D.gilly's 75G Planted Tang community

[D.gilly]

Hi all it's been a while since I've been on here I just moved away for university and decided I needed to setup a tank to keep me sane through all the work I'll be doing. Or at least that's been my excuse to spend so much on my tank.

Specs are as follows:

75 G aquarium
4 x 54 Watt HOT5 fixture
Eheim Pro 2 2226 Filtration + 2 koralia Powerheads for circulation
Jager 250 watt heater

Water Parameters:

Ph 7.8
Nitrate 0.5
Nitrite 0.0
Ammonia 0.0
KH 7

Flora:

anubias barteri
anubias barteri var. nana
anubias coffeefolia
anubias congensis
anubias lanceolata
vallisneria spiralis red

Fauna:

8 lamprologus multifasciatus (3f 5) (going to drop 2-3 m to open up space)
6 lamprologus ocellatus gold (2f 4m) (again dropping 2 m waiting for pairs)
2 julidochromis ornatus (juveniles fingers crossed on a pair)
11 cyprichromis leptosoma utinta (juveniles just starting to color)
2 synodontis sp. hybrid (I suspect a brichardi x multipunctatus)
8 Nerite snails

I am having some algae problems that I'm working out currently but I have another thread going for that so I'll just post a section of it on here.

Initially there was a bit of green water I combated with a few small 10% WC and a 4 day blackout which worked. Shortly after this short green filamentous algae started to pop up on some rocks this is when I dropped another hour on the photo period, next came some brown algae on the glass realizing something must be up I tested the water and added some phoslock to my canister as I noticed no green spot had developed at all which to my understanding is common in tanks with low P levels. Finally I've been hit with the dreaded Blue Green Cyano Bacteria. I'm doing my best to remain positive and tell myself this is just the tank getting established before the plants take off and out compete all this stuff. I've been good at cleaning the glass and plants/rocks as much as I can I try to clean the substrate in areas possible as much of the tank is rocks or shell beds. It hasn't become a major issue yet as a result of my efforts but the cyano does not seem to want to give in. I have the erythromycin handy all ready as a last resort but I'd Like to get this sorted out the natural way, by balancing this out.

Anubis and Vals have begun to shoot new leaves and runners but they are slow to grow. Bolbitis seems to have stopped growing almost. I've been thinking of adding some moss or floating plants to suck up more nutrients.

I am aware there is some kind of off balance going on maybe I need to boost up my N levels to encourage growth, or continue to drop my lighting photo period. The cyano could be caused by low N as I'm reading or a wide variety of other things. The green filamentous algae could be another sign that I have no N in the water I must be dealing with P but that's just my guess the phoslock should be doing a decent job of removing it right? I'd prefer to not use the erythromycin if possible but I have it if I have to.

I Have a pressurized CO2 unit that I can use if I have to but I believe that I can get away without using it. This is just a hypothesis at this point though I guess we'll have to see what happens.



Sorry about the low quality pic my SLR up an disappeared a few weeks ago

[crazydaz]

I dunno gilly....looks pretty sweet to me!

Won't the cichlids simply eat the algae? I seem to remember that most Africans tend to graze on this stuff. So, is it really that much of a problem?