demurefemme
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Ok, so a few months after adding my new lights (196 watts at 7600k, over my 46 gal bowfront), my tank has turned into an algal smorgasbord. It wasn't too bad before I left town for a week, leaving the tank in the care of a friend, but I came back to (my first ever) a bad case of green water, and some cyano (blue green algae), as well as the existant brush/ fuzz algae that's on my leaves. My pH is around 6.7, and I have hard water (I haven't tested it yet tonight), zero nitrite, zero ammonia, zero iron, but phosphates are above 5 mg/l and nitrates are right between 60-80 mg/l (I think my friend's admitted over-feeding might be partly to blame). I have one hagen co2 system (which i refilled tonight), and have not used fertilizer since flourish gave me a horrible case of cyano.
whew, that was a lot of information.
ok, so does anyone have any idea what would help my situation here? i thought about adding iron, but figured that might just exacerbate my problem. i'm looking for a diatom filter (saw the vortex xl model at petsmart, and 90 bucks seemed like a decent amount to shell out), and will perform a 50% water change tomorrow morning. i kept the lights off today, as well (they usually get about 12 hours).
any ideas/insights would be fantastic!
thanks, and hope everyone is having a great holiday season
whew, that was a lot of information.
ok, so does anyone have any idea what would help my situation here? i thought about adding iron, but figured that might just exacerbate my problem. i'm looking for a diatom filter (saw the vortex xl model at petsmart, and 90 bucks seemed like a decent amount to shell out), and will perform a 50% water change tomorrow morning. i kept the lights off today, as well (they usually get about 12 hours).
any ideas/insights would be fantastic!
thanks, and hope everyone is having a great holiday season