# NEW member, new tank, issues...



## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

First, my apologies since I x-posted this into the plant sub-section as well, not knowing that this general section existed.

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Hi everyone, new member here! So many great setups and beautiful tanks from the members of this forum!

Ok, here's my setup. I've got a band new 30g tank which I setup about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Here's the list of equipement:

-30g Hagen tank (31" L x 13.5" W)
-2 x fluval 205 canister filters
-Aquatic life 4 x 24w 6500k T5 HO light fixture sitting about 3" from the top of the tank. So about 96W total or 3.2 wpg
-Pressurized CO2 infusion (10lbs tank, regulator, needle valve, selenoid, bubble counter, tubing and ceramic diffuser)
-Aquaclear 50 powerhead set on minimum flow
-Corallife TT 3x UV sterilizer inline with output of one of the fluval 205 filters
-Substrate: about 3" of black flourite 

->Illumination cycle: about 11 hrs/day
->Water parameters: 0 amonia, 0 nitrite, very low nitrate, PH around 7.6 when not infusing CO2 drops to around 6.8 when infusing CO2.
->CO2 infusion rate: about 2.5 bbs. Diffused by ceramic disc which is sitting under my powerhead which absorbs it, chops up the bubbles and disperses them into the tank
->Ferts: Flourish 2x week, Flourish Iron 2x week. Dosage as per bottle instructions


I planted this tank moderately when I first setup the tank and everything was fine for the first 2 weeks. Plants doing fine, clear water, no issues whatsoever. The tank has a mix of low, med and high light plants in it.

However, about 2 days ago, I started noticing what I would describe as greenish 'hair algea' growing on some of my plants. Also, some of the plant leaves were beginning to show brownish algea spots. Mainly on the Anubias. Also a bit of algea spots are beginning to appear on the glass which I'm dealing with using a magnet glass cleaner. 

Now, I'm no expert but this isn't my first tank and I've never really had any major problems with algea before, but with this new tank setup, it's starting to creep in quite early. Not even 3 weeks in and already algea making its appearance in various places. I don't even want to think what it will look like in a month or two...

What could be the problem? Too much or too little lighing? Too much or too little CO2? Too much or too little ferts? Illumination cycle issues? Anything else?

Thanks a lot folks for helping out the new guy


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

HI there, I am also new to planted tanks using T5HO lighting and CO2.

I also had a problem with hair algae starting on my plants. I searched around and found that it could be too much light and too much co2. I have a 20# cannister and of course was just letting the air go almost full blast...

Like I said, new to this stuff 

So what I did was this...I added a black cloth along the back wall of the tank and one side (facing the light from the window) to eliminate a bit of the extra light the plants were getting. Backed off the number of hours the T5's (2 bulbs about 3 in off the surface) were on to 10 hours, and also backed the CO2 down to a small little stream coming out (very slow stream) added 4 oto cats, and 6 nerite snails.

In approx 10 days they had eaten ALL the hair algae that was growing on my plants, and have since then kept my tank free of any algae....great little workers. 

Maybe try these guys and see if this works for you.


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Your light cycle seems a little long. That could explain the brown algae growth. As far as the hair algae goes I'm not 100% sure. I know that excess phosphates enable growth of algae, so perhaps your plants are not absorbing enough of this.

Are you fertilizing the tank?


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Thank you for the responses. I will definately try to add algea eating creatures in the tank soon. I already have a few Amano shrimps and a couple of snails but they don't seem to be doing a very good job lol! I'm sure that will help. But along with this, I'd like to know the root cause of the problem. I may also play around with the lighting cycle and CO2 levels to see what that does to the algea problem. As for phosphate levels, I need to buy a testing kit for this as I currently have no way to know what the levels are.

Ferts: Flourish and Flourish Iron 2x a week and dosage as per bottle instructions.

By reading several forums, I was under the impression that 'strong' lighting combined with a healthy dose of CO2 would make the plants thrive (and it does) which would make them compete against the algea. I seem to have what it takes to make the plants happy, and they do appear to grow well, but I'm still wondering why all this algea, and so soon?


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Strong lighting yes, extended photoperiods no. Indeed a lengthy amount of light is wonderful to help your plants to flourish, however too long and you actually can damage the plants (think about grass on a sunny day, it browns and dies). 

I'd say cut the light down to 8 hours a day, try adding some more snails or oto cats. And maybe block out any natural light penetrating from outside (close the blinds man I can't see!)

As said before, root cause is excess phosphates.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

I hear you. The reason for the 11 hrs cycle is that on almost every web site I've read they mention 10-12 hours of light. I went with the median value. But I'll try less and we'll see. Will going with an 8 hr cycle lower phosphate levels or will something more need to be done to achieve this?

