[argblarg]

Tank has been set up for 10 days

75 gallons
4x65 (2x10k,2x67/10k) 10 hours
ADA Aquasoil
Pressurized CO2 ~30ppm (by pH and drop checker)
pH 5.9
78 degrees
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20

EI Dosing for 60-80 gallon

I thought I loaded up with enough plants to start but maybe not. The left side is a big thing of hornwart and cabomba.

So... yell at me or something, what do I do? Less light for less hours for a while? Lots of water changes? I would give up and just grow tulips but they flowered last week and now its 20 degrees out so I can't do that very well either.

 

[frozenbarb]

whoa looks like a tank with no maintances would turn like that, looks kinda scary:eek5:

you might wanna do a W/C and clean most of your slimmys things off

 

[Mr.ThomasWalls]

OH my God!!!! Nice algae farm. And yes you have many types of algae in that tank.

 

[mistergreen]

well for now, Do a blackout for 3 days.

Then lower the wattage by half and lower the photoperiod to 7-8 hours... You can increase when the plants are growing & healthy.

And get an algae eating crew in there. Most fish won't eat that... maybe octos & american flag fish.

 

[Betowess]

If it was mine I would probably pull all the really bad algae infested plants or leaves. Stick in a whole boatload of FAST growing stems. Cheap/ Raok, whatever you can get. Don't worry about scape or appearance, just fill it full of plants for now. Egeria, Wisteria, Asian Ambulia, Hygrophilas etc. Basically start over with 100% new water or there abouts and do less light 8 hours a day and real light dosing if any to see where you are at after introducing new plants. There are a lot of macros in AS and many don't dose much at first, even if others say to.

You probably are coming into a diatom bloom too, which of course is normal.

 

[Finch_man]

IMHO I would start over, what I would do is take all of the plants out do a 75% water change pick all the algae off and add some kind of filter to filter out all the algae thats left in the water, repeat until no algae and don't put the lights on... Throw away your plants. Do not wash your ada soil if you do it will turn into mud, trust me I did it onces.... Then get some fresh plants.

 

[argblarg]

This stuff is pretty easy to remove manually. Just bumping it with a Python made it come loose in some places. The scary part is that on Sunday there was no algae at all, I thought everything was going swimmingly. Didn't have time to look at the tank for two days other than dosing with lights off, and now I feel like a dumbass.

4 SAE and 3 Ottos in QT right now but I will not be putting them in until this is under control, I doubt they would dent it. Changed the timer to 8 hours and half bulbs for tomorrow. The Petsmart here has a huge tank full of easy stems I can go grab a ton and keep loading it up.

Betowess recommends to stop adding ferts, not that I don't believe this but does anyone else want to chime in?

 

[Finch_man]

Stop the fert and get all the algae you can, and large of amount of water change...

 

[mistergreen]

no ferts, no light for a few days.
That'll bring the tank nutrients into balance and then you can start over.

And you'd be surprise what the sae & ottos can do.. Not sure if they eat staghorn/hair algae though.

 

[Betowess]

If you want to add some fish early to AS, you can put a lot of zeolite (Ammochips) in a can filter and that will take care of the ammonia spike. I added AS to an established tank (four 9 liter bags) and my fish were fine... big Rainbows & community...

 

[Storm_Rider]

what kind of algae is that? i had it (very very minimal though) for a few days but it went away

 

[argblarg]

Ammonia spike is over with, I did like 6 75% water changes initially and loaded the XP3 with carbon and purigen.

 

[argblarg]

Picked up about 30 stems of anacharis and 5 more big bunches of hornwort today. Added 6 otos and 2 SAE.

 

[eklikewhoa]

When I set up a tank with AS I only light for about 5hrs a day and no ferts for a week, then when the ammonia is settled from daily water changes I plant heavily and add O-cats and Amano shrimp.

 

[argblarg]

Alright.. I did another 50% water change and sucked up about half of this stuff. Added 2 amano shrimp today.

Ammonia, nitrite 0
nitrate 5
phosphate 1 (tap)

I will just keep manually removing some every day while keeping photoperiod at 6 hours. Opinions on fertilizer at this point? Maybe half normal EI?

 

[Finch_man]

Not yet, it is still not stable...

 

[Betowess]

Alright.. I did another 50% water change and sucked up about half of this stuff. Added 2 amano shrimp today.

Ammonia, nitrite 0
nitrate 5
phosphate 1 (tap)

I will just keep manually removing some every day while keeping photoperiod at 6 hours. Opinions on fertilizer at this point? Maybe half normal EI?

For a seventy five gallon full of plants, I would get at least a dozen Amanos to make a dent. And consider not dosing for well over a week. The plants should be fine. Just go lowlight tank with a little CO2 and they'll grow slower, but without algae. Maybe in a week bump it up to 8 hours half power light and review from there. There are lots of nutrients in AS which will leach into the water column anyways.

 

[argblarg]

I would get more Amanos but I have never seen any in stores around here and there are none on Aquabid at this time. I just happened upon these 2 for sale locally. Also this is hopefully going to be an Apisto tank and they might be an expensive snack.

The algae is still around but is not growing at the alarming rate it was before. I will do another WC tonight and hopefully get most if off again. I have not dosed anything in the tank for almost a week and have only been running lights for 6 hours. Water params still at 0/0/5ish and CO2 30+

Plants are quite leggy, 2+" gap on the cabomba. Nothing is really dieing off from lack of fertilizer. Tonnia was almost completely melted away seems to be recovering, foxtail melted to the stem and sprouted new healthy growth at the top finally, I am assuming this is an Aquasoil thing like that other thread. They are growing enough that I might pull half the tank and replant the tops algae free.

I will have a huge amount of hornwart and anacharis when this is done.

Thanks all for your help.