So I switched all my 29 gallon community tank to all real plants about 6 weeks ago. I switched the single fluorescent tube that came with the tank to a double strip (making it 40 watts total). I have a bunch of lower light plants (java fern,water wisteria, red ludwigia, vals, dwarf sag, christmas moss, pellia). I'm dosing with Flourish, Excel, and NPK and I do 40% pwc's every 10 days.
Most of my plants have shown a little bit new growth, but I'm having a bit of an algae problem. There's some green algae on the anubias (see picture) and java fern leaves. The new top leaves seem to be fine on the wisteria and ludwigia but the lower leaves have algae on them. I'm almost afraid that the lower leaves of the wisteria are dead but the new leaves on top are bright green with no algae (see attached picture - new leaves are on the upper left). The algae aside, I'm not really seeing a lot of growth. I thought with the plants in there for over a month now that I would have seen a good deal of growth, especially from the wisteria but they've hardly grown. The moss and pellia are doing well, but nothing else is doing much in the way of growing.
So that's the situation - should I try CO2? I'm thinking about doing a DIY rig, but I was under the impression that with the wattage so low I wouldn't need it (especially as I'm dosing excel). Will that help? The lights are on about 11 hours a day, should I cut it down? Is there anything else I can do to help the plants grow and stop the algae? Thanks for your thoughts!
Most of my plants have shown a little bit new growth, but I'm having a bit of an algae problem. There's some green algae on the anubias (see picture) and java fern leaves. The new top leaves seem to be fine on the wisteria and ludwigia but the lower leaves have algae on them. I'm almost afraid that the lower leaves of the wisteria are dead but the new leaves on top are bright green with no algae (see attached picture - new leaves are on the upper left). The algae aside, I'm not really seeing a lot of growth. I thought with the plants in there for over a month now that I would have seen a good deal of growth, especially from the wisteria but they've hardly grown. The moss and pellia are doing well, but nothing else is doing much in the way of growing.
So that's the situation - should I try CO2? I'm thinking about doing a DIY rig, but I was under the impression that with the wattage so low I wouldn't need it (especially as I'm dosing excel). Will that help? The lights are on about 11 hours a day, should I cut it down? Is there anything else I can do to help the plants grow and stop the algae? Thanks for your thoughts!
