First week not so good

[syburn]

Hi,

I am rather worried about the long term survival of my 1 week old planted tank. It only has 3 smallish clumps of 3 species of plants.

1. I have snails growing very fast!
2. I have some hairy light brown filamants on my What looks like Egeria Densa (Elodea)
3. My Vallisneria is buffeted by the inflow and has brown patches on edges as well has what look like light green crack lines.
4. tubes under the water are slimy to the touch!


Conditions
a. 2ft tank
b. 1x55w PL light on for 6 hours a day
c. CO2 on for same time 1-2 bubbles per second
d. No fish yet.
e. Not tests conducted yet.

Any thoughs on the situation and any things I should be doing?

[patricc]

Definitely not enought flora so algae is setting in

Tubes are like that ... at least for me... should be normal...

Snails can be removed using the cucumber method... look through the forum for snail removal methods... but i think got to wake up at 4 am to 'fish' for snails hehe

[FishSoup]

More plants, that's for sure. Get a LOT more plants

And some algae-cleaning crew would help loads.. shrimps, some otocinclus maybe. Best to get at least a few test kits: pH, ammonia, nitrate tests.

[torque6]

If you are sincerely worried about your long term survival of your tank, it would be wise to read up before even starting one. Sparingly planted tank initially could lead to serious algae issues later on.

At the end of the day, it depends what you want for your tank, the plants you want to keep, the maintainance you can afford. From there than look at the necessary equipment you need to keep the tank healthy. You may have done the reverse from what i hear.

[syburn]

well i wanted to build up the plants as i was more confident. So I was doing to add more after the first week pnce I see what else I need.

Anyway I am very inexperienced and there is only so many web sites i can read, before some hands on experiecnce is needed.

So I have Algea - anything I can do bearing in mind I leave for 3day trip to shanghai in 1 hour hahaha

Is the tank doomed??

[torque6]

To slowly build up a tank is a common mistake, coupled with slow growing plants. Starting minilistic will usually get you no where.

As fishsoup mentioned, starting off with a densely planted tank with close to 60-80% of tank volume is very good. Of course, you have to know how to balance your tank with slow growers, low maintainance plants, high maintainance plants and fast growers plants. In doing this will you achieve the ideal balance environment.

[syburn]

ok i will do that next week - even if i throw away my current tank plants, can i still use the tank water etc or id it now poisioned??

Thanks for your great advise!!

[torque6]

?? throw away plants?

Please do not do that. Those algae comes off easily with them just under the water tap. I wouldnt called it "poisoned" in an aquarium context, since its only algae.

Just have to balance out your tank and everything will resume as it is.

[syburn]

ok well i will have to leave it till monday when i get back to singapore

might it be better to reduce or increase light/co2 ?

[torque6]

Just clear as much brown algae as possible first. Once you get back, clear them again so it doesnt build up too much. Check what plants you might want to have, aquire them and plant densely.

As to lights and co2, imagine a 2FT tank with 55w lights and co2 but only a few stock of plants and decide if you want to adjust the variables.

[PeterGwee]

What kind of substrate are you using? ADA aquasoil, GEX or just plain gravel? NH4 can be the issue as does lack of fertilization or poor CO2.

Regards,
Peter Gwee

[syburn]

Im using brown gravel with a substaight fertiliser under it by Dennerle.

Saw some products that kill algea - should I use?

Maybe a test kit would be good so i can know a bit about whats in the water?

[torque6]

Its not a good idea resorting to chemicals to resolve algae issues. Like most of us suggested in this thread, plant more densely. No need spend more money on test kits when its going to not resolve your problem.

[syburn]

Thanks for that. I have doubled my plants and changed a 1/3 of the water so see how it goes.

[properfool]

You'll find this everywhere in this forum but I'm bored and I feel for your algae issues.
Have been where you are right now, only with a 5 foot tank.

if you have no fauna in the tank yet, crank up your CO2 until your plants start to bubble. It'll probably kill all the snails too.

Algal blooms are usually due to excess unbalanced nutrients in the water (in a new tank that's often from the new soil)

Things to try:
Frequent water changes,
manual removal of algae
use of fast growing nutrient absorbing plants.
split your lighting period with a siesta of 2-4 hours midday - algae hates that.

I suggest cheap fast growing plants like carbomba, ceratophyllum and floating plants like duckweed which will help the plants beat the algae. once you tank is more stable you can slowly replace the fast growers with nicer plants.

Add the recommended dose of a general fertiliser as well. eg floracid, seachem comprehensive to help the plants along.
For badly algaed plants soak them in bleach diluted 1 in 5 parts water for a few minutes before washing well in antichlorine and water

All my vallisneria melted completely when i first started but regrew after 2mth from roots and now is threatening to take over my tank. My elodea turned completely to mush

Adding seachem excel as an algacide is a bad idea because a sudden large dose of it can apparently kill vallisneria and elodea. Was fishing out dead elodea from my tank and filter for weeks


DO NOT throw in any algae eating fauna until your tank settles for a week (to allow cycling) Although it's true you don't need to cycle a well planted tank, the definition of well planted is too variable. IF you crank up your CO2 you need to check your ph levels after compatible with life before putting in fauna.

[torque6]

Some good advise here PF. However, spliting the photo period to 2-4 hours for me hasnt been quite effective in controlling algae. I believe some of us would agree that optimum photosynthesis requires a full 8 hours.

[cyclops]

Normally when i start a new planted tank in order for algae not to crawl in, i just try to buy a lot of cheap plants and throw into tank to have a lot of plants in tank and remove them when the tank is more stable. Hope this advice helps.

[Timothy Tan]

OK. I have a heavily planted tank and its one week from inception. Brown algae and hair algae are forming in clumps. I have CO2 fertilisation and am using ADA Brighty K Step 1. I have the lights on probably 12hrs to encourage plant growth and I suspect that is the reason for the high algae growth. I introduced 6 OTOs, 4 SAEs and 6 Amana shrimps yesterday to try to control the algae but that means that I am doing 30% water changes every 2 days to control the ammonia content till the nitrifying bacteria can establish themselves (use ammonia and nitrite testkits to monitor progress). I am probably going to reduce CO2 fertilisation in the next 2 weeks to reduce algae growth and to keep CO2 at manageable levels for the fauna. And reduce frequency of the water column fertilisation to once a week.

Does anyone have any other suggestion to control the algae?


Tim

[WaterH2O]

I used to have hair algea in my 3 feet tank but that was when I am only using 2X36W lighting and the situation has improved since I add in an additional 55W PL lighting but I have alot of fast growing plants like wistria, elodea and such and so adding additional lights for me works.
In this case you may want to add in more plants preferrably a little more of the fast growing plants.

[jacian]

I have the lights on probably 12hrs to encourage plant growth and I suspect that is the reason for the high algae growth.

Yes, the 12 hrs is most likely the main cause for your algae outbreak. Usually we start with 6 hrs and slowly increases to 8/10 hours over a period of 1-2 week. You may want to cut your lights to 8 hrs daily and monitor from there. Other than that, you are doing the right things in controlling the algae.