# Ugh, My new tank is melting down with Algae



## greenrebellion (Oct 11, 2015)

I've poured my heart and sould into this tank and spent two months reading, studying before launchng, but my tank is on full on meltdown. Any advice would be appreciated!

Tank Setup:
90 Gallon
Pressurized CO2 ran pretty high because I had no fish until recently, now about 8 bubbles per second only when lights are on (come on one hour before lights)
BML Lighting (definitely high light) runs about 6-7 hours per day
Variety of plants (Cabomba, repens, Hygrophila, HC, S. Repens, Blyxa Japonica, Hydrocotyle Tripartita, Alternenthera)
Substrate - Aquasoil
Large driftwood which is noticeably lowering PH and releasing tannins
Canister filtration
Tank temp - around 76 degrees
EI Dosing
Tap water - KH 6.0; GH 8.0; PH; 8.0 (tank water ends up lower given lots of tannin leaching and aquasoil)



Tank History:
Launched 4 weeks ago
Water changes of 50% every 2-3 days since launch
Ran 8 hours of light per day at beginning, reduced to 6.5 or so after diatoms showed up
As of one week ago, tank finally showed no ammonia and nitrites
Added six corycats today
HC started melting about two weeks in, haven't pulled it yet but its probably time to get it out
Had huge explosion of Diatoms about two weeks ago and its only gotten worse
Staghorn now arrived in small quantities of a few days ago - decent amount of it on the Ludwigia repens, some on Hydrocotyle and S. Repens
Couple small areas of green spot algae as well.


Most plants seem to be growing well besides the Alternanthera Reneckeii and dwarf baby tears. Lots of lower leaves and algae covered leaves have started melting off plants like Ludwigia and Hygrophila Corymbosa.

I have ordered new plants that will be here in a couple of days and will rip out the dwarf baby tears and replace with a S. Repens carpet. Also going to add a few other plants to try to jam the tank as full as possible. Also planning on adding purigen but my LFS was sold out today.

Worried that by the time I get the purigen and new plants, my tank will be in full on meltdown mode as it seems to be spawning new algae pretty quick over the last couple of days. If you ignore diatoms, the tank isn't yet overwhelmed with algae, but the diatoms are seriously growing insanely fast. I remove it at water changes and it is back in full force 48 hours later. Staghorn seems to be spreading pretty quick probably due to very high organic content of melting leaves (mainly HC)...hoping purigen helps?


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## AWolf (Jun 13, 2014)

greenrebellion said:


> I've poured my heart and sould into this tank and spent two months reading, studying before launchng, but my tank is on full on meltdown. Any advice would be appreciated!
> ?


Ah, been there. Every tank is different because of water source and tank flora and fauna. Years ago, when this happened to me, I was so sad and angry. I have since come to understand it takes about 6 months to truly balance a tank, unless you are a pro. Plants covered in algae and mulm, fish dying, (hopefully not, but sometimes), is part of the 'ritual of passage'. Clean, clean, and clean some more. Tweak, tweak, tweak. You are learning your water and flora and fauna. All the book knowledge in the world can't completely prepare you for actually changing the carbureator on your particular car. There are special tools you'll need, a replacement piece here, a hose there, all that was not mentioned in the books. I hope you don't give up and feel defeated. Keep working that tank. If you really work at it, you will have the pride you never would have gotten if it was 'plug and play'. If plants are dying, get them out quickly so as not to ruin your substrate (dead roots rotting). If the plants are healthy enough, try to clean them from algae and feed them good fertilizer. If the fish die, try a more hardy kind until the tank balances and you are on top of the game. Do weekly water changes, buy easier plants so you have success for about 6 months. Wait to do the harder stuff after you have won the battle against algae. Hang in there! It sounds like you really want a nice tank and have tried. More work is necessary.:wink2:


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## latchdan (Sep 7, 2007)

Are your lights on full? Is it a reg bml or the higher one? Which fixture, each has different par.
Nitrate readings?
What you using for micros? What concentration and dose? Diatoms increased with full ei dose on csm+b (when made at iron .5ppm) for me.

Pics of whole tank. Huge plant load helps with algae then you scape later


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## greenrebellion (Oct 11, 2015)

latchdan said:


> Are your lights on full? Is it a reg bml or the higher one? Which fixture, each has different par.
> Nitrate readings?
> What you using for micros? What concentration and dose? Diatoms increased with full ei dose on csm+b (when made at iron .5ppm) for me.
> 
> Pics of whole tank. Huge plant load helps with algae then you scape later


It is the higher BML's and I run them at 100% for about 6 hours a day. Tank is 24" tall so figured I need high light to get to bottom.

Nitrate is at 30ppm.

I am using Nutritrade CSM+B...dosing for 75 gallon tank as per Tom Barr

Pic below is about one week old, right after a water change so the Diatoms are relatively cleaned up. Again, plants generally healthy but increasingly being covered by algae as the days go by.


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## shrimpNewbie (May 6, 2011)

Might want to lower your light intensity. It seem like a likely problem

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk


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## greenrebellion (Oct 11, 2015)

How do I get rid of the staghorn that is already in there, will it go away on its own once tank is balanced? I have a bunch growing on my driftwood.


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## leemacnyc (Dec 28, 2005)

Do you have a pic (FTS)? Is your plant mass high?


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## Mikeygmzmg (Mar 19, 2015)

what is the name of the red plant on the right?


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## mikluha (Dec 4, 2015)

There is reason for everything. If you have algae, then there are optimal conditions for it - light and food. You have plenty of light and nutrients for algae.
You did not provide phosphate reading but most likely it's high as well.