Oto cats: I'll go get myself a few of those

Btw, there is no natural light hitting this tank. Blinds are closed permanently in this room.


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Glad to hear about the otos and blinds and that you'll try the advice presented. 

In regards to the phosphates I'm not sure how to lower those. Can we get a possible tank shot? That way we can see how many plants you have in it, perhaps theres not enough plants for the amount you are fertilizing.


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## malajulinka (Mar 29, 2008)

You could also try putting the lights on a timer so they're one for 5.5 hours in the morning, go off for "siesta" for 4-5 hours, and then come back on for 5.5 hours in the evening. I found this helped a lot with my algae.


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## Greg_o (Mar 4, 2010)

In my experience HA was from low or inconsistent CO2.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Greg_o said:


> In my experience HA was from low or inconsistent CO2.


I've heard that one before as well. However, not having a drop checker for the moment (on order), I'm guaging the CO2 levels by eye which is to say that I'm checking the PH levels and since I see it drop from 7.6+ to 6.8 or even less, I was under the impression that I was infusing enough of it. I could be way off.

Also, since the tank has fish in it, I was prudent with the CO2 by fear of gassing the poor creatures and loosing them all. The tank is full of CO2 microbubbles due to my powerhead dispersing them throughout the thank, but it may look worse than it is and perhaps there is still not enough. At the moment, I'm infusing about 2.5 bbs for my 30g. Sounds off track?


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

The lights on a siesta cycle. Hm, I'm wondering how this affects the photosynthesis cycle? Could it hurt plant growth? I just don't want to get rid of problem by killing the patient lol! I'll read up on this though. Thanks!

As for getting a pic of the tank, I'll do that tonight.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

You need that thingy in the tank that turns green when co2 is right, co2 indicator or something. Just woke up and can't remember the name exactly.

Just add this to the rest of the good advice so you are adding the right amount of co2


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

lights on period enables to photosynthesis cycle to ensue. By limiting the light, you limit the cycle. And pyrrolin, you called it correct as far as I know, a CO2 indicator should change colors when the CO2 is correct. 

How many bubbles per minute do you have from the CO2?


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

also called drop checker

I don't count my bubbles, I do DIY and it is not enough, but without a drop checker I don't want to try to push it and go over. Waiting for spare funds to get proper co2 equipment.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

I and many others call it a drop checker, but yes, it is really a CO2 level indicator. I ordered mine already and it should be delivered to me tomorrow. 

To answer your question Ryan, I'm currently infusing at a rate of 2 to 3 bubbles per second so around 120 to 180 bubbles per minute. I thought that was a lot. Maybe not.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I know when I set up my new tank last spring, it went through a brief period with green spot algae popping up all over the glass. Green spot is just what it sounds like, and has to be scraped off because it is so hard snails and shrimp can't eat it. Then I had brown algae in the filters and tubing and corners, thanks to low light levels.

The next tank skipped green spot, went straight to blue green algae, covering the entire back wall. Messy, but very soft & easy to remove. Nothing would eat the vast amount of it that grew, but once removed, the tank remained clean. Small amounts appear in the filter, so I covered the filter box with mylar and that solved that.

Both my tanks are in a south window and get the sun. I acquired plenty of algae eating species because I assumed I would have algae problems, but I really didn't have any after the first month or so. I actually used to complain on the forum that I had no algae, as it meant the algae eaters had little to graze on. Now I have some hair algae, which is, I am sure, Murphy's revenge for those complaints . I assume it came on a plant and liked its new home, but it has not infested everything, only a couple of areas.

I may end up having to dip some of the plants to destroy it, because where it's growing, there is more than shrimp and snails can consume. My conclusion ? Algae is just something you have to deal with if you keep planted tanks. I have several species of shrimp, Otos, and numerous species of snails and they all help keep algae under control to some degree.

I don't yet run pressurized C02, but in the many tanks I've seen set up with it, I don't recall seeing very many bubbles of the gas in the tank. Usually it's just a small quantity of very tiny ones, so small they look more like mist, and they seem to vanish into the water pretty much before they reach the surface. I wonder if your diffuser is in the best spot ? Have you thought of getting a drop checker ? These allow you to monitor the C02 levels much more accurately than by doing a pH test and all you do is glance at them. Hopefully someone with more experience than I have with this can be of more help.

As for the photoperiod, having the lights on, then off, then on again, won't bother the plants in terms of their ability to manufacture food, or photosynthesize. Plants can only make a given amount of food in a given period of time, assuming they have adequate resources to draw on.

If you were trying to produce flowers or fruit, photoperiod might be crucial, but simply for maintenance and vegatative growth, it doesn't matter. Providing more resources than a plant can use is pretty pointless and in some instances can do harm. Some nutrients are toxic in too high amounts; light of too great an intensity may burn leaves.

