Help!!! Plants Melting And Algae Growing!

Hi there. I'm in the same boat as you with my new 55 gal tank. I've got the same Beamswork lights and also started at 8hrs/day thinking that would get my plants established. So I've also learned the hard way that it's better to start with low lights to avoid algae while your plants are getting acclimated. My problem is green water, not BBA (so far)

Lots of people report success with spot treating BBA with Excel and/or hydrogen peroxide. There are some current threads on other about this, but this site won't let me post the URLs. So I'd suggest checking those out, and will see if I can post those URLs in a subsequent post for you. In addition to spot treating & cutting back on lighting, try to figure out what else could be causing the BBA. Sounds like you're on top of keeping the tank clean of any dead plant matter. What are your ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels that could be contributing to algae growth? The root tabs are a good idea, and may be enough until your plants get established and can start utilizing the ferts in the water column. Otherwise you could just be adding fuel to the fire. Another cause could be imbalances in macro & micro ferts--phosphate is often cited as a contributor, both too much and too little. As a planted tank newbie I'm no expert on ferts, so again I'd look on other forums for info & advice. Another great site (not a forum) is Dennis Wong's site. He's got a great section on the various algae types & how to deal with them.

Looks like this is not a very active site--nobody's responded to your post from last weekend, and a lot of the threads date back 6 yrs or more. But lots of good info here, and elsewhere. Keep googling & asking, and good luck!

 

Getting an error message that I can't post links until I've made 2 posts. So will try again after this....

 

theplantedtank.net (Dave Barr is a frequent contributor to his, and it's very current & active)

Dennis Wong's advancedplantedtank.com

 

'The key lies in desertpupfish's answer "until your plants get established and can start utilizing the ferts in the water column..." Even with houseplants, when you repot, it takes a while for the plant to settle down and start stabilizing and growing. During this period, you need to dial down the light and hold off on the fertilizers. This could take a week or so and during this time, any carbon source like flourish excel should be added as per the recommended dosage. Ensure that there is good filtration and flow. Take care of these fundamentals first, and micro/macro ratios etc can come much later into play. Let us know how its going after a week, with pictures of before and after.

 

Yep, melting can happen when plants are transferred to water with different parameters. And commercially grown plants are often grown emersed, so when you submerse them in your tank, the old emersed leaves can melt and new submersed ones emerge. Be sure to thoroughly remove all the melted leaves or they could fuel an algae outbreak--I've been going through this in my new tank.

 

Water parameters is what you need to watch for - soft/hard/acidic/alkaline? Get a base line first of how your water is now, and try to normalize it using natural means. You should hit the sweet spot in a few trys.