Going to try to cover everything in one post -- swamped for time atm with the newest 75g
Captain Hook said:
Roan it's great to hear you've won the war, for now at least haha. It's amazing how many people are hesitant to increase fertilizers thinking that will cause algae or make it worse when that's the solution! You went about it in a good way though. Measured what you had, knew what you wanted to get at, and did what you had to. I've found that once you get in a fairly regular schedule of dosing that makes it easier and the plants do better as well.
Still working on a regular schedule. Sounds easier than it is
I'm curious about your Nitrate fertilizing. You mentioned that you were adding 10 ppm a day and it disappeared. Wow! So what are you doing currently?
That has slowed down a lot. Right now I'm dosing every waterchange (about the 4th day) 10 ppm + the 7ppm out of the tap for 17ppm. That's gone by day 3, so I either have to up the waterchanges to every 3 days or dose macros on alternate days like everyone else does
Cathy G said:
Roan! What a perfectly timed letter!!
I am waiting for my chemicals to come - I have 0 nitrates. I have beard algae. Today I pulled my plants, and soaked them in Potassium Permanganate (sp). I replanted the tank. What a mess. I really hope the algae is dead, but if not your news is soo good! Did you have to clean it off when it died, or did it just disintigrate?
Neither yet
I have been learning the hard way, I added lights and co2 before I knew about dosing the tank. My otos have kept much at bay, but the beard stuff is totally gross and I didn't want to buy SAE.
So, how long did it take your plants to throw off their beards and be lush and pretty and green again?!
Actually, the beard algae "went away" VERY fast and was replaced by those wonderfully yucky brown diatoms
EVERYTHING was covered in that stuff. Except for the fact that VA dirt is red, it looks like I emptied my vacuum in my tank :laugh:
Those are disappearing slowly, but it's my SAE that are clearing it out. Yep, my SAE eat brown algae and not only do I see them do it, but -- get this --
I originally bought 6 SAE, all of which were the same size. Two of them I put in this tank, two went into my son's 65g, and two went into my newest 75g. The SAE in my son's tank and my newest tank were supplemented with wafers and stuff. The SAE in my aglae tank, nothing. The SAE in my algae tank are now THREE TIMES the size of the other SAE! There is *nothing* in there for them to eat but brown algae and that's all I've seen them eat. Yesterday I moved the two SAE from my newest tank to the algae one and the size difference is hysterical.
My son's tank -- no CO2, 2 WPG -- has been developing some brown algae and his SAE are increasing in size rapidly.
As an aside, I have never seen an oto eat diatoms, which is why I didn't bother to move them into the algaefied tank.
I'll try to get a picture of the SAEs later today.
squall_japan said:
Good to hear you got the algae out.
I am having trouble with my tank too. Algae and nitrate 0. Wish i can get my hands to those AP phosphate test kits. I only have red sea available here.
I'm actually starting to prefer the Red Sea test. The problem with the AP one is that the colors the test turn do not match the freshwater color card that came with it
I didn't keep the SW card that came with it, so I can't compare those two.
The problem with the Red Sea one is that it only goes to 2.0. I'm going to email AP and find out why the colors are off.
I think I'm going to buy the SeaChem one and see if it's any better.
Roan
