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Yes. You have multiple issues going on.
Regards
Peter Gwee
Tank Dimensions : 3ft x 2ft x 2ft
Lighting Intensity : 188W
Number and type of Lighting : 2 x 55W PL & 2 x 39W T5 (HO)
No. of hours your lights are on : 9 hrs - 7.15~10.15am, 14.15~17.15pm & 20.15~23.15pm
Type of CO2 : Cylinder
Method of Injection : internal reactor
Liquid fertilisers Used : Seachem Flourish, Seachem Flourish Iron & Seachem Flourish Potassium
Fertilization regime : 5ml per 10 days
Other additives : Seachem Prime
Type of Filter : Dymax 3 canister filter
When was the filter last washed : setup recently
Filter media used : Ceramic Rings, Coral chips
When was the media last changed : Setup recently
Age of setup : 3 weeks
Water change frequency : Every week
Amount changed : 30%
Water surface movement : None
Circulation : Gentle
Tank Temperature : 29~30 degrees
Chemical Properties (Fill what you can)
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KH (dKH): 4
pH : 7
Bioload (Number and type of fish and plants)
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Java Fern
Nana
Com
Hair grass
Taiwan moss
Cabomba caroliniana
2 other unknown plants
No fishes/shrimps yet.
Describe your problem :
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Patches of hairy threads appear on the substrate, is it hair algae ?
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I planted glosso at the foreground before tearring it down and these hairy threads appear then after.
Anyone can advise what I should do ?
Last edited by jowy_ham; 30th Jul 2009 at 14:41.
Yes. You have multiple issues going on.
Regards
Peter Gwee
Plant Physiology by Taiz and Zeiger
Set the lighting period to one full length, not broken up like that.
You need to supply nitrogen and phosphorous too.
Get in more plant mass and meantime remove the algae as best as you can.
OkieOriginally Posted by |squee|
Where to get that ? and the dosing amount ?
How to remove the algae ? I've tried to use the tweezers to remove them but it is too difficult too. Any livestock that eats that ?
Could you please enlighten ? newbie hereYes. You have multiple issues going on.
Regards
Peter Gwee
You can buy Seachem Flourish Nitrogen and Seachem Flourish Phosphorous. Follow the dosing instructions.
Weird, they look pretty easy to remove to me. Just use your fingers and pull the stuff up perhaps?
For the lighting period, try 1pm to 11pm. 10 hours of light uninterrupted. This will remove the breakup points and allow you to view your tank at night after work
The difficult part is that are alot of these on my foreground area.You can buy Seachem Flourish Nitrogen and Seachem Flourish Phosphorous. Follow the dosing instructions.
Weird, they look pretty easy to remove to me. Just use your fingers and pull the stuff up perhaps?
For the lighting period, try 1pm to 11pm. 10 hours of light uninterrupted. This will remove the breakup points and allow you to view your tank at night after work
If I'm to reset my tank, how should I go abt getting rid of the hair algae ? Take out all my plants, drain the tank and leave it to dry ?
Thanks for the advice once again
Yippie!! Reptiles and Fishies!
1) set your lighting period into one long length.. dont break it up into 3hr periods.
2) Get some No3 and Po4 and start dosing them.. you can buy them at NA. For amounts to dose, download Chuck Gadds calculator and use that to calculate how much to dose. You can get it at this link You need to know how many ppm to dose.. for that.. read up!!! on tom barrs E.I. method. You can find it on the stick of useful link on the beginners page.
You can stop Seachem Flourish Potassium if you go this way. IF you go the seachem route suggested by Squee..then follow their insturction for the size your tank is.. use the tank volume calculator found on this very forum to calculate that.
3) depending on what you want.. you may not want coral chips in your tank filter. You also need some form of biological filter in there.
4) go read up a little more.. ALL the answers to everything you just asked can be already found on the forum.. you jsut need to do a search.
Yes I suppose you can do that. Have not tried it myself though, I remove most algae as best as I can. It's tedious hard work.If I'm to reset my tank, how should I go abt getting rid of the hair algae ? Take out all my plants, drain the tank and leave it to dry ?
Can you show a full tank photo to let us see how much plant load you have ?
I think is best to let us see before you go and add NO3 and PO4.
As requested :
Last edited by jowy_ham; 30th Jul 2009 at 14:41.
Buy much more of that stemmed plant in the centre. This will increase plant mass for you significantly. Plant the new plants together with the existing ones where they are now.
It's important that you get your CO2 right. From the picture, it seems that your CO2 is not dissolving well. Try this: get a good diffusor and place it at the output of your filter letting the bubbles fly all around the tank. Reduce bps to 1 per second at the start and slowly increase until your fish start to gasp at the surface. When this happens reduce the bubble rate to the last known safe point and leave it there.
Remove the algae as best as you can, and increase the dosing amounts you have right now. It's vital that you get nitrogen and phosphorous.
To dose nitrogen and phosphorous you can try both methods suggested in earlier posts; Seachem is familiar to you but expensive in the long run (you're paying money for the water they use) while buying the powders KNO3 and KH2PO4 seriously saves you a lot of money but require some understanding at the start.
After seeing your tank, imho here are my thoughts :
1- From your KH (=4) and PH (=7) readings, CO2 level is about 12ppm from the CO2 table. Frankly speaking that is kind of low. Do you check the bubble per sec ? You may want to crank it up more (20-30ppm), or as Terence said above. But if you do that, be around to check your fish condition while keep KH more than 3 dH. Sometime PH can crash and kill sensitive fishes if exceed the buffer capacity. Especially if not enough plant mass to use up the CO2.
2- I noted you said it is just 3 weeks old. So the key word is "be patient". You did not mention what substrate additive you have there. And the algae seem to be at the substrate level ? Just my guess new substrate needs time to be stable too. Different type of bacteria just starting to interact and take root in the substrate layers till a balance happen. Sometime organic compound leaching out from substrate promoting algae too (depend on what substrate you use).
I would think the first step is to remove as much of the algae as you can, then add more plants as Terence's advice, even if temporary and you can remove them later.
For the fore ground, it seems that you intent to grow hair grass ? Try add more of it to cover more of the substrate.
Basically try to add as many plants as you can to begin with.
For dosing N and P at a newly start up phase I do not have much experience to comment. I found usually with good level of CO2 and high plant mass the initial phase is not a problem. It is after the initial phase (my latest experience was a 2 month of stuned growth) when plants grow in and not enough plant food, then adding N & P. But other may disagree. But I think eveyone will agree it will help if you add more plants.
Just give it some time to settle in rather than disturbing the ground too much. Once you have plenty of plants that grow well there the algae will retreat.
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