Definitely need some help with my planted tank

[Fish_in_Utah]

I do roughly 25% water changes in a week all while adding Seachem flourish twice a week, I have 5 snails in the tank with 11 fish, and I have my light on with a timer of 8 hours but my tank and plants grow algae too fast...what am I doing wrong and what can I do to fix this issue? Thank you all

[Andy Sager]

Reduce the fertilizer and check nitrate level to make sure you are doing large enough water changes to keep it under 40 PPM. Algae is a product of light and food. The Flourish is feeding it and your plants are not needing or using as much of it so the algae is.
Hope this helps.

[Fish_in_Utah]

Appreciate the advice!

I forgot to mention I also have roots tabs in the substrate so I may be providing my plants with excess of nutrients. I will check my water nitrates prior to changes. I also have moved my light timer to only 6 hours now, you think that would help?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Fish_in_Utah

Appreciate the advice!

I forgot to mention I also have roots tabs in the substrate so I may be providing my plants with excess of nutrients. I will check my water nitrates prior to changes. I also have moved my light timer to only 6 hours now, you think that would help?

Your plants would tell you if that is too little light. I suggest you research each plant specie you have to see what it's light requirements are. Some need low light, some high light, some in the middle light so you don't want to under do or over do your lighting. Your spectrum of lighting will also play a role.
Why are you using the flourish if you are also using root tabs? That's an awful lot of algae food in the tank.

[Fish_in_Utah]

Honestly, this is my first planted tank. I always used fake plants but really wanted to move to a living aquarium so I did some research to get started but that’s about it, I then got some advice from the fish store people and they had instructed me to put tabs in the substrate and fertilize the plants 2-3 a week so I went with it. Now, after some experience, and advice from more experienced people…I can see what they told me was quite wrong

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

You have a number of plants that are garden/ marsh plants. These grow really slowly when kept underwater and don't use much light or fertiliser. I would reduce the fertiliser and see how the algae looks after a month with less nutrients going into the tank.

I would fertilise once a week at half strength. Do a huge (75%) water change before adding more fertiliser. See how it goes and if the algae has settled down after a month, then maybe increase the fertiliser to 3/4 strength once a week and monitor for a month.

[Caliban07]

Hi and welcome.

What you have been told isn’t necessarily wrong. The root tabs and dosing is fine. People do this all over the world and have magnificent looking tanks. The planted tank world established some time ago that fertilisers do not CAUSE algae but they will FEED algae that has managed to get a foothold. This is an important distinction because when you understand that fertilisers are not the cause of algae you don’t have to worry about using it.

What you need to grow algae is an algae spore and we pretty much always have them in our tanks then you need the conditions that favour algae in order to trigger the spore to grow. These conditions are less clear as far as empirical evidence is concerned but the planted tank world has some overwhelming anecdotal evidence.

Algae tends to grow when there is a lot of organic wastes present in the water column. These wastes are usually a result of decomposition and unhealthy plants are one of the culprits when it comes to feeding algae.

Unhealthy plants are usually a result of too much light. It’s very unlikely there will be not enough light in an aquarium. High light intensity increases the plants carbon demand and if that cannot be met it will wilt.

Other reasons that there will be a lot of organic waste in the water will be overfeeding and/or a young biofilter that can’t handle efficient waste breakdown.

Also if the plants are new (weeks old) they will always drop the initial leaves.

Water changes will help because you can dilute the organic wastes until the the tank is ready to cope and will remove algae spores as well as keep excess nutrients down. Though do not stop feeding nutrients. The plants can’t help the situation if they are weak.