micaiah12
Aquarium Advice Freak
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2011
- Messages
- 336
The cause is too much light/wrong color spectrum and/or too much decomposing organic matter in the tank and/or not enough available carbon.
What light and color spectrum are you running? How tall is the tank? What plants are you trying to grow? Any other fertilizers other than Flourish Iron?
Excel needs to be dosed daily not weekly, I would start by dosing as directed on the bottle. Remove as much algae manually as possible, spot treat with excel or H2O2, do a large water change making sure to remove any mulm/decaying waste from the bottom, maybe consider a 5 day blackout??? with another large water change removing even more junk afterwards. Buy more plants, which will help uptake nutrients, keep lighting at 6 hours a day for now.
If you aren't giving plants their essential nutrients they need to grow, algae will always out compete plants.
I am running two light fixtures one at 10000k and the other at 6700k.
It's a 46Gal bow front so it's pretty tall.
Just Iron and excel.
Do i spot treat with H202 in the tank or do I pull plants out for that?
I will do a large water change and clean the decaying leaves off the java fern.
Make and model of light? t12/t8/t5/t5-ho/compact fluorescent/led/power compact ???? watts?
What plants are you trying to grow?
You can spot treat excel or H2O2 with the plants in the tank, turn off filters and wait for zero water movement, then spot treat using a syringe, wait 10-15 minutes, then turn filters back on. Don't go crazy, like doing every inch of every plant in one dose, split it up to give the excel or H2O2 time to break down (once a day until completed). Now, this won't solve the root cause of the algae, so in a week it will be knocking at your door again. So, larger water changes, limited decaying organic matter, proper fertilization of plants and proper use of excel would be my advice on overcoming the cause of the algae.