need some advice

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You may need to dose Flourish Phosphorus as well. If Phophates are at or near zero you'll want to pick some of that up too. Also since you've got such a large tank, you'll find that the Flourish products will get expensive fast. Eventually you'll probably want to switch to dry ferts from www.GregWatson.com since they're much more cost effective.
 
thanks for all the great advice. I went to big als to get the suppliments to get things happening again. The guy at big als talked me into not using the flourish products. He said to use brine shrimp to to get the nitrates back up by naturally re-cylcing the tank. And to get the the c02 back up using a diffuser and not using the diy. So i got a kit. .. I hope i did the right thing. I did the 50% water and cropped the bigger signs of algae from the plants. Stilling having the reduced wattage to the lights (40w) and increased time to 11 hours.
I plan on doing filter changes/cleaning to both the fluval and aquaclear300 in the next week or two. (both at different times)
I'll monitor the ammonia, nitrogen and nitrate in the next couple of days from the brineshrimp. And do another 50% water change next week (or earlier from the results) hopefully that'll bring the nitrate back up. Is this all correct?
 
You really do need to get those fertilizers. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how the brine shrimp are supposed to help you out. You could get increased NO3 from their die off and/or feeding, but this is highly uncontrollable. You're best bet if your current fish load isn't generating enough NO3 and PO4 from feedings is to dose the ferts.

No idea if the CO2 kit you were sold was a good idea or not as you haven't provided many details on what you actually got sold. It could be that you were sold DIY CO2 in a pretty package, which is no better and probably worse than your old DIY setup as it won't have enough CO2 production out of the box for your size tank. It could be a pressurized setup, which would be much better.

Also you're much better off providing more light for a shorter duration, than less light for a longer duration. Length of time that you leave the lights on will not make up for lack of light.
 
I completely agree with Purrbox. The brine shrimp won't do anything for you, other than possibly make things worse. And never listen to the people at the LFS, lol. Some of the people that work at fish stores are really uninformed aboout a lot of things, and planted tanks are usually the least known about.

Also, DIY setups that are done correctly are usually much more effective than the systems bought in the stores. Some packages say for up to 40G, but in reallity, are only effective up to about 20G. And if you are wanting something that you have much more control over, then pressurized is the way to go, as you can regulate the output. With DIY, the only way you can regulate it is by bottle size or number of bottles.
 
I went into big als to get the Florish products but the lfs guys were blocking the stand. They asked if they could help so I asked them about flourish products. That I needed Flourish Nitrogen. They pointed it out since it was behind them. I grabbed the bottle and then i got questioned about it. I told them what i have and what i was suggested to get. The guy said ya or you could just get the brine shrimp. Pump some in.. maybe 1/4 packet and let it get eaten/die (like purrboxx stated) doing the natural cylcle. ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Bringing the level up. He kept saying. . why do it artificially..

Now after reading and already doing it.. I'm like crap.. now i'm i real trouble?
I will buy those ferts this weekend ! I wont listen to them.. I cant get out till then because of work.. but I will check the levels and water change if needed to maintain levels.

And yes.. purrbox.. the c02 kit is like a glorified diy kit. I only got it because it had a diffuser which was quiet compared to the diy to the filter method. That way i didnt have to see that coke bottle anymore.

But after reading what you guys stated, now i'm thinking that i ruined the tank and should pull the fish to the other tank. And starting from scratch on this one? I still have the bba (but reduced from trimming)
Maybe go semi large childlid unplanted since I've been successful on that level with my tank at work and get many compliments on that one.

thanks again for the great advice!
 
You didn't totally mess up your tank by any means, just a minor delay in getting things straightened out.

The reason to do it artificially, is because your current bioload isn't getting your plants the necessary levels of Nitrates. While you could increase your bioload and/or feedings to get the Nitrate levels up, this isn't very exact and could lead to problems if something goes wrong in the tank like a power outage or filter failure. Much better to be understocked in that situation.

There are two main DIY kits the Hagen and Red Sea. The Hagen comes with a ladder diffuser which is one of the better passive diffusers, but most active diffusers (like your filter) will provide better results. The Red Sea kit comes with a mini active diffuser that is supposed to provide good results but need some fairly regular maintenance. If you got the Red Sea one (you could do the same with the Hagen if you want), I would recommend using their diffuser but attaching a couple of 1 Gallon CO2 generators to it. This will get the benefit of the quieter diffuser combined with sufficient CO2 output for your tank.

Plants are very rewarding if you decide to stick it out, it's just sometimes a bit of a trick getting the hang of what you need to do to get everything in balance. There's a lot more information involved than most people realize, more really than just taking care of fish.
 
Yes its the Red Sea. So right now it has the 1 Litre container it came with. If I T another 2L container I should be good??? (on the c02 anyways) You mentioned a couple of gallons but that converts to around 7L - which seems like alot on a 55G.
Right now the co2 is coming out every 10 seconds or so.

When I first started a few years back I was running 2L DIY to the filter (loud) 80watts @12 hours the tank was totally plush but over grown - plants to the top. No algae or anything.
I guess my mistake was I took reduced to 6hours and cut back severely on the c02 causing things to slow down but lost control.
 
Actually you want about 2 Liters per 10 gallons, so with 2 Gallon jugs you may still be a bit on the low side. It will depend on how efficient your diffuser really is as to whether you have enough or not. You're goal is to get your CO2 upto about 30ppm, which takes a lot of DIY CO2 on a 55 gallon. This is the major reason that most people go with presurized on 55 gallon and larger tanks.
 
'Actually you want about 2 Liters per gallon' sorry i don't understand this line.

I pulled out the measuring tape and calculator.
With 4" of gravel at the bottom of the tank the actual volume water is 40G or 153L
using the outside tank measurements so its abit less than that.

1 us Gal is 3.78L. (according to the online conversion chart I'm using) Sorry just trying to get a grasp of this. I dont wish at this time to get into a pressurised system.

lonewolfblue stated if the kit says 40g its actucally suited more for 20g.

If I get another of the same kit and run both? so two diffusers? or add another bottle?

sorry for all the questions but I'm trying to get the grasp of this. And again thanks so much for your time and help!
 
Sorry, that was a typo which I've corrected. To clarify, you want approximately 2 liters of generator bottle for every 10 gallons of tank. Since 1 gallon is roughly equal to 4 liters, two one gallon bottles would give you roughly 8 liters. Since you'd want about 11 liters for a 55 gallon tank, the recommended two 1 gallon bottles would be a little on the low side. It's a good starting point and would give you a chance to determine if the reactor is efficient enough to be able to make up the difference. If it's still not enough you could always add another bottle.

The recommendations on those kits are overly optimistic as they are just aiming to get a very conservative amount of CO2 into the tank. To get the CO2 levels recommended around here they don't go as far. There's not much point in picking up a second kit, unless you want a spare reactor. You can easily hook multiple bottles up to the same reactor using an airline T connector.
 
well the algae is slowly breaking off. probably have 40% left. So far what i've done:
lighting to 12 hours 9 @ 40watts and 3 @120 (part of 12 hours). Cleaned out both fluval 204 and aquaclear 300. fluval 204 was had somewhat restricted due to clogging of plants.. So I raised the intake to near the top of tank. The output I also changed position. I have it aimed at the diffuser. I added 1 2l bottle (so far) to the existing 1l from the kit. Now its almost a steady stream. I thought at first it was a leak but the 2l bottle has alot of vacuum in it so I ruled that out. I've noticed alot of activity in the tank. Either the fish dont like this or they are loving it.
 
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