[rick dale]

I have a 55 gal medium tech planted tank that has been going for about 6 or 7 weeks now . I am starting to see some diatoms and some green algae on my glass. What do you think of my water stats.
Tap water: Ammonia 1.0 ppm
PH 8.4
nitrite 0
nitrate 0


Tank water: ammonia 0
PH 7.8
nitrite 0
nitrate 10 ppm

I am dosing the directed amount of Excel daily.
I have a 2 lamp T5 ho with 2 6700 54 watt bulbs. 108 watts total.
Lights on for 8 hrs daily
2 aqua clear 70 hob filters. no carbon. Just sponge and bio media.
78 degrees consistently
Started the tank using Tetra safe start as directed
Also a little seachem stability
Have used Prime regularly. as directed

Any suggestions and comments will be appreciated.

 

[King of Hyrule]

try this...

Your tank is out of balance, the traditional wisdom of the board would be to boost your frets and cut your lights and pump in lots of CO2 in hopes of overdriving the plant growth and using up the excess nutrients in your water.

My advice -- simplify. I'd cut back on the frets and the lights, the excess of both is only feeding your algae at this point. If you're using a substrate with a high CEC, it will release nutrients back into the water. Your plants growth will slow, but it will help knock back the algae.

If your selected fish can handle it (or even benefit from it), try backwater extract. The tannin will inhibit the growth of the algae. You might have to work adjusting the use of black water extract to keep your water mostly clear, and free of algae. You could add the carbon back to your filter(s) (along with Purigen) to reduce the unwanted yellowing effect of the tannin, with the excel dosing levels you are using, it will have little impact on the frets. The black water extract will help lower your pH and soften your water.

You could over use the black water extract to kill off the algae in one big hit. Then use large water changes and then let the carbon (and Purigen) pull it out of the water once the algae is gone.

I had a tank over run by algae, due to a lot of direct sunlight, and failed cap on my MGO (dirt) substrate. After converting the tank to a black water set up (to make the fish feel more at home) I have no algae. I still have all that sunlight and my filter still gets clogged with dirt from the failed capped substrate -- but no algae.

Your algae didn't happen overnight, don't expect to go away overnight either.

Algae over run tank.

Black water clean tank.

 

[poormanisme]

If you are not running CO2 I would turn one of those lights off. I would try to clean up the algae before if gets out of hand. Looks like your cycled now, perhaps add a clean up crew (ottos and amano shrimp usually earn their keep). With less light, good fert levels, and some manual removal of existing algae, u should be golden. Try for a few weeks and see how it goes. You may be surprised that we really dont need a bunch of lights to grow plants well. Good luck

 

[roadmaster]

I see no mention of fertz only excel.
Plant's need food.
Way too much light. Raise it up higher ,shade it with window screen ,remove one bulb (prolly won't work with just one).