Lighting Duration for New Planted Tank

[Urban Aquaria]

How to get rid?? Or wait it out like diatoms? They are like en wrapping themselves to the plantlets and suffocating them...the ones engulfed as seen are like half dead plants to me.

Usually they would gradually dissolve away on their own (and get replaced by other types of tougher algae) once the tank is cycled and stable. When shrimps are added into the tank, the shrimps will eat it up quickly. For your tank size, i'd guess 20 cherry shrimps should be enough for a start to help clear the algae.

Its common to see more algae engulfing the plants which are in poor health or melting, mainly because as the plant dies and rots, it releases nutrient back into the water column. The higher concentration of nutrients released around the melting plant tend to attract algae to grow there.

If the plants are really melting, its best to just manually remove them, cut away any healthy stems you see and replant them. That will help to reduce the excess nutrients from melting parts.

If possible, you should keep planting more monte carlo, currently its still quite sparse, adding more of it will increase plant mass to help soak up more nutrients and outcompete the algae. Alternatively, you could also plant some fast growing stem plants around (ie. water wisteria or water sprite), let them soak up the excess nutrients, then later you can remove them when the tank stabilizes.

[Everlance]

hi, apart from what bro ua suggested and reading from the previous page, you are doing wc of 20% every two days. maybe you can increase the amount of water to 60-70% since you do not have livestock in the tank. this will greatly reduce the algae. another thing you can do is to add abit of maybe excel or algaexit to suppress algae grow for the time being until you can add livestock. i didn't share my water change regime in my post. i do 80% water change everyday for the 1st week. 80% every two days for the 2nd week. 80% every 3 days for the 3rd week and 80% every 4 days for the 4th week. Lastly, 50% every week when livestock is added. no algae at all. only diatoms.

[LegoMan]

Hi Everlance and UA, appreciate your shares and advises. I guess I might be doing too little wc for my ada amazonia soil but nevertheless, I've asked a friend who has the master test kit with results showing tank cycled but will play safe till official two months later which is Jan 25th before I add any RCS in case of ammonia spike. For now, 2-3 otos might be a good bet as clean-up crew. Will also add in more mc as well and remove the melted plantlets or nip off those affected stems. My dkh is at 8 degrees hardness. Hope that with this, the plants will take over on the growing. I was starting to want to reduce my lighting period to 5 or even 4 hours but thinking EL had almost the same size tank so it couldn't be the case.
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[Everlance]

nice... now you can add some otos and some cheap rcs. you will see the difference overnight.

[LegoMan]

If I put 3 otos and 20 rcs, would it be too much for my tank size?

[Everlance]

If I put 3 otos and 20 rcs, would it be too much for my tank size?

should be ok. but you shouldn't introduce so many fish at one shot, especially when the tank is just cycled. add maybe 2 otos and 5 rcs first. then around 2 weeks later if everything looks fine, you can add more livestock. adding livestock now is only for dealing with the algae problems. add more when the tank stabilizes.

[LegoMan]

Ok added 3 otos yesterday. Hope they'll clear the algae in time for additional replant again.

[ActiveBlast]

My sae are dependent on food that I gave now they don't even bother to clean the glass that has brown spots.

[mercur1al]

My sae are dependent on food that I gave now they don't even bother to clean the glass that has brown spots.

I believe you need Otos for that. When i had brown diatom algae addinga couple of Otos did the trick. SAEs are more for hair algae etc.

[ActiveBlast]

What I would do right now is that I would wipe it off the glass when I'm doing weekly water change

[LegoMan]

Overdue update...after last failed attempt to save the mc..I have replanted two pots of mc to make it dense.

It is growing well and spreading and have recently added 10 RCS into the tank.

Also, I've changed the bubble counter, dropchecker and ceramic diffuser to the bazooka intense atomiser which works well.

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[LegoMan]

Quick Pic of the day with RCS shrimps
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[LegoMan]

Quick Pic of the day with RCS shrimps.

Made a grave mistake of not turning down the CO2 as I thought the otos are surviving same. Now am left with 6/10 RCS over the span of two days. Previous CO2 is at 1 bps with dropchecker turning yellow green and have adjusted further due to the first death onwards to 1 bubble per 2 seconds but still same. So am adjusting to 1 bubble 4-5 secs to further monitor. Guess for nano tank, the CO2 really swings the pH as well as can see the shrimps are not active and just freezing when there is CO2.

Am also cutting down the CO2 kick in to 30 mins before light is on and 30 mins shut off before light is off.
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[Dscheng]

got bigger size pic?

[LegoMan]

Update is now I am left with 6 RCS out the 10 and seems that they are adapting well now that I've tuned down the CO2 ( 1 bubble 4 secs--nano tank---dropchecker dark green)significantly.

One have even molted nicely so hopefully all goes well. MC growth is slowing down as I noticed the bunches I planted expand in size initially but parts of the mc melted maybe due to adapting as newer, smaller leaves are seen as well as there is some hair algae here and there.

[LegoMan]

Sorry for the long lost updated post...wife is expected so my attention is on her.

So now this is the current tank profile...added 10 yamatos to help clean up the BBA and GHA.
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[rohitsingh_81]

Keep the CO2 running 24x7. Fluctuating CO2 levels are prime cause of algae.