Hair Algae Armegeddon

Jemflowers said:

Ok, yea the water softener is a Culligan one that I have to add salt to all the time. I couldn't bypass it to fill my aquarium, the softener is hooked up right to where the well water comes in from the ground.
I was dosing Excel everyday, but since have discontinued it.

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The salt added for the softener may well be detrimental to the plants, and this is going to give algae another advantage. This salt is also not good for soft water fish. I'm sorry I can't suggest anything, but I would myself not want to use water from the softener.

Jemflowers said:

We have a great supply of those "water cooler" jugs of water. We have quite the stockpile, think that would be ok to replenish the tank? Or how about those kiosk water refill stations at the grocery store? Are those ok too?

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This can work, depending upon the water. If it is "pure" in the sense of distilled or Reverse Osmosis, you may need to add some mineral back. Mixing the well water (before it goes through the softener) with "pure" water works.

Before going out and buying water, you may want to test some of your different faucets. At one home of mine I found that, for whatever reason, our kitchen bypassed the softener (had near normal GH/KH). Sometimes you can manually bypass as well, I believe.

Also, you could think about getting an RO/DI fileter yourself and reconstituting the water, but that would depend on how much you're going to be needing...

I'd always test any source water first to get an idea of what you're starting with. Not all purified water is equal.

Please check us out in case this might be a solution for your algae issues

Ah, I see I missed an earlier post where you alluded to that being an issue. Well if that's the case then I guess buying water might be your best option at the moment...but given the tank size, I'd seriously consider thinking about purchasing an RO/DI unit for yourself if you are not going to be using tap.

One thing that was sort of touched on by gmh and Byron is C source. For a 55g tank, DIY CO2 really isn't going to be consistent and may be causing more harm than good. That setup is really only good for 20-30 gallons at the most, unless you're running a LOT of batches at once. I ran in BBA on my 30g for that exact reason...the DIY setup wasn't enough, and the algae LOVED the shifting CO2 levels. Excel is a good product, and may be enough to supplement the lower light plants' C requirements, but it's an entirely different mechanism. Personally, I'd discontinue the CO2 and only add Excel rather than the other way around.

What did you decide to do with the lighting? I'd also say that you likely have too much light for what you are trying to accomplish. 3x T5HO, correct? That's quite a bit of light, even for a slightly deeper tank, given that it looks like you're only keeping species with lower requirements. While cutting the photoperiod might help, I'd honestly just stop running at least one bulb altogether, however you're able to accomplish that with your fixture setup.

Definitely see what the GH/KH is like though...I'm assuming that, if your softener is functioning correctly, you'll see very little GH, but likely some measurable KH depending on what the water is like coming in. That may not be helping the plants as they do need Ca++ and Mg++, albeit in small quantities, but you don't seem to be dosing any sort of micro mix.

One other little thing to consider purchasing is a TDS meter if you're going to be getting RO/DI water from whichever source you choose. I got my EZ meter for maybe $20-25 online, and that way you can at least make sure that the water is "pure"...because GH/KH wont cover every thing.