Hi everyone!
My wisteria is lookin' pretty crappy. I've had it for a while, and it's never really grown much or developed many new leaves. About a week ago I did a search on wisteria, and from what I read, wisteria is a nitrogen hog. The nitrate in my tank is about 3ppm, not enough for wisteria evidently. On the Flourish Nitrogen bottle, there is a crazy little equation on how much to add in order to acheive your desired nitrogen level. I figure, I'm at 3ppm, and I should move slowly, so I'll just go up to 5ppm in this jump. I did the equation, and added in the desired amount, and dreamt of fabulous wisteria.
Well... not a day later, there was brown algae EVERYWHERE in the tank. The 5 otos can't even handle it. I did more research (a bit too late) and discovered that high nitrate levels cause algal blooms. But would a jump of 2ppm really cause a huge algal bloom? And my wisteria still looks awful... so I guess nitrogen isn't why it looks so bad. I did a huge water change, 75%, after the algae popped up.
My questions are: as far as wisteria is concerned, much much nitrate is sufficient? How much is too much? If nitrogen isn't the problem, what is?
Tank specs: 46gal, 2.4wpg, 80-ish degrees. I stopped dosing ferts after the algae, but I did dose: Flourish Trace, XL (still add this), Nitrogen, Iron, Potassium, and just plain Flourish. The tank is on a timer and gets light from 7AM to 7PM.
Thanks in advance!!!
My wisteria is lookin' pretty crappy. I've had it for a while, and it's never really grown much or developed many new leaves. About a week ago I did a search on wisteria, and from what I read, wisteria is a nitrogen hog. The nitrate in my tank is about 3ppm, not enough for wisteria evidently. On the Flourish Nitrogen bottle, there is a crazy little equation on how much to add in order to acheive your desired nitrogen level. I figure, I'm at 3ppm, and I should move slowly, so I'll just go up to 5ppm in this jump. I did the equation, and added in the desired amount, and dreamt of fabulous wisteria.
Well... not a day later, there was brown algae EVERYWHERE in the tank. The 5 otos can't even handle it. I did more research (a bit too late) and discovered that high nitrate levels cause algal blooms. But would a jump of 2ppm really cause a huge algal bloom? And my wisteria still looks awful... so I guess nitrogen isn't why it looks so bad. I did a huge water change, 75%, after the algae popped up.
My questions are: as far as wisteria is concerned, much much nitrate is sufficient? How much is too much? If nitrogen isn't the problem, what is?
Tank specs: 46gal, 2.4wpg, 80-ish degrees. I stopped dosing ferts after the algae, but I did dose: Flourish Trace, XL (still add this), Nitrogen, Iron, Potassium, and just plain Flourish. The tank is on a timer and gets light from 7AM to 7PM.
Thanks in advance!!!