Hi,
I am into my 2nd week of replanting and I am running into problem. It looks like algae issue to me.
I can rub off some of the dark portion with my fingers but the leaf are still brown.
I am thinking of the 3 below options,
1 ) Use anti algae soultion to treat the tank
2 ) Trim away all the affected parts
3 ) Replant the tank again
My spec are as follows;
Tank Size : 4X2X2 Tank.
Light : 4x55W T5
Lightings period : 6.30pm to 1.00am (7 Hrs)
CO2 injection by reactor : 4BPS from 5pm to 12.30am (7,5 Hrs) + 10ml excel daily
Fert : Seachem NPK + Trace + Iron (Dosage per indicated on bottle)
Substrate : Gex red packet soil (5 yrs old), intend to insert root tab this weekend.
Hope to ask for advises which option should I go for.
Last edited by PKB; 21st May 2015 at 10:27.
it could be brown algae or dust, you can get some otos to clean it up for you
Looks like parts of the leaves are melting, most likely due to lack of nutrients.
Your Gex substrate at 5 years old is probably well used and depleted of most essential nutrients, so you'll definitely need to rejuvenate it. Especially for the large leaved echinodorus plants, they are heavy root feeders and require alot of nutrients to sustain growth.
Dosing water column ferts do help, but due to the current shortage of nutrients in the tank, you may need to dose more than the recommended amounts listed. Bottled ferts tend to be relatively conservative in their nutrient content too, so higher dosages may be required to compensate for it In higher growth tanks.
Do note that it may take more time for certain plants to utilize nutrients from the water column too, as taking in nutrients from their roots is usually easier.
Yes, the substrate are as good as useless I guess. I bought some Seachem Fourish Tabs to regenerate the soil, not sure how many tabs should I insert, was thinking of inserting 10cm diameter per tabs.
As for the liquid fert, i am already dosing 1.5x the amount stated on the seachem bottle. Hope the tabs will solve the nutrient issue.
As for the suspected algae, I will treat them with Easy-Life ALGEXIT. Hopefully along with the Otos suggested by Robert it will provide me with a solution.
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