@JAAG How are you liking the twinstar?

It is great man. I have it on a dimmer on a little over half intensity for 6 hours a day right now. I am starting to get some algae. I have zero complaints about it. I would recommend it.

I actually already have it, but haven't started using it yet. (still in the process of getting my tank together in a journal here too.)

Can you explain your schedule? How many hours at what %? Also can you recommend a dimmer!

One more question, when you were setting up your tank, did you use any substrate additives or just pure substrate?

So I have mine on from 4 to 10 everyday at i would say 65 to 70%. The reason I don't know the exact percent is because the dimmer I have doesn't say.
Here is the dimmer: https://buceplant.com/products/led-light-dimmer. It was cheap and I have had no issues.

I just used UNS Controsoil without any additives but I do dose now once a week. I use UNS Plant Food.

If someone else responded about the algae, I must have overlooked it. But I think this looks like staghorn algae. Maybe someone with more experience can confirm.


I had too much light in my low-tech tank when getting started and had some of this pop up. Since I cut my light back, it has mostly stopped spreading. I don't really mind it because I have a pretty wild aesthetic going, and the fish all spend a lot of time foraging through it. During my last water change, I removed the biggest clusters by hand.


Your set up looks beautiful!

Thanks for the advice and complement @Karley.

Very clean setup! Good luck with the algae.

I like the look of your tank, nice island look to it and the tall vallisnaria give a nice trailing effect across the tank. I'm a big fan of buce, so much variety, so easy to care for, stick 'em anywhere. Great plants.

I agree with someone that posted above that your algae is likely staghorn. Judging by your description of dosing and water changes in addition to lighting schedule, I doubt they are the problem. It is tough to have "too many nutrients" if you're doing water changes weekly as you described and if you're following the instructions on the liquid supplement. Not to say it's impossible, but by your description I don't think you're in danger. My thoughts are it is most likely a CO2 and/or circulation problem.

Two suggestions for flow/CO2 distribution:
1) position the CO2 diffuser so that it's directly in the flow of the outgoing pipe from the filter, this will help distribute the CO2 more efficiently. This could be putting it on the other side of the tank (see next point) or moving it over more to the left so the bubbles will get swept into the outflow current
2) If you were to put the diffuser on the opposite side across from the outflow, I would recommend moving the inflow to be right next to the outflow in that back right corner. Doing so can help create a circular flow in the tank as opposed to linear flow across the back that you likely have now. I bet that there isn't much flow across the front of the tank and below where the outflow sits, which is where I would guess your algae is growing the most.

So maybe if you move those things around, give it a couple weeks and see if you notice an improvement

Another option is Seachem Flourish Excel, it should kill staghorn if you squirt some directly on it in several days to a week. If you use this product, be careful as you CAN easily overdose Excel. It's technically a fungicide and can harm fish and plants at too high of a dose, so follow the instructions on the bottle to make sure your spot treating of the algae doesn't go beyond the safe dosage.

Keep up the good work and dedication, your skills will keep improving as you learn more from online resources and from any of your own mistakes.

@ChemGuyEthan Thanks for all the advice and time. I will move my intake over. Today I was actually going to go buy some Excel and start dosing that. Hopefully both of these help. You are right most of my algae, which is green hair and staghorn, is in the front of the tank in the moss. Good call.

On another note I was thinking about getting an atomizer for my CO2. I like the look of less in the tank. What do you think? Do you think that will help distribute more CO2?

Bump: You can see that the algae is starting to kill my Monte Carlo up front right where @ChemGuyEthan said it would.

Bump:

You can see that the algae is starting to kill my Monte Carlo up front right where @ChemGuyEthan said it would.

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So, with the information from all of you guys I have come up with a plan for my algae issue. I think I am getting a lot of phosphates from my water source which is just tap water that is conditioned with Prime. I do not have an RODI unit at the moment. It is back home. I am way from home for school. Also, I think an other contributing factor, which @ChemGuyEthan pointed out, is my flow pattern. I was not getting enough flow up front in my tank and that is where most of my algae is.

Here is the plan: I want to try the "one-two punch" algae treatment method. I know this method can be dangerous and only will be helpful in the long run if I fix the source of the algae but, I am going to do my best. If my thoughts are correct about the sources of my algae problem this plan, hopefully, will work. Wish me luck or tell me another idea if you have some please.

Today I changed the flow pattern so the front portion of my tank will receive more flow and the chemi-pure elite should be here tomorrow.

