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Green water update
I've been fighting a green water outbreak in my 29 gallon tank for
the past two months. It was interesting that even though it got pretty
think (could barely see the back of the tank), the plants continued to
grow quite a lot.
The good news is that I've won the war. Suddenly, in the last three days,
the water cleared itself and now it's crystal clear. So what did I do?
I started with completely covering the tank for 3 days (not 4), and
that cleared some of it. Then I set the photoperiod to 9 hours, and
started fertilizing with PMDD (minus the trace element mix, which I
haven't gotten around to ordering yet). Everything together helped
get the tank all clear again, and the plants are bubbling like crazy now.
One observation: the darkness period definetely hurts some plants, in
spite of some people's assurances to the contrary. I found that
the Hygrophila polysperma lost many bottom leaves (turned yellow/white
first), and most other plants lost their weaker leaves. On the other hand,
that's not necessarely a bad thing :)
By the way, I suspect that the cause behind the persistent green water
is the kitty litter/Osmocote substrate releasing phosphates in the
water (combined with fairly high levels of light, 80W for a 29g).
So, if you have a bad case of green water, don't give up!
--Noel