Ive had my 55g planted tank up for about a year now. I have a 48in Glo t5 lighting system on my tank with two power glo bulbs. I have been using flourish excel for about two weeks now every other day. For one, my plants do not seem to be growing like i want...i have had a whole lot of plants just die on me. I have a problem with green and black hair algae..the black hair strictly grows on my plants and slowly kills them. the green algae covers the glass, wood and substrate. I have tried everything i can think of. I do 30% water changes 1-2 times a week and i have to scrape algae every time. I have cut back feeding considerably, and my light is not on that much and i have it turning on and off throughout the day. What the heck am i doing wrong?
Having trouble with my tank...
- Thread starter Jkessler623
- Start date
Up your dosing of excel that should help fight the bba. And the green algae and bad plant growth could actually be from too low of phosphates.
With limited lighting yes. Problem with planted, at least as far as I understand it so far, is that you need to have many of the same nutrients/fertilzers that algae also uses. Therefor you need to figure out the fine balance. However the plants need to out compete the algae but the limited lighting you are running does not allow this. Sorry, phosphates might not be the cure but it sounds like your plants are deficient of something.
Here is a thread I bookmarked a while back to help me figure out what might be going wrong if my plants start failing at growth. Check post picture 2
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=392879
Here is a thread I bookmarked a while back to help me figure out what might be going wrong if my plants start failing at growth. Check post picture 2
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=392879
what do you mean by clean up the water column? i hate hornwort, and wouldnt duckweed block light?
With that much light you're lacking in CO2 most likely. Excel won't provide the plants needs with that much light over it. Once you have CO2 in the tank, adding good amounts of nitrate and phosphate should get everything in order. The algae grows simply because the plants don't have enough of what they need to grow.
You can try double dosing excel, but I'm still not sure that will keep up to the plants needs.
The only other option I can think of is to remove one of the bulbs.
The only other option I can think of is to remove one of the bulbs.