+1 for GLA, I have one of their dual stage GLA, I have a 10 pounder, and I love it. So easy to setup, and easy to use. Monte carlo to carpet is amazing but that is only if you don't care about maintanence, it floats up so much. If it was those two, I'd stick with the s. repens, but if I were to actually go through a selection, for easy, and thickness, and the quick pace, nothing beats dwarf sag in my years of keeping planted tanks.

Hopefully your floaters get to you soon, they'll eat up some excess phosphates.

Nice tank, still say you should give it to me though. :P Makes me itchy, kind of want an uns rimless now, why must I see this thread, why!?

Hey @JAAG, I feel your pain.

If you haven't done it already, you might be able to avoid the 1:2 punch by adjusting your CO2. Even if you HAVE done the 1-2 punch I would still check this.

I set up an ADA60P at the same time as your re-scape and I'm battling with algae issues as well. Mine are almost certainly due to too much lighting and inconsistent / not enough CO2. (I switched from an in-tank to diffuser to an in-line diffuser and didn't properly tune the CO2 in). I'm on the upswing of it now and, **fingers crossed**, if things continue in their current vein, my tank should look pretty decent in a couple of weeks. To cheer you up, here is a photo of my terribly algae infested tank taken last night. Believe it or not, this is a big improvement from last week.


Your lighting period of 6 hours is reasonable and should be around 80 - 90 PAR at the substrate with your dimmer. You could maybe reduce the photoperiod to five hours but that change isn't likely to make a huge difference.

I really don't think that phosphates in your water supply have anything to do with your issues. Fresh ADA Aquasoil actually absorbs phosphates from the water column, and the amounts in tap water shouldn't be enough to imbalance your fertilization to cause an algae bloom anyway.

I strongly recommend reading this article by Dennis Wong on CO2 gas exchange. Dennis knows what he is talking about, his tanks prove it. https://www.advancedplantedtank.com/...-of-co2-safely

Drop checkers are great, but their reading is a couple of hours behind the actual level and it is difficult to know how dark green or bright green or lime green or yellow green the thing should be. Measuring your pH is a great tool in combination with your drop checker to make sure that you are really hitting 30 ppm or higher. 'Tuning' your CO2 by looking at pH is based on the concept that without CO2 injection the amount of CO2 in the water should be around 2 - 3 ppm. When you add CO2 to the tank it turns to carbonic acid and the pH drops. Given the pH-KH relationship, to get to a 30 ppm CO2 target you should see a 1 point pH drop at KH (1 - 10). (Dennis explains this way better, and also explains how you can have too slow a build up of CO2 and still be gassing your fish at the end of the day).

So do the following to check your CO2:
1) Measure your pH when it is still dark, just before your CO2 turns on. This is your baseline, your target is a 1.0 decrease in pH.
2) Keep measuring your pH every half hour or so after lights turn on. Ideally, your CO2 injection rate should get you to that 1 point pH decrease within about 3 hours or so. You definitely should be at that pH by the time your lights kick on.
3) Adjust your CO2 accordingly. Monitor your drop checker and your fish behaviour so that you have a second and third data set and aren't relying on pH alone. You may need to make adjustment to your water flow to optimize results.

Here is a chart I made to keep track of my adjustments. (My BPS are all over the place because I was playing with working pressure too and made a circulation adjustment by turning off an airstone, but you can see how it got to a nice equilibrium).


Notes:
- Summer means longer daylight hours, and you can get a lot ambient light in your tank even with the lights out. Your CO2 should turn on before the tank is gets ambient daylight. For me this means my CO2 turns on at 5:30 am, even though my lights don't start up until 1 pm.
- Check to make sure that your CO2 equipment is working properly. Count and record your BPS to make sure that it is consistent throughout the day and from day-to-day. If it is not, check for leaks using soapy water and a little brush. When I switched to an in-line diffuser I didn't increase my working pressure and my BPS were all over the place.
- I remineralize my RO water to DKH of 1.8, but my KH readings are zero, or close to it, thanks to the Aquasoil, but the 1 pH drop relationship still seems to work just fine anyway.
- Where the pipes were located made a big difference for me in terms of gas exchange. I switched my pipes from the back to the side of the tank and had to almost double the BPS to hit my CO2 target. My filter has a lower flow rate than yours (I only have the Oase Filtosmart Thermo 100), but I expect you will find a big difference too depending on how you set up your flow.

Hang in there. It'll get better!

Mind = Blown. I haven't even started on planting or flooding, and this post is intimidating. I understood like 75% of what was said here. I have so many questions.

@taylorwinhaha - Ack! not meaning to intimidate! Do check out the advancedplantedtank.com site though. Dennis Wong has posted a ton of really great information that explains this CO2 equilibrium concept much better than I do. He also has Youtube videos!