i want to GROW ALGAE-for my malawi

[cuprajake]

hey guys

i found this site many moons ago when i had a heavily planted tank, on that i used ei and compressed co2, it worked a treat, but i decided to move over to malawi.

now i want to grow algae in the tank, and seen as its kinda a plant, i thought who better to ask lol

heres my setup as of yesterday :

added two more tubes from my planted days, lol so now i have

36" flora growlux 30wt
36" fresh water lamp 30wt
30" marine white 30 wt

so that gives me 1.8wpg now, the two 36" are going on from 10am to 10pm, then the marine comes on at 4pm till 10.30 ish this hopefully will give me plenty of light,

now what to put in, i have stuff left over from my ei dosing days i have plant micros traces

i have these left over

Potassium Nitrate
Potassium Phosphate (monobasic)
Traces - these can either chelated trace mix (CSM+ or a commercial product such as Tropica Plant Nutrition or Seachem Flourish.

im thinking of using the traces, how many ppm do you think i need something like 5ppm?

im just worried about over dosing and creating a bloom so to speak, my tank perametres are:

phosphate-5ppm
ph-8.4
nitrate-0
nitrite-0
amonia-0
kh-16dkh
gh-14dkh

some one mentioned they dosed a little bit of iron also, but again how much is the key.

the tank is a 51us gallon

regards jake

 

[cuprajake]

and this is the tank

 

[cuprajake]

i actually have my pressurised co2 and diffuser still, i could use that to get the algae going if i have 5ppm co2 or something, with the 5ppm phospahte, a little nitrate and then the added traces

jake

 

[VaughnH]

Light and a bit of ammonia should trigger all the algae you could want. The more light, the more likely you get algae. And, a small surge in ammonia should provide the trigger to start the algae growing. Unfortunately, that might be green water that starts and not "plant-like" algae.

 

[cuprajake]

thats the only risk, and thing im worried about. attracting the wrong sort, i had the idea of getting an algea covered rock off of some one to get the correct spores into the tank from the get go.

thanks for the info

jake

 

[Tom Barr]

Hi,'

I think things will look good and be easiest doing this:
Lots of light, but directed at those nice rocks in the back ground.
So bring the light forward and then direct it back towards the rear(somehow).
You do not want algae on the glass, rather, the rocks.

Next, add lots, and lots of fine air diffusion along that back wall and high current.
This + good bioload will culture Pithophora, a very pretty green fur algae, it's actually very aesthetic.

You can also raise this alga out side in a shallow pan and add a powerhead for aeration+Flow.

This should work well and simply rotate a few rocks back and forth.
So there are two options.

Regards,
Tom Barr