Blueish crazy hair tentacles.

Hello, I just wanted to see if anyone knew what this stuff was, just curious. It has followed me from a low tech tank, to a C02 injected tank. I let it get a little worse so the photos would be better.


Cheers

 

I have been doing the Aquarium thing a little over two years now, for 90% of that time I have done Low Tech setups, with dimmable LED light strips (CurrentUSA brand). I have had some good success with those types of tanks, algae is not usually an issue once I get my light dialled in correctly. I mainly liked raising Neocaridina Shrimp. Fertilization I usually do at a water change, but its minimal, usually liquid potassium, and Salty Shrimp GH+. I have some pictures waiting approval in my albums in my profile. Anyway so after rescuing this big 180 gallon vivarium I got a little extra money and I made the plunge into CO2 injection. My setup right now is:


- 20 Gallon Long


- Satellite Freshwater LED+ 13 watts 600 lumens (35+ par @ 12 inches) After reading the Tropica article on light this doesn't sound like enough


- Eheim canister classic 250 (supposed to be good for tanks up to 65 gallons, for idea of flow)


- GLA PRO-SS (dual stage regulator)


- atomic inline diffuser


So I wanted to attempt to learn EI dosing. Initially I couldn't find teaspoons small enough, so I googled the mass of a teaspoon then basically made dilutions of the KNO3 and Monopotassium Phosphate. Anyways, I upsized my daily dose to a monthly dose 8.8g of Monopotassium Phosphate, and 31.7g of KNO3, I dissolved it into 250 mL of RO water, and blah blah blah roughly 20mL of each liquid would be my daily dose (daily meaning 3 times per week) I totally could have messed this up, and probably did, so I bought some teaspoons that go to 1/64th online and I am doing it exactly the same way it's outlined in the EI sticky post from 2005. I even bought myself a gallon of Seachem Flourish for like $140 (ouch).


So, today I cleaned up and removed all the algae, took my like 2 hours, then I did a 90% water change. I added back RO that was remineralized with Salty Shrimp KH/GH and Salty Shrimp GH+. I am adding water with roughly 3-4 degrees KH and 9 Degrees GH. I decided I would dose Macros 3 times a week, Saturday (after water change), Tuesday, and Thursday. 1/4 teaspoon KNO3, and 1/16 teaspoon Monopotassium Phosphate. I also added 10 mL of Flourish Excel, becuase bleep-you algae. So I will post my findings as the weeks pass.


I always find that blueish green hairs would form on 1 week old leaves, but I guess time will tell now, hopefully everything goes alright. This is round 3 of me attempting this EI method. I had real problems with that Green Leaf Aquariums regulator, it would not keep my CO2 constant. Which drove me nuts considering what I spent. Anyways they have a crappy design where the bubble counter/check valve meets the needle valve. Anyways after complaining they sent me softer washers for that area and we seem to be 100% leak proof now.


I have mini dwarf hairgrass, anubias, weeping moss, java fern, and some rotala in my tank right now. I also posted a tank where I did correct the algae problem by adjusting the light, but this blue !@#$% is something I can't seem to beat, hopefully me doing the EI properly will work. Eventually something has to work.


Here's a link to higher res pictures, since this forum compressed mine even more:

 

So it's been 4 weeks now, I boosted my light as per the tropica article so with 3000 lumens I have 40 lumens per litre. Growth of the mini dwarf hair grass is great, Anubis has not done that well, the leaves keep getting spot algae on them, although they did flower. This last week I have been getting algae on the glass. Tom mentioned in an older post that it was due to CO2. Would this be low CO2?


I added an ecotech mp10qd powerhead to increase flow in the tank, I was reading that lack of flow can make algae a problem. We will see how this week goes. I notice the plants start bubbling o2 much faster with the powerhead running. How long does it take algae to appear on older leaves before you need to trim them? What's normal?