My 10 gallon tank is a constant struggle to maintain, I believe due to the amount of lighting I have for it. It has a 40w Current USA fixture on the tank, uses DIY CO2 and I have been using Kent's Freshwater Plant ferts and Flourish Excel(only more recently)
I started the tank 2 months ago, and it has shown an amazing amount of growth. it is about where I'd like it to be, in terms of plant growth. further propagation isn't really required, I've got a pretty nice amount of HC on the floor and more dwarf sag and micro swords than I ever imagined. floating plants grow insanely fast in the tank, and most days pearling begins about 20 minutes after lights on. I use a 5 on, 2 off, 5 on cycle for the lights.
Since I started the tank, I have had so many problems with keeping algae at bay, even with the fast plant growth... and I'm finding that if I miss a few days of excel, hair algae jumps to action, most recently attacking the roots of floating plants the most. it's frustrating, and is becoming expensive. It's possible that the tank simply needs more of one nutrient or another... it is very lightly stocked and never shows nitrates... could be a ton of things... but I attribute it the most to my lighting. I have 2 other tanks with much lower lighting, and neither have been as much of a problem.
Sooo, I'm thinking that since I've pretty much grew in my carpet and gotten things rooted, I'd like to transition the tank to a low light tank, and let it rest... hopefully keeping the algae down and requiring less maintenance. I've been considering doing this by using strips of black tape over the lense on the light fixture, to block light... maybe adding a few strips at a time, to slowly acclimate the plants to less light.
does anyone have advice how to best go about this?
how will my plants react?
is there anything else I need to do at the same time?
I started the tank 2 months ago, and it has shown an amazing amount of growth. it is about where I'd like it to be, in terms of plant growth. further propagation isn't really required, I've got a pretty nice amount of HC on the floor and more dwarf sag and micro swords than I ever imagined. floating plants grow insanely fast in the tank, and most days pearling begins about 20 minutes after lights on. I use a 5 on, 2 off, 5 on cycle for the lights.
Since I started the tank, I have had so many problems with keeping algae at bay, even with the fast plant growth... and I'm finding that if I miss a few days of excel, hair algae jumps to action, most recently attacking the roots of floating plants the most. it's frustrating, and is becoming expensive. It's possible that the tank simply needs more of one nutrient or another... it is very lightly stocked and never shows nitrates... could be a ton of things... but I attribute it the most to my lighting. I have 2 other tanks with much lower lighting, and neither have been as much of a problem.
Sooo, I'm thinking that since I've pretty much grew in my carpet and gotten things rooted, I'd like to transition the tank to a low light tank, and let it rest... hopefully keeping the algae down and requiring less maintenance. I've been considering doing this by using strips of black tape over the lense on the light fixture, to block light... maybe adding a few strips at a time, to slowly acclimate the plants to less light.
does anyone have advice how to best go about this?
how will my plants react?
is there anything else I need to do at the same time?
