Over my head? 5 days away and algae has taken root... Help?

[sudz]

Hey! i just got my new 96 watt fixture in on tuesday... I installed it, and then ran out for 5 days until today. I believe the unit is on for about 8 hours a day.

When i come back, my drift wood is "fuzzy" It has little non-colored "hairs" coming from it that are all uniform length of about 4 mm (1/4 an inch) or less

Its only noticible when you look at it closely.

My magnetic algae scraper had... algae on the side that was facing my lights. coated in it. I WAS expecting algae to form on the windows, which they did, only minimally.

My hornwort has lost some of its... definition. It has also gone fuzzy, and 2 plants directly under the lights don't seem to be floating well. The one off to the side seems fine. (too much light for them or something?)

recent tank readings (5 minutes ago)

PH 7.4
KH 11
NH3/NH+4 ammonia 0
NO2 Nitrite 0
NO3 Nitrate 0


I guess those readings only give me 13.138 PPM of CO2. I can aim for more. Would that be why algae appears to be prolific in my tank?

I guess i'm over that 2 WPG mark...

Would the lack of CO2 be causing all the above symptoms?

I guess my parents under-fed the fish... No nitrates after a week of no waterchanges. *look of shock*

opinions welcome!

Thanks in advance

 

[crazycat]

i got huge amounts of algae about 3 days after setting up my new tank with 3wpg. bba, green spot hair algae, everything but cyano. i started injecting co2. let the saes go crazy on the bba, scrubbed the green spot and, over time, all my algae went away. i did just have an incident, where my co2 regulated busted and i was without co2 for 3 days, and i started to get a nice, large crop of green spot algae on the glass.

do you have anything in your tank that will eat the algae? i would say up your co2, scrub scrub scrub, and when your level stabilize, you should see a reduction.

jmo

 

[sudz]

OK, good to know that its not a freak thing.

I have some cherry barbs, which apparently love hair algae, I have a Clown loach, and i guess i can put my chinese algae eater from my 10 gallon tank, though he tends to bug the cherry barbs for some reason.

Sound good? I REALLY need one of those razorblades on a stick... But they are so bloody expensive for what you are getting! :'(

I only have a magnetic block scrubber.

 

[Purrbox]

Sounds to me like it could be the start of BBA due to your NO3 bottoming out. Zero NO3 will also cause plants to start going transluscent. Since this was an upgrade to your lighting, your plants are using more nutrients which could have caused the drop in NO3 especially if your parents were feeding less. You may need to look into dosing NO3 along with adjusting the CO2.

 

[malkore]

Purrbox is exactly right: 0ppm of NO3. In addition to BBA from probable phosphate being too high for the 0ppm of nitrate, your lack of nitrate is opening you up to a potential BGA bloom as well, and that's not much fun to deal with.

Get more NO3 in there, get a phosphate test kit, and increase CO2 levels.

You have no nitrates because you threw a brand new 96 watt light over the tank. You've not mentioned the tank size, but since a single 96w fit over it, I'm guessing its not much over 30 gallons, which means you definitely need CO2 up in the 25ppm range.

 

[sudz]

Sounds good. Is there any inexpensive way to dose Nitrate?

I don't really want to spend money right now... espically before christmas...
If i have enough after I go to cuba with my gal, i am hoping to buy the nikon coolpix 5900... I took a picture of her hair at the camera store on my SD card... TOTALLY amazing. (picture below) Imagine what this will do for my fish (provided i catch them sleepy/docile)

Your typical plant ferts don't have NO3 in them, do they?
I'm just using big al's all purpose plant fert. Its cheap, and i got a 1 litre bottle of it. (and funny enough, a guy at the london superpet recommended it, Nice guy!)

We'll i'll try and take pictures of the new algae tonight, provided my batteries don't annoy me too much (my camera takes 10 pictures and dies, its most definately defective... Stupid HP 635

Cheers

 

[malkore]

gregwatson.com sells KNO3, cheap. it contains about half as much potassium as NO3, so if you have to dose a lot of it, you end up not having to dose K separately.

 

[sudz]

do i understand correctly? KNO3 has half as much potassium as NO3... or other way around, it has MORE than NO3?

How long do you think it'd take them to ship up to toronto canada? (guess)

 

[czcz]

KNO3 is ~39% K by mass. Greg ships quickly but you may be able to get it locally from a plant nursery or as Grants or Greenlight stump remover. Surely any of these choices will be cheaper than buying some aquarium nitrogen product. HTH

 

[malkore]

Half as much....meaning, if you dosed enough KNO3 to give you an increase of 10ppm of nitrate, you'd be adding approx 4.5ppm of Potassium.

