RE:Lighting 101

[<envisible at earthlink_net>]

lighting is not your problem.  although another 30w bulb wouldn't hurt later
on when things are going better your real problem is nutrients. although it
may seem counterintuitive i'd bet the farm you need to add nutrients. what's
probably really happening is you're plants are starving and the algae is
taking advantage of them as they slowly die. at the very least you need a
nitrate test kit and a phosphate test kit.  an iron kit would help too but
these kits are often less reliable and if you get something like Kent
freshwater plant supplement (blue bottle) along with Kent "growth stimulator"
or whatever they call it in the pink bottle - its really basically just sodium
nitrate - you can dose for the proper amount of nitrate and then just add the
same volume of iron/traces as per their instructions. i think there are other
similar product systems but i've used kent this way and it worked. in any
event, the nitrate and phosphate tests are usually cheap and fairly accurate
(hagen or something for like $8-10).  test your tap water first to see what it
has.  a lot of the time tap water will have some nitrate (up to 5ppm) but no
phosphate or some phosphate (up to .5ppm or so) and no nitrate. just bring
things to generally acceptable levels.  I think just about any post by Tom
Barr on this list will probably mention the ranges (about 5ppm nitrate,
.1-1ppm phosphate, .1ppm iron, if i'm not mistaken). the hardest part may
actually be finding a useful source of phosphate if that's what's lacking.
search the archives for info on this or repost later if need be. hope this
helps