Damn, it's coming back!
OK, I've been doing W/Cs every 2/3 days, dosing with Excel. I've put in a few more plants (more crypts and lileaopsis) to fill in some of the gaps and pruned the worst affected plants. Growth is good and the algae was dying off but over the last few days hair algae is creeping back in on the plants and green algae on the glass. If I have to leave a water change 3 days I dose ferts on the second day (my job gets in the way sometimes; roll on retirement - only 20 years to go
)
I've been using tap water rather than RO but I haven't adjusted the pH controller so CO2 level should be increasing. I think it's quite high but the fish seem unaffected and my CO2 test indicator is showing around the 40+ ppm mark. There is some PO4 & NO3 in my tap (I wouldn't know what else is in there; my water authority's on-line water report is for the plant in town, not the one half mile up the road and it's two years out of date!) so I've been dosing half measures of traces and macros at w/c time
I put in a few black neons last weekend.
You mentioned reducing the light but I'm not sure that's possible. The light is a pendant fixed over the tank. The only thing I can think of is will a 70w MH work OK in a unit with a 150w electronic ballast? I've raised it up to about a foot from the water surface and altered the timer to give two five hour sessions.
The other item I plan to tackle is to build the DIY reactor you have on this forum to replace my CO2 ladder. For now I have filter outlet running to just ripple the surface.
I've been a bit confused by my tap water. Straight out of the tap kH is around 110 mg/L CaCO3 but I'm running it through the pre-filter for my RO which has a sediment filter, basic carbon and a chloramine filter, then into a tank where I pre-heat it. After passing through this the kH goes up to around 130. What could be causing this increase?
I'd like to try and bottom this as I'm starting to set up a 6' x 2' x 2' tank soon and I want to make sure I can get things right before I start screwing it up on a bigger scale!!
Brian