Switching substrates and lighting

[peacelizard]

Soooo ... I attempted my first planted tank a couple months ago with a 20g L, gravel and a Fluval LED, root tabs and Flourish. Suffice to say, the plants grew but the green algae was ridiculous. Eventually, I ripped out all the plants and the algae problem has gotten better but still gets ugly if I go more than a couple days without a PWC.

So my questions are thus:

Most of the BB lives in the filter, but some does reside in the gravel, so if I were to pull out all the gravel at once and replace it with Eco-Complete, would I risk losing my cycle or cause a mini-cycle?

What light should I switch to because I can't deal with the algae and I don't wanna dump money into a pressurized CO2 system? I've been reading up on PAR values, low-mid-hi light plants and distance between light and substrate. Based on that, my understanding is I'd wanna go with a light hood that supports T8 bulbs, right? I've had a hard time finding the right length T8's and T8's in general. Are they being phased out? Can I replace them with T5's? I think they're also called T5NO. I know I can't go with the T5HO because it'd be too intense.

Sorry for the ramble. Just frustrated with the tank and can't find a good solution so that I can finally get up and running

 

[Delapool]

Soooo ... I attempted my first planted tank a couple months ago with a 20g L, gravel and a Fluval LED, root tabs and Flourish. Suffice to say, the plants grew but the green algae was ridiculous. Eventually, I ripped out all the plants and the algae problem has gotten better but still gets ugly if I go more than a couple days without a PWC.

So my questions are thus:

Most of the BB lives in the filter, but some does reside in the gravel, so if I were to pull out all the gravel at once and replace it with Eco-Complete, would I risk losing my cycle or cause a mini-cycle?

What light should I switch to because I can't deal with the algae and I don't wanna dump money into a pressurized CO2 system? I've been reading up on PAR values, low-mid-hi light plants and distance between light and substrate. Based on that, my understanding is I'd wanna go with a light hood that supports T8 bulbs, right? I've had a hard time finding the right length T8's and T8's in general. Are they being phased out? Can I replace them with T5's? I think they're also called T5NO. I know I can't go with the T5HO because it'd be too intense.

Sorry for the ramble. Just frustrated with the tank and can't find a good solution so that I can finally get up and running

I have changed from gravel to a bare bottom tank with only a small ammonia increase. Same with adding more gravel to double it.

The weekend before I would suggest doing a very large gravel vac as I found all the muck coming out of the gravel a problem as well.

I don't know these lights but it sounds like an imbalance somewhere and my first thought would be to reduce the lighting down to 4 to 6 hours if not already the case?

 

[bvfarms2]

Whenever I do a change in substrate, I collect the old substrate (or portion) and place it in either a large media bag, (I have even used a "knee-hi" stocking), and after replacing the new substrate, set the bag of old substrate in the tank for a good week to ten days. Don't replace filter media at the same time!


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