Algae in the Undergrowth

[Philosophos]

Hey everyone,

I've been reading this site for months now, as research for my own high light/high plant density 20g. With a few bumps of iron toxicity (9ppm iron and spot treating excel on anubias = bad) and such, things seem to be working out slowly.

Right now, the biggest problem is trying to figure out how to dose EI appropriately in an aquarium with growth just establishing. Everything looks a bit messy, nothing is stable, but most of this is because I'm unsure of where to start the doseage at. One of the more obnoxious side effects seems to be a lot of algae under the H. micranthemoides and rotala rotundifolia, with symptoms of low lighting. Any sugestions? What are the parameters relevant to figuring this out?

Lighting is a 65w dual 6700/10,000 sunpaq in the back plus a redish 8,000k 15w fluoro up front. There's a glass hood on it that interferes a bit, but the lighting seems to be enough to keep hemianthus calitrichoides down on the bottom.

I've got a pile of other questions, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to start here.

-Philosophos

 

[Philosophos]

***UPDATE****

Solved my own problem. I should've clued in that 2 days of trimming, planting and re-scaping might just clog the filter. One good filter cleaning got all kinds of material on its way to mulm blown out of the lower levels of the plants. The low-light indicative leaves match up pretty much 100% of the time with where the algae covered them. I'm heading on with EI dosing at 1/2 of what's outlined in the PMDD style EI thread. From there, slowly dialing it up over the next month won't hurt.

One question does remain in my mind. How much extra MgSO4 and CaSO4 am I going to have to dump in to get a nice stable GH at 50+ppm? I'm already adding in extra MgSO4 to total out at ~12.3ppm. The water is 100% RO due to a small tank size and nasty tap water. Any help would be appreciated.

-Philosophos