swanandmokashi
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Hi all
Some of you on the forum might recognize me : I was pretty active on this forum a few years back.
I had a beautiful (IMO) planted freshwater 55G aquarium with the following specs:
Eco-complete Substrate
Equipment : In-line heater, RENA XP3 filter, 130 Watts Fluroscent
You can see the tank in its former glory (again IMO) :
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f70/some-pictures-of-my-55-gallon-96631.html
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f24/it-is-jungle-out-there-96173.html
So what happened? :
1. I started working on a business while working on a full-time job (great stuff : I have quit my job 2 years back and have been growing my software consulting business)
2. We had our 2nd daughter (greatest thing ever )
The above 2 events meant I had very little time to spend on the tank (yeah I know it is not a good enough excuse) ,I used to keep up with water change but stopped fertilizers. To top it off, 2 years back I had an issue with my lighting where the light would come on and off randomly. I changed the lights but no use (more on this later). The result was most of my plants died
Also, the fish I had, bit the dust too slowly (a lot of them were at the end of their life anyway) and currently I only have a cory catfish and 3 mickey mouse platies in my tank.
I finally figured out that the ballast was an issue with the lighting and ordered it last week and installed it. The light has been stable now. Since the above 2 events are stable now (business and my daughters are both out of the toddler phase I want to get back to my hobby. Just looking for some encouragement and advice from this great community.
First things first : please see the attached photos (sorry taken from my iPhone) : looks like some sort of green algae. My first step is to get rid of this, and then start fertilizers and DIY CO2 and add more plants.
What is this algae and how best to get rid of it ? Of course, I do not want to use any chemicals
Feels great to be back
Swanand
Some of you on the forum might recognize me : I was pretty active on this forum a few years back.
I had a beautiful (IMO) planted freshwater 55G aquarium with the following specs:
Eco-complete Substrate
Equipment : In-line heater, RENA XP3 filter, 130 Watts Fluroscent
You can see the tank in its former glory (again IMO) :
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f70/some-pictures-of-my-55-gallon-96631.html
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f24/it-is-jungle-out-there-96173.html
So what happened? :
1. I started working on a business while working on a full-time job (great stuff : I have quit my job 2 years back and have been growing my software consulting business)
2. We had our 2nd daughter (greatest thing ever )
The above 2 events meant I had very little time to spend on the tank (yeah I know it is not a good enough excuse) ,I used to keep up with water change but stopped fertilizers. To top it off, 2 years back I had an issue with my lighting where the light would come on and off randomly. I changed the lights but no use (more on this later). The result was most of my plants died
Also, the fish I had, bit the dust too slowly (a lot of them were at the end of their life anyway) and currently I only have a cory catfish and 3 mickey mouse platies in my tank.
I finally figured out that the ballast was an issue with the lighting and ordered it last week and installed it. The light has been stable now. Since the above 2 events are stable now (business and my daughters are both out of the toddler phase I want to get back to my hobby. Just looking for some encouragement and advice from this great community.
First things first : please see the attached photos (sorry taken from my iPhone) : looks like some sort of green algae. My first step is to get rid of this, and then start fertilizers and DIY CO2 and add more plants.
What is this algae and how best to get rid of it ? Of course, I do not want to use any chemicals
Feels great to be back
Swanand