upgrade without risk of algae.

[jay]

keep looking at all these gorgeous planted tanks with thick bushes of stem plants
and im green with envy.
im looking to put my forest of swords into my biotope tank, then get a nice thicket of rotala and a lawn of ech. tenellus and add to my cyperus helferi.
i got a fluval roma 125 ltr tank with the standard lighting 2x 20watt fluorescents. lights on for 10 hours.
im thinking of adding another set of tubes via a starter unit and fit the tubes to the front and rear canopy flips.

not sure how much to add in terms of watts
2 more 20 watt t8's?
t5's?!! surely that would be too much and cause a big algae bloom.

my co2 is set at nearly 2 bubbles per second 24hours as i have some surface agitation.
i dose 2ml tropica every day.
will both these need to be increased and what else could i do to prevent an algae bloom?

thanks.

 

[aaronnorth]

2 more 20w T8's will give you 2.6WPG which is plenty. As long as you get enough nutrients & CO2 for the amount of lighting you have, and also enough plant biomass, then algae will be no problem. What type of tropica is it, the plus or the standard?

 

[jay]

using the standard as i feel i get enough nitrate from fish load. always at around 10 or 15 when i test.
not sure about phosphate though.

 

[aaronnorth]

using the standard as i feel i get enough nitrate from fish load. always at around 10 or 15 when i test.
not sure about phosphate though.

sounds ok, 20ppm is reccomended

 

[jay]

Nice.
Thanks for that.

Love this site