exactly what slappy said... stable co2. in my case, it wasn't by injecting or liquid supplementation and i certainly had too much light to begin with... but i didn't change my light... and i was kinda new to things in general.
what i finally did was add an hob and make sure my water level was up high at all times so it created surface flow. this, i'm convinced, facilitated good gas exchange that eventually solved my issue, but i was so behind it was a long struggle. had i caught it earlier, i now know it would have been much easier.
i must admit, it was a long road for me though. i had tried a few things that certainly didn't work and stuck with them way too long. i was on the verge of losing all my plants when i finally turned things around, so i didn't have much to trim and had to leave enough BBA covered leafs in the tank to keep the tank in a state of constant inoculation. between this and my light being too bright to make things easy, i had no choice but to keep at a ridiculous pace for maintenance and remove one leaf here and there for a few months.
some of the things i tried and their results...
1) diy co2... this was on a 50 gallon tank and i tried the hagen system. i tried a few different recipes, feeding the line into my canister, the whole shebang. the end result was it only complicated the issue, though. had i had a little more knowledge/experience at the time i would have known it wasn't going to work.
2) adding more light... at one point i was convinced the problem was not enough light to grow plants since i was constantly losing plant mass due to algae issues. as could be imagined, my plants actually grew faster, but so did the algae... which resulted in having to remove more covered leafs more often.
3) strong aeration. however, with aeration only in one corner of the tank, i believe it caused more fluctuation and the result was a rapid increase in the amount of algae... way faster than an inconsistent diy co2 even.
4) asking local fish stores. one in particular of which i thought at the time would have been a good place for advice since i looked up my local aquarium group and they were one of the sponsors listed. the advice i got there was horrible and only turned out to be selling me more useless products. first layer laterite and api leaf zone was their answer... period. as could be imagined, that had no effect at all.
5) from there i was doing relentless searching. what i found was a slew of answers that varied, but always came back to (regardless what the algae was) "if you don't get to the root of the problem, it will be back no matter how you fix it". so, then i started really looking into different fertilizers. i was reluctant to try dry ferts because i was unfamiliar with the chemicals/powders and didn't want to have to dose a dozen bottles (and pay for them), so avoided the seachem line pretty much altogether. i tried everything a person can find at the most well stocked LFS. 2 of my lfs's carry just about anything you don't have to go online to get, so this was not a problem other than tremendous cost. no positive effect other than a hair more plant mass.
6) the seachem line... every single bottle except excel... my plant mass reached its peak for my co2 levels, but the algae was untouched and happy. my wallet was quite thin, though... constantly!
7) purchased every single test you can get from the common hobby brand test kits and tested religiously to understand what was going on in my tanks. from this i learned my source water was practically void of everything even remotely useful in a planted tank and that my local water department was definitely using chloramine. this was confirmed by having residual amounts of chlorine and ammonia given your basic tests and 0 ammonia when tested with a free ammonia test kit from seachem. gh and kh were consistently below 2, copper was low, iron was rarely testable, no3 consistently below 5ppm, po4 rarely testable from the tap, etc, etc. ...
meanwhile, my 30 breeder (same footprint as my 50) was doing phenomenally in contrast with the exact same treatment/parameters except gas exchange (more surface area to volume).
8) realizing this (#6) and seeing how much i was spending on ferts monthly, i finally decided to take the dry ferts plunge and added the hob to the tank. with careful maintenance and trimming it wasn't long before things started leveling out... and then my plant mass hit a new peak.
i'm still fooling around testing different theories and constantly mucking up everything... but now i can get my tank back into shape whenever i want, so that's good. i have found that with an inert substrate and no carbon dosing (liquid or gas), my 50 certainly does have a maximum plant mass it can sustain and be healthy looking. another thing i've come to know about carbon, is that the plant mass can be considerably increased and healthy with only the recommended dose. currently dosing/testing with florin axis.
i've also come to the conclusion (prior to my own testing, but i think the evidence all over the web supports this) that carbon consistency doesn't necessarily mean hitting the same ppm with pinpoint accuracy every day. more along the lines of hitting and exceeding a minimum that's proprietary/specific to each tank on a semi-constant day to day basis without surpassing that critical "my fish a panting and floating" break point. otherwise diy co2 would be a definite recipe for disaster as day to day ppm's simply cannot be consistent in an anal sense of the term. tom barr is constantly posting a graph that's indicative of this as well that shows different concentrations of stuff don't have to be exact... just within that "sweet spot"...
(hope tom doesn't mind me linking his pic) :uhoh:
if this weren't true i assume the carboy diy co2 method also wouldn't be an option for bigger tanks without gassing someones fish... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plantgeek.net%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ft%3D13369%26sid%3Db3b555d6606ea367a63e37f96fe9ad5b&ei=cLHnTon1OOHv0gH595mKCg&usg=AFQjCNHk8ZorJhFVcQmIiHrZdlmMYiKHyQ&sig2=T0Xxc_pEAOwKTlJ9O7syLQ (pretty sure that's the relevant link on plantgeek, but apparently the site's down... maybe forever? ugh...)
i'm long winded for nothing at times, ain't i? :banhim:
anyways... if you changed up what you were doing and that's causing it, you know how to avoid it. i'm just not an advocate for "overdosing" excel or h2o2 in the tank. seems a lot of folks have "gassed" their fish this way in an attempt to save their plants. little trim here and there, remove what goes back easily, treat and replace... even cut off the filters and spot dose if necessary... is fine by me... but i wanted to know it was gone because i'd gotten to the root of the problem in the past... and now it seems i can see it coming in time. hopefully around tax time i can go pressurized and see if i can still keep up. :evil_lol: hopefully.......
EDIT: sorry if this seems a bit scatter brained. with christmas and kids, it took me a few rounds to type that all up. i still don't think i got across everything i wanted to, but the basics are there. hope it helps.
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