There is no "poopers" in the tank and nitrates are high, despite water changes.

Did you check nitrates in tap water?
Something is leaching nitrates? Substrate? Fertilizers?

KH 6 and GH 8 seem too low for me. 
You want to be in around 25-30 ppm of CO2, which pushes PH down to 6-6.5 in your case. Kinda scary, since it may crashes (i.e. extra tannin leaching drops ph even more). Plus large night/day ph swings, which plants/fish don't like. 

I always had better results using moderately hard water. Right now I keep planted tank at KH13-15. PH is 7.2-7.5, which gives me enough CO2 (and bicarbonates) for constant oxygen bubbling.

I see lots of surface agitation in your tank (and bubbles - are from airstones? or is it CO2?). It may drive CO2 (=needs more CO2) - better to have slow water motion.

Don't rip any plants. Use extra fast growing plants to eat up extra nutrients until slow growers take up. Add floating plants (pistia) - they provide shade and they're great nutrients removers.

Don't waste money on purigen or any other snake oils.
No drastic changes. Patience is the key.

When plants start to outcompete algae, it goes away very quickly.


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## greenrebellion (Oct 11, 2015)

Thanks mikluha for the help. 

Mikey, the plant is purple cabomba


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## latchdan (Sep 7, 2007)

If its a dutch XB 90 degree lens at 24" not counting the substrate your sitting at 80 PAR directly under the lamp. If you didn't buy a dimmer I would suggest a floater. I have RRF Dwarf Water Lettuce and Frogibit In my tank and I also have my tank dimmed a lot.
If c02 is good, ferts good it has to be the lighting, floaters will solve the problem of lower plant mass and slightly lower the intensity of the lights.
(if its 10k) its 115 PAR at 24"


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## Fujiija (Feb 24, 2012)

Reminds me of when I started up my 75 gallon two years ago. I also started up a two 58 gal this summer.

Turn the lights down - you need to slow things down and turning the lights down is a big part of it. Buy either the manual BML dimmer or some other dimmer control. BML XB lights are fantastic but they are bright. your plants don't need all that light at this point. You can always bring up the intensity later when plants start to take off.

Get some oto cats - I put in about 12 in my 58 gal that I started up this summer and they cleaned up the diatoms. Diatoms are unavoidable at this stage but your tank will mature and it'll go away on your its own. The otos will eat the other algae when the diatoms are gone. I never start up a tank without otos. I am not sure what cory cats will do for the tank at this point except be fun to look at.

Add more fast growing plants - fast growing stem plants are perfect for this situation. When your tank has matured a bit, you can always throw them away or give them to someone else starting up a tank. If you are concerned about the aquascape, then put those stems as a background of sorts where you can easily pull them out and replace with more difficult plants later. I always keep some pogostemon octopus, rotala, water sprite around as well as hygrophila because they are perfect for a new tank start. You want to pack your tank with these plants from the start.

Cut back on EI dosing - your plants are not growing fast at this point and you don't have enough plants in the tank that can consume that much fertilizer anyway. You need to cut back to 1/2 or 1/3 EI dosing by cutting down your stock solutions and maybe even dose twice a week instead of 3x. I find so many people overestimate their plant load and do full EI which is way too much nitrates. Measure your nitrates in the water - I finally did and realized that even what I thought was heavily planted really wasn't. My plants couldn't consume anywhere near the nitrates going in the tank and I was consistently getting over 100ppm in my tank water by the end of the week. YIKES. I almost killed my fish until I figured it out. Only heavily stocked tanks (where you can't see the back glass through the plants) and rapidly growing need full EI dosing. Again, measure your nitrates if you're not sure.

8 bps sounds like a lot - I probably run about 2 per sec on my moderately planted 75 gal tank. I run about 1 bps in my 58 gal tank. I have inline diffusers and they are decent at getting CO2 into the water column. Measure your pH when the solenoid goes off to be sure your pH has not bottomed out. Your pH will go down because of the aquasoil but it should not bottom out near 5 or anywhere near that. We did a 120 gal with Controsoil (another active substrate) as a demo at a store and the CO2 regulator was new, new person setting it up in the store, etc. pH hit 5 and the fish died. not pretty. Check your pH so you know where you're at when the solenoid shuts off. You want to put a good amount of CO2 in the tank but the downside is if you crank it up too high, your pH will drastically fall and your livestock will die and possibly melt your plants.

Your GH and KH are fine - my water is slightly higher on both and I wish my water was closer to yours. Leave it alone it's fine.

I love Purigen but not critical at this point. It's icing on the cake once you get your tank stabilized, algae under control, CO2 dialed in right, and ferts adequate. This all takes time and observation. 

Oh - and if the diatoms continue, do water changes and suck out what you can at that time. It'll help a lot.


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## greenrebellion (Oct 11, 2015)

Good idea on the ottos, I will pick up a couple of those.

I have already reduced my light intensity to 70% and will further reduce my EI dosing levels.

Mainly added the purigen to reduce the yellowing from the driftwood. 

On CO2, I bumped it up to 8bps before I added fish since a PH crash wouldn't kill any livestock. I've reduced it to 3 since then and am getting a PH of about 6.4. My tap KH is around 6 but the KH in the tank declines between water changes due to driftwood and aquasoil so estimating CO2 levels is a little trickier. 

I have some Rotala and S. Repens on order which I will plant here next week. I pulled the HC out since it was really just a decaying mess. 

I'll keep up with water changes every 2-3 days and see where I am at after planting the tank more heavily next week. On the bright side, the Cory's are all doing fantastic and are tons of fun to watch school around together.


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