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Looking for fert advice

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Kunsthure 
#1 ·
I've got a 13g low-light tank (15w of T8) and I'm not sure where to go from here. The contents and inhabitants were previously in a 5g but were all moved a week ago. I had a lot of green algae on the glass of the old tank, as well as hair algae and BBA. I did my best to remove as much of it as I could before putting things into the 13g.

I have an amazon sword, anubias nana, lace java fern, flame, java, stringy, giant, subwassertang, monosolenium tenerum, and unidentified moss, second-hand driftwood with BBA and hair algae on it, five kinds of dwarf shrimp, five tiger endlers and three otos right now. I will be adding Christmas and Taiwan moss soon. The lace java fern has a lot of brown on the leaves, and some are even eaten through like you'd see on a leaf a caterpillar ate. The mosses do fairly well, but there was a lot of green hair-like algae in the flame moss.

I used to dose 0.5ml of Flourish Comprehensive every three or four days, but I now dose 0.625ml every other day and I have a Flourish fert tab under the sword.

I'm wondering if I should add Excel to my regimen to work against the algae? Or I'm also open to DIY CO2 if that would work better. I'm looking into EI with my 37g and 75g, so could I do that here as well? Should I stay with the every other day dosing of the Comprehensive? Should I do something else?

-Lisa
 
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#2 ·
I don't ever dose anything in my own 10gal setups under that much light- you don't need much if you do decide to dose.

CO2 is optional. You definitely don't need full EI dosing, though there's a special "low light" variation you could use if you want.

I would hit the tank with some Excel to kill back the algae, though.
 
#3 ·
#5 ·
Yellow, malawa, green, orange Sulawesi and a lone amano I thought would take care of algae on the plants but didn't.

I asked about the DIY CO2 because I had the same algae problems in my 37g medium light tank that had 1.75wpg and, from what I was told, I shouldn't have needed CO2.

I've read conflicting reports of Excel hurting mosses. I read through some posts here and it seems the consensus is that it doesn't. I'm just really worried because this tank is the home of my moss collection and it's not always easy to come by some of them.

-Lisa
 
#7 ·
Wait- did you just say you've got Sulawesi shrimp in this tank? :icon_eek:

I think you need to decide very quickly about your priorities- converting this tank to one that has a chance of keeping Sulawesi shrimp alive (which they do not have right now) or keeping it as a planted tank.
 
#8 ·
There's one lone orange Sulawesi now, so I still include her when I mention what species I have. I know they're touchy with their water parameters, but since she's the only one, I'm not going to build the whole tank around her when there are 30+ other shrimp that actually have a chance of breeding.

-Lisa
 
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