After 6 weeks, my KH remains 1 in a new planted tank. I have purchased lots of bells and whistles including the following:
C02
PH Controller (set at 6.4) so it rarely turns on.
Satellite Plus LED 11 hours (lights up the tanks a little).
Build My LED 8 hours (like the sun) 6300K.
I am getting diatomes and some brownish/green hair algae the I remove by hand by aiming gravity fed water at it.
My plants are not growing well and appear weak. the leaves on my Ludwigia Peruensis look like wrinkled grandma skin. The aponogeton longiplumulosus has seen better days as well.
I have been adding Potassium according to directions and Aquariumplants.com liquid Fert. according to directions.
Nitrate <10
Nitrite =0
Ammonia =0
My plan this week was to finally add Seachem Alkaline Buffer to raise KH and add a UV Coralife Turbo Twist.
Yes, it does seem like you're doing something wrong. Diatoms are normal. Hair algae not. You probably have a deficiency for the plants and too much light, which is probably causing the deficiency.
The diatoms make me think that there's low flow. Try increasing flow and/or filtration if you can. Also, why a 6300k bulb? I've always used much warmer bulbs, around 5500k.
The 6300K is from buildmyled.com and was highly recommended. I bought the smallest wave maker I could find and it seemed to be way to powerful. It was a sunsun jvp-110. I removed it. My phosphates are somewhere between 5 and 10 ppm. I have not dosed potassium or aquariumplants.com liquid in 4 days. I did finally add alkaline buffer and which raised kh to 4 and my ph monitor is set to 6.8. What do you think my next step should be, or should I wait it out for a couple days. My plants usually start to pearl about 3 yours before lights out.
Exactly right:
Once the population has built up, it is OK to alter the water chemistry. It is only in the initial stages when you need the fastest growth that you want to cater to the bacteria with hard, alkaline water.
Now get the plants growing well, and they will handle a lot of the waste.
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