When I switched to the lights I use now, I did some burn damage to a number of floaters. They weren't used to the more intense light and I should have given them a couple of weeks to adapt.. some sort of shade cloth would have helped prevent it. The plants all recovered, it just slowed them down a bit. This was not from heat, it was essentially sunburn.

The length of time you have the lights on is a parameter that you can experiment with to see what works best for your particular tank, but 12 hours is too long and a waste of electricity. For my tanks, 10 hours guarantees greater algae growth, but 8 hours seems to work fairly well.

I've seen the recommendation for 12 hours as well, but I believe it is based on an flawed assumption, which is that because many of the plants we grow come from the tropics where days are longer, that's how long the lights should be on. It's flawed because first, it's only at the equator that days are 12 hours long, and a great many of the plants are not from equatorial regions. They're from many parts of the planet. But even if the plant is from an equatorial region, one must still account for what a plant truly gets in native habitat.

Consider such things as overhanging trees & other vegetation, all the other submersed or emersed plants that grow nearby, with potential for crowding out. Floods or drought, ordinary wet/dry seasons, are just a few of many things that may affect how much light, or nutrients, a plant gets. They can't get up and move if things aren't working out where they are, so a great many plants can adapt to some degree. Some can adapt to a remarkable degree, and some few are not very adaptable at all.

So it's rather pointless to attempt to mimic what you think a plant would get in its native habitat based solely on the geographic location of the parent species. Just as an example, if you look at at a great many ordinary houseplants that are popular here, a lot of them come from the tropical rainforests, where they often grow in dense shade most of the time. But that dense shade is from tropical sunlight, not Canadian sunlight. So for that shade plant from the tropics to thrive here, it might need full sun in our winters, to survive indoors.

In our tanks, we take plants from all sorts of places and we nurture and coddle them as best we can. They don't have to contend with the potentially adverse conditions that may exist in habitat, but they also get artificial light that is pretty much aimed straight downward, not natural daylight. Daylight moves. It changes intensity and angle from dawn through to sundown, as well as providing the entire light spectrum. Light bulbs are not identical. All we can do is place our plants so they can make the best use of the light we can provide.

Some plants are much more difficult to grow, due to having very specific requirements in a narrow range. They usually can't adapt to conditions outside those parameters. They may need soft acidic water or hard alkaline water, higher or lower pH, or extra nutrients of some kind, like iron [ many red plants have high iron needs], or a specific type of substrate.

If you want to grow these, you have to provide their requirements as best as you can, but it is unlikely anyone would be able to completely reproduce conditions like a native habitat in the average living room or basement.

As for snails, what type of snails do you have ? I have found that while most snails will keep glass clean, Nerites are vastly better at eating brown algae than any other species. All the Nerites perform about the same, but Zebras are larger, so they can cover more ground than the Thorny or Horned variety.

When my uplift tubes get algae inside, I drop them into the tank and let the Nerites do the cleanup, and in a day or two the tubes will be spotless. Oto cats seem to prefer the soft green stuff, but shrimp also appear to be willing to eat hair algae, and I think Aspixi Asolene snails are supposed to eat it as well. Mystery snails grow much larger , so they can cover a lot more area. They'll clean algae off plants, glass, almost anything really, but they don't seem to like the brown stuff. They usually don't eat plants unless they are really hungry, so ensure they have enough to eat. They'll clean up left over food, dead plant matter as well as algae.

Enjoy your planted tank.. it's fun, but it can also at times be frustrating when things don't go as you planned or hoped they would.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

New tank syndrome could be part of it to.

But fishfur said it best


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Thank you for your post Fishfur, much appreciated. To answer your question, i believe my snails are Zebras. They are new to the tank and as such, I'm not sure to which extent they'll be useful or not. Time will tell. I also have 6 Amano shrimps. Since there was no algea at all in the first two weeks I had the tank, I gave the shrimp additional food in the form of tablets which get dropped to the bottom of the tank where they can feed on it.

I agree, it can be quite frustrating at times trying to recreate the 'perfect' environment for our plants and fishes. I've had various degrees of success and failiure in past tanks that I've set up. Since the equipment changes every time I buy a new tank, the parameters can't just be copied over from the past setups, unfortunately. So it's all about trial and error.

My issues may sound worse than they really are, because in reality fishes and plants are doing very well. The algea is a bit of a nuisance I must admit but so far it doesn't seem to have had a negative effect on aquarium life. It's just, as you well know, unpleasant for the eyes and I prefer a clean looking aquarium, like most people. 

I will try adjusting parameters, slowly but surely, and we'll see what kind of results that yields. Oh yeah, I do have a drop checker on order and I should have it in my hands tomorow. This will definately help tuning the CO2 levels, rather than playing it be ear...


