# GSA help



## aquarium hippy (Feb 7, 2013)

So I finally kicked the bba only to replace it with a healthy dose of GSA. I have high light El dosing and use RO. I have a split photo period with two five hour periods with a four hour break in between. I have pressurised CO2 with a rex griggs style reactor drop checker always yellow. Eheim 2217 two koriala 425s and probably slightly overstocked on my 46 bow. I use a wave point 4 bulb with two coralife 6700k and two wave point 10000k bulbs. I am fairly heavy planted but still growing in. Any suggestions?


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## PortalMasteryRy (Oct 16, 2012)

I solved this issue by adjusting the balance with my nitrate and the phosphate levels. I configured so my nitrate is lean around 10 ppm and my phosphate was close to 3-4 ppm. In 1 week the GSA started to go away and is almost completely gone. FYI My KH was also a bit high when I got the GSA/GDA bloom but I'm running a KH of 3-4 down from 6-7. I accidentally added too much baking soda after a water change.

I am still running in this configuration and my plants are still growing really fast. I do dose 1 tsp of Barr's GH booster every week after the water change. So P and K is plentiful in the water column.


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## pianofish (Jan 31, 2010)

I've been having similar problems. My tank is only about 4 months old, and I'm still getting massive diatoms and just got rid of most of my bba with the "algae one, two punch". And most of the advice that I've gotten is just continue to wait until the tank matures and fills in more while cleaning everything as best as you can. All the while try manipulating certain variables, such as photoperiod/fertz. You might could try backing off the lighting period a little bit. Maybe only 9 instead of 10 hours. Just whatever you do try it for at least 2-3 weeks. Could also try redirecting flow of your powerhead/filters to try a different water route? Let me know how it goes. As I'm anxious to see if time really is the biggest factor.
Joshua


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

GSA has 2 things that it likes: lower CO2 and lower PO4.

So you can easily rule out PO4, the NO3 plays no role.

10-20-30 ppm etc, does not matter.

CO2? 95-99% of the issues we see.

Stop with the drop checkers and assumption they are correct or they provide some idea that the CO2 is correct for this or any aquarium.
pH/KH/CO2 chart and then tweaking from there is a far better option if you use observations. 
Example, you target say 30-40 ppm using the chart. Say your pH is 6.4 for a CO2 of 30 ppm using the chart. 

From there, you look and assess the tank, are plants looking very healthy and clean? Pearling well after 1-4 hours?
Have you kept up on filter cleanings? Lightly vacuumed the sediment to remove any muck on top? Good current?
Then you tweak the CO2 using pH as the guide.
A pH meter or pH pen can be used.

Drop the pH by 0.1 or 0.05 using ONLY CO2 gas. Then watch and observe for a few days, maybe a week. Is the tank doing better? Less algae, better plant health/growth?
Fish doing fine? Watch all three things carefully.

Drop it another 0.05 or 0.1 pH units and watch for another few days. Do not drop it and then leave for a few days or ignore the tank for a week.
This method works very well and requires a little patience. In a few weeks, you will have tweaked the CO2 well and should have healthier plants and much less algae.

People try all sorts of fert dosing methods like this, but curiously very few of the same folks suggest this for CO2.
Old myths are hard to kill I suppose.


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## aquarium hippy (Feb 7, 2013)

I turned up the co2 until my fish were gasping then dialed back as little as possible until they were ok

Jason


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## discoveringmypath (Oct 9, 2013)

aquarium hippy said:


> I turned up the co2 until my fish were gasping then dialed back as little as possible until they were ok
> 
> Jason


 
Update?


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## aquarium hippy (Feb 7, 2013)

I still have the GSA I just bought a scraper and use it on front and side glass. The GSA stopped growing on my plants but still has a good hold on my wood and glass.


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## DarkCobra (Jun 22, 2004)

aquarium hippy said:


> I still have the GSA I just bought a scraper and use it on front and side glass. The GSA stopped growing on my plants but still has a good hold on my wood and glass.


If you're still trying to solve this with CO2 alone as last posted, I'm not surprised. Sorry to say that you were given and followed some bad advice. Let's take a look at it.



plantbrain said:


> Stop with the drop checkers and assumption they are correct or they provide some idea that the CO2 is correct for this or any aquarium.


This at least is partially true. Drop checkers don't indicate the optimum level of CO2 for plants in a particular tank. Depending on the tank, it may be lower than 30ppm, but often _much_ higher.

What they do indicate is what a comfortable CO2 level for fish is. Green (about 30ppm) is safe for essentially all tank setups.

Yellow is starting to push it. And then you were told to push it higher still.

Now here, you didn't follow the instructions:



plantbrain said:


> Drop the pH by 0.1 or 0.05 using ONLY CO2 gas. Then watch and observe for a few days, maybe a week.


