[JohnnyHalcyon]

Hey guys, sharing a progress pic of my 90p and looking for some advice around what I believe is a bunch of GSA.

Generally I think stuff is okay, tank is in a bit of an akward teen phase and has some temporary plants in it for now that are for another build.

The thing thats dragging me down the most is this GSA(?) It shows up almost exclusively right above the sandline and on the anubias/buces. The algae seems to prefer leaf margins but will cover a leaf if I allow it. It's hard to the touch, I cant brush it off like the dusty green I had on setup.

My instinct when I first noticed it showing up was to not really change anything and just continue as usual. I did lower the intensity of my light a bit as I had raised it 2-3 months into the build to try (and fail) to get the HC growing.

For now I'm doing an extra 25% WC in addition to my weekly 50%. I'm also taking care to remove any leaves that are fairly covered (If a leaf is more than 40% algae covered I consider it a loss) as well as any leaves that have holes/rips and otherwise looking badly. I also added 3 pots of rotala to the back in an effort to uptake more nutrients and get some more,faster plants in.

Other than that I'm keeping everything the same as I don't want to change everything all at once. I am at the point I'm looking for any advice, even if it's just watching and waiting.

My setup:

Biomaster 600
Pressurized CO2 - Aquamedic 1000 reactor
Chihiros WRGBSlim 2 (30cm off of surface, at around 75% intensity - 7 hours a day)
APT3 Complete 5ml daily (suggested dose)
50% weekly water changes + vaccuming any organics/debris I can get

 

[JohnnyHalcyon]

I will add that one thing I do think I have off with the tank in general is CO2 - My drop checker never gets to that bordering on yellow lime green. I'm currently doing about 3.5bps, it comes on 1.5 hours before lights and turns off with them.

I've done several PH drop tests and observe something like a 0.6-0.8 drop in PH 3-4 hours after CO2 comes on though it is veery hard to tell between the shades of the PH drop test. I've ordered an actual PH probe as I want a better idea of what's going on there. KH of the tank is around 4-5.

I feel like CO2 is probably the sorest spot, I'm assuming it can have an impact on algae indirectly through just having more robust, healthier plant growth. I'm nervous to change it by eye right now and alter so much at once like I mentioned. I should get the probe sometime next week and can start to dial that in

Should also mention for cleanup crew I have a half dozen Otos and around 12-14 amano shrimp (3 real lobsters too) - They don't seem terribly interested in the GSA(?_

 

[minorhero]

GSA is an annoying part of having an aquarium. The issue here being that you have slow growing low light plants in a high light tank with not enough fast growers to make up the difference. Plus all the old leaves that have not adjusted to your tank on your slow growers are probably the ones getting the most gsa.

If it were me, and I wanted to stop the gsa, I would figure out the par/ppfd coming off of the light at the substrate level. You can download the photone app and calibrate it, or the lux meter app and divide the result by 80. The latter is more of a rough estimate. If you adjust your par to about 40 ppfd at substrate you will be in a better place. I suspect you are probably closer to double or triple that at present.

I assume you are doing big water changes each week of at least 50% already?

Beyond that it's a waiting game to see if the new leaves are being affected. Anything already affected will likely remain affected. Good luck.

 

[JohnnyHalcyon]

Hey Minor,

Yeah, I mentioned I'm doing an additional 25% along with my week 50% for now. When I set the tank up I took PAR readings with an actual meter, Had 60 at the tallest points and as low as 15-20 at the lowest. I had boosted it up about 15-20% for months 3-5, however a week or two ago I returned it to it's original settings. Maybe it's just a matter of watching and waiting - I really need to get that CO2 under control