algae

[muskieswen]

Quick question, I am hoping that someone can identify what I think is a problem. I seem to be getting alot of green algae on my glass as well as some dark kind of spotty algae on my leaves of all of my green colored sword plants but none on my crypt's or my red leave style swords. I inject c02, my ph is around 7.5, KH is at 14 and no amonia, 55 gallon tank with 4 - 32 watt 10,000 K lamps burning 10 - 11 hours a day. I run one canister filter and one magnum filter. Even the bacopa gets the black spots on the older leaves. Newer leaves do not get the black spots. My crypts are growing real fast as well as my red leaved style sword (kinda of red and green). What do you think?

[Timmain42]

I think you have a fair amount of light, but I didn't see where you mentioned what fertilizers you were adding to the water to support the plants. ?

[muskieswen]

I do not add any ferts. My substrate is supposed to (as I was told) have enough of that stuff.

[Timmain42]

Did someone here tell you that you only needed substrate for fertilizer? I sure hope not.

If you've got 2.5 WPG, you're going to need fertilizers. Your substrate, no matter what it is, won't have enough ferts to last the entire lifespan of your tank. We have a very good sticky on fertilization at the top of this particular forum. Handy stuff to know, and all of the ferts are cheap. If you're going to go as far as plugging in CO2, you might as well go the whole nine yards... right now, you've only gone about 6 yards.

[muskieswen]

thanks timm for the advice. If I introduce fertilizer to my water column, wont that help the algae grow?

[Timmain42]

Not really. It's all about balance. You want to add enough light, CO2 and ferts to get the plants to grow. Once the plants drink down all the nutrients, there aren't enough left over for the algae and it tends to shrink to acceptable levels. You'll always have the potential for weird algae and you'll surely have a little green-spot (all plants tanks do), but the vast majority of the "crawling crud" that plagues you will go away with the proper care.

[muskieswen]

cool, thank you again.

[Timmain42]

No problem, take pics of your tank sometime so we can all see.