So if you had to dose 10ppm 3x a week, that's 14ppm of potassium dosed...so you may not need Potassium Sulfate/Potassium Chloride to meet your potassium needs.

I was simply pre-addressing the common question: "If I am dosing KNO3, why would I ever need to dose K separately?" In my 75gal tank, I don't ever need to dose KNO3, so I go through plenty of K2SO4 instead.

this is why a comprehensive formula like what you seem to be using, or they PMDD method, really doesn't work long term. You're adding EVERY nutrient imaginable every time...but in a fixed ratio...so if your tank uses a lot of nitrate, dosing extra fert to increase nitrate will give you too much phosphate. And vice versa.

Tanks are as unique as people. If I eat 2,400 calories a day, I get fat...but if you eat it, you get skinny. Same thing in our tanks...mine always has 20ppm within a day of 50% water change, but my phosphates can be hard to get above 1ppm.

Confused yet?

 

[sudz]

Confused, yes. I just ordered some KNO3 from gregwatson. I went to my LFS... nothing. I went to the pharmacy, Nothing (only potassium chlorite or something like that... )
Sooo i ordered it.

Nowwww comes the question: How do i dose it? I'm thinking one teaspoon of the stuff in 250ml of water, every week or so?

I bought a phospate test while i was at big al's... My Phosphate is just under 1 ppm.

I also have just found some black algae forming. This is bad, aint it? :-(

I scrapped it off the driftwood. Its only REALLY forming right near the lights. Anything that has some distance (12 inches) from the lights is fine. I also just cleaned the intake of my powerhead and filter, so that should up their speed a litte, not that it'll do much... Please let me know if there is anything i can do. Should i put my old 18 watt light back on for the time being?

 

[sudz]

Ok, what i've probably foolishly done is stuck a piece of white plexyglass over the area that my driftwood pops up at. This way the top of the wood only gets indirect light. But the bottom gets almost near the normal amount of light. Yell at me if its stupid please.

 

[rich311k]

This should help with the dosing levels. http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_dosage_calc.htm

 

[sudz]

Ok, that calculator... It doesn't make sense to me. If i dose 15 tablespoons of KNO3 with 250 ml of water and add it in The nitrate level is 3.71... but if i add the same amount in 500ml, the nitrate level drops to 1.85 ppm. WHY would this happen if i'm pouring everything into the tank anyway? or is this "nitrate level" what the estiamted level would be if i poured say, a cap full every day? where does it say how much to add of this premix i'd be making? :-S

Other than that, pretty nifty!

Also, is there such thing as too much potassium? do i need a freaking test kit for that too??? (this is getting too expensive...all these test kits)

 

[rich311k]

No kits available for K. It is hard to verdose so dont worry about it. just dose for 20 ppm.

 

[crazycat]

because you're diluting the mixture by increasing the amount of water to fert. to get the smae ppm, you would have to add 30 tbs to 500 ml.

i dose everything dry now (except for pmdd).

if you type in 1ml as the volume amount, it will give you an accurate reading on the ampount of dry fert and the resulting ppm. i.e 1tbs of kso4 gives you approx 17ppm. so i take 1tbs, mix it with some tank water, and then pour it in.

ANYONE, if this is incorrect, please tell me now!

 

[sudz]

sweet.

Yeah, Greg himself basically described high lighted tanks to a tee:

"High light will do that to you <grin> … high light is like a turbo charged Ferarri on a gravel road … a great ride until you hit loose gravel on a corner …"

He sure likes to grin!

Dry dose? My golden gourami eats ANYTHING that is put in the tank. I moved the ceramic bio rings in my filter and some little pieces of it fell into the tank, and he ate them and spit em out before they even hit the ground. How fast does it dissolve? like sugar?

Thanks for advice/experiences!

 

[rich311k]

I mix it in a dixie cup of tank water and pour it in.

 

[sudz]

for your 36 gallon, how much do you mix in a dixie cup every day/week/whenever you dose? It'll give me a good idea for where i should be at.

 

[rich311k]

I dose about every other day. Enough to keep nitrate at 20 phosphate at 2. I dose 20 ppm K after 505 water change and mid week I dose 10 ppm more. I put in flourish every other day.