Spirogyra attack!

[zonkkie]

Help! I have a 2 ft planted tank with the following details:

T5HO 48w - 8 hrs a day
Co2 - 4bps, according to drop checker, at 30ppm
Dosing - Excel Flourish and Trace 2x a week each
Soil - ADA Amazonia 2
Fauna - 4x guppies, 1x dwarf gourami, 4xleopard cories, 5xneon tetra, 1xdario dario, 3xoto, 5xyamato
Filter - Juwel 280, flowrate 280l/h

Recently Spirogyra started appearing on my plants after by Co2 diffuser got blocked. Now the diffuser is cleared and I am removing them everyday but it keeps coming back. Any idea what else is wrong and how to remedy?

One thing I suspect (which is true according to the aquarium calculator) is that I have insufficient filtration.

Overall Pic of Aquarium:



Eh... can you see the algae? Cannot seem to see from the picture as the thread is very fine.

[Shadow]

yes your filtration is too low, for 2 ft normally I put 400-500 l/h.

You light is quite hight but you did not dose any N, P and K. It is probably ok for about 6 months because you are using AmazoniaII. After that you might see plant grow slowing down.

Normally yamato will eat it, you might want to add another 5 and starve them

[zonkkie]

Oh, but I dose Flourish already. Still need N,P,K? I have a bottle of Brighty K lying around somewhere.

I can't starve the yamatos because i need to drop food down to the Cories. Then the yamatos will go and feast with them.

[Shadow]

Dosing - Excel Flourish and Trace 2x a week each

You are dosing flourish excel which is Carbon source not NPK
also you are dosing trace which again does not contain NPK.

NPK, nitrogen, phosphat and potassium is called macro nutrient. Means plant need them in large amount.

Picture below are link directly from Aquajournal online, as you can see Aquasoil Amazonia 2 is rich in nitrogent (Amazonia 1 richer though). ALso it contain P but no K. That explain the brighty K .

So now what happen if one of this nutrient not available? Plant grow will be stun because it does not have enough ingredient for their growth. When plant growth stun, normally algae will take over. So far I have not come accros scientific document exaplaining the reason why algae take over when plant growth stun. I guess not many biologist interested on it or it is too complex to understand

Picture link directly from ADA Aquajournal Online

[zonkkie]

Thanks bro for details. I think i made a mistake in my first post, i am dosing Seachem Excel, Seachem Flourish and Seachem Trace.

Flourish link is here:

http://www.seachem.com/Products/prod.../Flourish.html

It has N but I don't see P (not sure if P2O5 is considered P) and K.

[Shadow]

seachem flourish N and P is very small percentage, I would say seachem floruish is jus a trace with additional N and P. Luckyly you are using ADA soil, you should have enought N and P for about 6 months (just estimate, probably less), after that it will be depleted and you need dose more agresively

[zonkkie]

Haiz... then I don't know I buy Flourish for what. Supposed to be comprehensive Macro nutrients for plants. Will follow advice and just buy Flourish N and Flourish P unless you can recommend any other products. I do not want to delete the nutrients in the soil.

[zonkkie]

Hey Robert, just to update. Thanks for your help, with regular dosing of Brighty K + added an Eheim 2224, the Algae grow just been stumped and now it is more of a case of manually removing some of the old strands.

The yamatos do not seem to be doing their job though, just hiding in a bottom corner. Very unlike my previous batch who rush all over the place. I am not sure if they are finding the flow rate too high (now 700 + 280). But not washing machine yet!

[Shadow]

sometimes you need to starve them