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

pyrrolin said:


> New tank syndrome could be part of it to.
> 
> But fishfur said it best


Yes, it could be just that too. I find that most new setups have weird results until you just leave them alone long enough for everything to just balance itself on its own 

Maybe I'm just fiddling around too much with it now


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

the co2 indicator will help alot and I would lower the light time like Fishfur said. Just have to find the right balance for each tank


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I think you'll find your Zebras do a nice job, even if only to keep the glass clean. They are very efficient little guys. 

The Amanos should eat most algae, if they find it, but they can be shy if they don't have enough places to hide. Being prey in the wild, they are not keen on being out in the open with nowhere to hide quickly. 

Be careful how much algae tab you give them.. six shrimp would not even need a quarter of one tab for a day. I give two tabs to a tank with at least a dozen various kuhli loaches, some cories and I think about ten Ghost shrimp in it and that's probably more than they need. Excess food will contribute to algae and high nitrates too.

I agree, I'd prefer a tank with no algae, but that's just not very likely. Just have to do the best I can with what I have to work with.


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## malajulinka (Mar 29, 2008)

> I agree, I'd prefer a tank with no algae, but that's just not very likely. Just have to do the best I can with what I have to work with.


I liken algae in the aquarium to poop coming out of a cat or a dog.  You can control the where and when and how much to some degree, but it comes with the territory.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Ryan.Wilton said:


> Can we get a possible tank shot? That way we can see how many plants you have in it, perhaps theres not enough plants for the amount you are fertilizing.


Here you go. Hope this works.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Fishfur said:


> I think you'll find your Zebras do a nice job, even if only to keep the glass clean. They are very efficient little guys.
> 
> The Amanos should eat most algae, if they find it, but they can be shy if they don't have enough places to hide. Being prey in the wild, they are not keen on being out in the open with nowhere to hide quickly.
> 
> ...


You're spot on with regards to the Amanos. Very shy little guys. I purchased 6 and since I got them almost 3 weeks ago, I rarely see more than one in the open, every once in a while. They found a hiding spot under a piece of wood and they don't come out very often, unfortunately.

I give them about a tab every two days but my fish find them (the tabs) and eat most of them lol! So the shrimp don't get a lot to eat...

The snails are always out and about, mainly on the glass, but there isnt much for them to clean right now.


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Well, with the amount of plants you have I'd say the co2 is pretty decent, maybe it could be lowered to 1-2 per second. But I think it's alright... without the drop checker you have no way to really tell for certain.

Where did you get your plants from. Sometimes the main store can have a horrible set up (petsmart- no co2 and barely ever cleaned... trust me). Unless you gave them a good bath before hand, then I don't know... Maybe bump up the w/c's?


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

You might try adding another 6 Amanos. In larger numbers they tend to spend more time out and about. I assume they feel safer in company, but whatever the reason, the more of them there are, the more you are likely to see them.

Btw, gorgeous tank ! Mine should look half so good .


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

So I received my drop checker and installed it. It's a basic Fluval Co2 Indicator kit. I put the provided solution in the thing and installed it into the tank. Within a few hours, the blue liquid turned to aqua green and it stayed like that ever since. So I suppose I have just the right amount of Co2 in there?

Thank you Fishfur for the compliment. I'm sure your tank looks very good. I'm not an aquascaping expert my any means and I simply threw a buch of different plants in there just to see what it would look like. Other than for the algea problem, I like the result so far but there's plenty of room for improvement.

Speaking of algea, I got myself a pair of Ottos and 2 more zebra snails and, together, it seems they've been able to clean up a lot of the algea which was bothering me. I also added some additional ferts (Potassium) and dosed the Flourish a bit more heavily. The combination of all of the above seems to have made a nice difference since I haven't noticed any hair algea for the past 48 hrs!


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Here's another screenshot. This one was taken yesterday, therefore only 4 days after the screenshots already posted in this thread. Notice how nicely plants are growing. Some of them gained inches in only a few days.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

if the hair algae becomes a problem, I recommend excel double dose for a few days, often clears it right up.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

I'll try that. Thanks for the tip!


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

I was at the BA's in North York on the weekend with my dad checking out Sumps so I could give him an idea of what I wanted to do for him (he decided on a secondary canister for his 220gallon) and I saw that their 90gallon planted tank (right outside of the fishroom) had a indicator on it. It was only bubbling about 1-2 per second. So maybe even 1 bubble per second would work out for your sized tank.


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## stripe (Feb 5, 2013)

Possible. To be honest, you ask 20 different people about the 'correct' bps setting and you get 20 different answers ranging from 'thats waaay too low - i'm using 3x that in my same size tank and it's still not enough' all the way to 'your gonna gas your fish and they'll all die'


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