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Advice requested - algae I have not seen before
Ok, time for me to come out of lurking mode. A while back I finally got
around to setting up a heavily planted tank, something I have wanted to do
for some time. Everything has been going absolutely *great* until these
last couple days when suddenly I started seeing a brown sludge-like algae
starting to coat the substrate and some of the plants. It is a real
light brown/grey in color and isn't like anything I have seen before.
There also is some type of hair-like algae growing on the plants, but
until recently that wasn't a problem as the plants were growing so fast it
didnt have a chance to buildup much.
My tank specs are:
35 gallon acrylic
220W compact flourescent (both only on for part of the day, otherwise
it is staged)
Eheim Pro II 2026 canister filter
m3 CO2 deluxe system controlled by an Aquacontroller II
pH kept between 7.00 and 7.05
temp kept at 78.5-80
Flourite substrate
It seems we have pretty soft water here (KH of 4 from the tap) and
I've had to add baking soda after a while as the water gets softer in
the tank.
Local water supply has roughly 5-6ppm nitrates.
I don't have the listing handy of the latin names for all the plants,
but the rough list is, plus or minus some typos:
Glossostigma
Crypt spiralis
Jungle val
Italian val
Corkscrew val
Rottala indica
Blood stargrass
Ozelot sword
Crypt wenditti or something like that
micro chain sword
A chunk of xmas moss
A red sword I received from Daphne
Also, up until recenty I have had plant growth like I could not
believe. On my pruning before last, I had to remove a 3' section of
one of the vals as it had grown that much and was wrapped around the
top of the tank . I also learned why they call this micro chain sword
a 'chain' sword. This thing has sent out runners all over the place
and is growing like mad. Growth seems to have slowed down a bit, though I
still get a lot of pearling.
Any pointers on what I could do more for this tank? This algae is quite
quickly detracting from the beauty of the tank.
Oh, I almost forgot the fish. I have 6 *super* red rosy barbs, 4 immature
german blue rams, 2 small SAE's, a mixture of ghost/amano shrimp, 4 cory
matae's and 5 otocinclus.
I know I should be adding something to this tank, but I am not sure
exactly what and how much so I have not been adding anything outside of
water changes and baking soda when the KH drops too low.
Thanks in advance,
Robert Chady
Chippewa Falls, WI