Green water.

Tank is looking real green and cloudy. I recently (about 14 days ago) reset the tank up after replacing my contaminated eco complete with new eco. With the old eco I had notice dosing traces resulted in algae so I decided to hold off on dosing traces until I noticed a plant growth pattern that indicated they needed traces. I dosed kno3 1/2 tsp, pot 1/4 tsp, and phos 1/16 tsp every other day.

Every thing was cool until the day after the first weekly water change. After that my L repens had the new growth looking yellow and washed out. The plant growth in general slowed down too. I thought ok time for traces.

I dosed 10ml flourish on Sat and seen cloudy water and algae almost immediately. The next day I does macro as usual. The algae and cloudy water continued. I dosed 10 ml of flourish again on Monday and the algae and green water are really taking off. The plants are growing much better too. I do have to shake fuzz or hair algae off the plants though.

I guess I will just keep with the IE method and keep dosing both macros and traces. But I am getting real skeptical about the theory that an excess of nutrients will not cause algae. Traces in my tank lead to immediate and explosive algae growth and now green water.

My fish load is light and I feed lightly. No detectable ammonia, CO2 is at least 35 PPM 6.3 ph with a KH of 6. the tank is heavily planted with cheap stems. L repens and Hydgro poly. About 80 percent fo the substrate is covered. There are some bear spots around some glosso and dwarve sag.

I am thinking about ordering a sterilizer but would like to get the tank in balance before I use one.

I welcome any advice or suggestions on how to proceed. Right now I will just continue alternating daily the macro and 10ml traces and do weekly 50 percent water changes and see what happens.


Thaks Rick

 

Re: Green water.

Well it is water change day. The green water and plants are both growing well. The green water is growing faster though.

I did a pre test on the nitrates and phosphates they came in about 20 for nitrates and .5 for phosphate. I also tested for ammonia as Tom states it is the cause of green water. None detected. I will change out half the water in a few hours and keep dosing the macro and micro on alterante days.

Could the green water clear on its own or do I need to get a UV? I don't want to do a black out.

Rick

 

Re: Green water.

Ok orderd a UV from Big AL's. Green water has to go my wife comments on quite often. I also stuck a willow branch in there from my front yard deseret willow. I read something about willow cleaning up green water on another forum.

Thanks Rick