I have been compating an explosion of BBA in my tank in recent months. Here's the short version so far.....
Upgraded lighting in March 09. 2 x 24w T5s @ 10,000K - yes I realise it wasn't optimal but they came with the fixture and I thought I'd give them a go anyway.
Bought a stack of new medium to medium-high light plants. Added DIY CO2 and was dosing Flourish, Potassium and Nitrate to Phosphate at the 10:1 ratio. Growth explosion followed and many new plants outgrew the tank. Caused Amazon-tank syndrome. Couldn't see fish.
June 09 ripped out and gave away most of these plants to aquarists friends (who always respond in kind). Left with lower light plants (Anubias Nana, Pigmy Chain Swords, Riccia, Java moss. Did NOT alter fert regime.
BBA arrives and takes over. Manual removal cannot keep up. Going this way for over 2 months. Excel dosing does next to nothing.
In last 2 weeks, got serious becuase it was really getting to me. Since then I:
Did around 10 hours over several sessions of manual removing what I could. Finished removal effort around a week ago.
Rermoved a 10K globe and was running one globe for a week. (minor hair algae issue goes away)
Realised my fert regime was inproper and wasn't altered to compensate after the de-amazoning of the tank. Reduced it to dosing 1/2 the recommended amount of Flourish. Have dosed only once since starting the big manual removal exercise.
Bought a 6700K replacement (minor hair algae issue comes back).
Bought a pressurised CO2 system. Waiting on the reg to arrive in the mail, so it's not going yet. Figure I can control the amount of CO2 much better than DIY. And I have never enjoyed the maintenance of DIY CO2 anyway
Today, I am convinced I had more BBA than a week ago.
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So at the moment, I am almost convinced my lighting is the primary culprit with my continuation of the old fert regime also a contributing factor (prehaps). So tonight, I have removed the second T5 10K tube and am running now on the single 6700K. Can do this fine for now....
Here are my questions:
1. I know from further research into lighting that watts and kelvins are not the full story and I have liughts that emit too much ion the green spectrum. Even my current 6700K tube seems to emit more light in the green spectrum than in the red and the blue that I need. Do I look at replacing these globes with ones that emitt more blue and red? I read that an ideal setup is 1/3rd blue to 2/3rds red/orange.
2. Say I want to keep my current globes. Will the number and type of plants in the tank potentially make a difference? I found it interesting that when I removed "the amazon" a tiny BBA issue got very large very quickly. If I rescape things and add a bunch of new plants could this work in reverse?
thanks for listening (reading).
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