Instead, you turned it up until the fish started gasping. Then turned it back down just enough that they stopped. CO2 doesn't actually remove oxygen from the water, but it does make it harder for fish to absorb it into their gills; so to them at least, it's like oxygen was removed.

Imagine being placed in a similar situation yourself. You live halfway up a mountain, where the air is somewhat thin, but not uncomfortably so; and you're quite used to it anyway. Someone quickly drives you further up the mountain, with the air getting progressively thinner, until you start gasping. Then descends just far enough that you're no longer _visibly_ gasping. And then you are required to live there, permanently. Does that mean you're comfortable and breathing easily? Nope.

The good news is that your lungs will eventually adapt. And so will the fishes' gills. Though both of you will still be miserable in the meantime. That's why you should do this slowly over days or weeks, as advised.

Now here's the bad news. Say you have a friend who lives at near sea level, where the air is nice and thick. He comes to visit you at your new altitude, and is quickly dropped off via helicopter, rather than undergoing the same adaptation process. He will immediately have severe problems breathing. Maybe even die, unless you strap an oxygen mask on him, or send him back down again.

And so will any new fish you decide to add. Unless of course you repeat the adaptation process, by lowering the CO2, then increasing it slowly again over a few days or weeks. But now the plants are shocked, and having problems "breathing" CO2 instead, so you may get a nice bloom of GSA or worse.



plantbrain said:


> CO2? 95-99% of the issues we see.


Yes, you can pound most algae problems into submission by throwing more and more CO2 at it. In the same way you can insert a pushpin into corkboard by swinging at it with a sledgehammer. I guarantee the pushpin will go in! But is it the right way to do it? No.

Look to light and phosphate instead.

You have four T5HO's blazing away for a total of ten hours a day. You say it's high light, and that's probably true. _At high light, the amount of CO2 plants can use is far beyond what fish can tolerate._ The only question is whether the limited CO2 will cause algae. And that depends not only on the severity of the CO2 limitation, but the amount of light, flow, and plant density. Plus subtle biological and nutrient balances as well, which are not well understood, but they are there all the same. Everything must be nearly perfect. This is why it's so difficult to have an algae-free high light tank. You can make this a lot easier on yourself by reducing light, which in turn reduces the need for CO2. Since the majority of GSA is on things other than plants, you can afford to go slow. Reduce it a bit, wait a few days or a week to see the result. Repeat if needed. Go only as far as you need to stabilize your tank and solve your problem. I bet you won't have to reduce light much.

Or you can try dosing more phosphate (PO4). EI is pretty good about supplying enough for the majority of cases. But just like there is no fixed optimal level of CO2, there is no fixed optimal level of PO4 either. It varies depending on other factors. One example was posted earlier in this thread:



PortalMasteryRy said:


> I solved this issue by adjusting the balance with my nitrate and the phosphate levels. I configured so my nitrate is lean around 10 ppm and my phosphate was close to 3-4 ppm. In 1 week the GSA started to go away and is almost completely gone. FYI My KH was also a bit high when I got the GSA/GDA bloom but I'm running a KH of 3-4 down from 6-7. I accidentally added too much baking soda after a water change.


I can relate similar experiences. For example, I was dosing standard EI in a tank with 30ppm CO2. Yet GSA/GDA was everywhere. Light was medium, not excessive, so I dosed more PO4. It helped, so I dosed more still. Every increase helped some, but I was dosing an awful lot of it. Eventually I broke out the test kits. What I found is that I'd neglected to consider how much additional nutrients were coming from fish food in my heavily stocked tank. That combined with standard EI had driven my nitrates up to a shocking 100ppm! And my PO4 increases had resulted in a grand total of 30ppm of that as well.

Maybe if I'd dosed even more PO4 I would have finally reached "optimal". But that too would have been using a sledgehammer to drive in a pushpin. Instead, I cut out both nitrate and phosphate dosing entirely, relying on fish food alone for these. Nitrates dropped to 20-40ppm, phosphates to 2-3. And poof, virtually all of the GSA/GDA disappears. Later I started dosing a bit of phosphate again, bringing it up to 3-4ppm like [PortalMasteryRy], and that took care of the final remnants of algae.

So yes, there is some importance in balance. I don't claim any fixed nitrate/phosphate ratios, but rather, _whatever your tank demands_. By doing this, carefully controlling balances and large excesses (but without causing limitation or "starving" anything), and keeping the tank well-maintained in general, _I'm now able to run that same tank at high light and only 15ppm CO2, without algae_! This low a CO2 level is a definite handicap. It's tricky, and I don't recommend it by any means. I mention it only to show there are multiple ways to solve a problem.

And there is _never_ any need to use one single parameter like a sledgehammer to solve "95-99% of the issues".



plantbrain said:


> Old myths are hard to kill I suppose.


New myths are worse.


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