Algae issues with plants

[newfound77951]

Looks like things are heading in the right direction. It takes a LOT of fish bioload to get enough nitrate in the tank sometimes, and obviously your plants are sucking it up nicely.

The reason you were probably OK for a while and then everything went downhill is that it took a while for the plants to get established and start growing well enough to deplete the nitrate. Once they did the algae are able to grow better in the low-nutrient conditions and out-compete the plants.

IMO the sword is not going to be happy until you give it more light. Plus in a 20g it's going to get way too big very quickly if it starts growing. If you want a sword-like plant that will be happy in your 1 wpg, try some Cryptocorynes, they like low light and have a similar look.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Interesting thread, I have a super-heavy planted 55 and dose with Flourish Excel daily, Potassium and Comprehensive 2x weekly, and Iron when needed (I got a bunch of free stuff from Seachem for discovering their Purigen recharging instructions disparity) but will switch to dry fert when those run out. I have over 75 livebearers in there and a Marineland C-360 with 500mL of Purigen (5x the recommended 1mL/gal) and my Nitrates usually don't go over 40ppm even after 2 weeks w/o a water change. I did 50% this weekend after a 2 week stretch of being too busy and they were at 20 last night when I tested, but this is what my tank looked like with 1/3 the water drained:

Here's my tank on 1/1

And today

...and I sold $100 worth of plants in the last month.

BTW I recommend using Purigen instead of carbon in your filter, as carbon will remove macro and micro elements needed by the plants.

Also I'm using 2 T8 32W Flora Sun Max Plant Growth bulbs from Zoo Med. Switching to those bulbs completely turned my tank around.

 

[AdamHorton]

I agree I need new lighting. Even the low-light plants don't seem to be doing that well with what I've got.

Update: I took some before and after pictures of the test results for nitrate when I dosed the tank this week. I'm very confused:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/before.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/after.jpg

 

[AdamHorton]

Well, I figured out the issues I was having with my nitrate test kit. Turns out that I didn't ever have a nitrate shortage, and now that I've been dosing the tank with KNO3 the nitrates are around 70 ppm. I will do a large PWC to bring that down. That begs the question, though...

If it wasn't the nitrates, then what could have caused the algae problems before? I'm not at all convinced that I've solved the underlying problem here.

 

[AdamHorton]

...any other ideas?

BTW, I'm getting some new lighting. It should be here tomorrow. I have a thread about it here: http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f24/question-about-lighting-fixture-126616.html

If there's an underlying problem that hasn't been fixed here, I imagine the stronger light will only intensify the algae problem, right?