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[APD] RE: BGA



>Tom, et al, 

>Thanks as always for your very helpful suggestions. Fortunately I did
>buy some potassium phosphate from Greg Watson along with the PMDD
>ingredients, I just hadn't used it yet. You mentioned .1 mg/l was too
>low for the phosphate, but what should I shoot for? 

Try 1.0ppm.
The little your test kit is reading is some residual organically bound PO4,
not available for plants(but plenty available for algae).

>Like Rick said, it seems to be more prevalent in areas like that bush
>that get less water flow. 

So fluff those areas ocassionally for now. Trim well.

>Anyway, this morning I noticed that the water seems a bit less green.
>There doesn't seem to be any new BGA growth, which is at least a step in
>the right direction. Also, I'm noticing more healthy new growth on the
>indica and macrandra, as well as the temple Hygros. The ends of these
>plants look like the textbook examples of beautiful plant growth. Too
>bad the bottom 80% of the stems look terrible. I guess I will need to
>progressively replace all these stem plants, or maybe I can get away
>with clipping off the top, planting it, and tossing out the bottom part.

Yes!, You should always do this. Remove the old nasty stuff. 
Add more CO2, before you try anything else.

>I do have one question before I try the 3 days of dark and no CO2 to get
>rid of the BGA. My tap water has a pH of around 8. Am I going to affect
>the fish if the pH goes up to 8 for three days without the CO2?

Does not matter. Plants are not growing during this time. 

>filter without any dechlor? Especially if I do a 50%+ water change? We
>got a notice from the local water company a while back that they were
>temporarily changing the chlorination of the water, and for about three
>weeks I could really smell the chlorine in the tap water. That seems to
>have stopped now. 

Depends if they changed to chloramines. The carbon filters should remove
it. Keep them routinely changed.

Main thing is to keep up on the CO2, pruning, filter cleaning, adding
enough KNO3, PO4, traces, water changes.
Do that for 3 weeks and you should see dramatic improvement.
The 3 day blackout should kill off most things, run the diatom during that
time and at least 3 days after.

You should not need a UV if you have a diatom.

Regards, 
Tom Barr



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