Aquascaper 600

Developing a real staghorn algae issue again think I'm going to have to take quite drastic action this time round. Its mainly in the right side of the tank but bits all over.

Current plan is

• Blackout, I've turned the lights off and Co2 off and may check again in a few days
• Clear out as much as possible by hand which will probably mean ripping out the right side and trimming the tips to replant of the stems round there
• Spot dose with Seachem Flourish Excel
• Regular dosing for a week with Excel
• Manual clear again
• Pray to any deity that will listen

Wills

I reckon if i out co2 in my tank it'd explode. I've lots of algae but small enough and I've just given up the fight

The tanks been in a blackout for a week now, seems to have helped with the algae issues I was having. I've added in the first dose of Seachem Excell and I'm going to dose daily for a week. Hoping in its weakend state after the blackout the regular dose will do enough to kill it off. I dont plan on dosing Excell in the long term though.

The blackout looks like it has had an effect on the plants but I can see some growth but it is pale and some of the hair grass looks like it could be dying off but I think with the lights back on, Co2 running and adding daily ferts should perk them back up.

This is a before, during and after of tonights maintenance (I dont know why the during picture came out so blue though...

Wills

Looking good! I love to see the foreground plant roots.

Thanks - hopefully the carpet will fill in more and more now, the Hirsuta is doing pretty well but just the hairgrass I'm a bit worried about.

Since I added the Excell the plants have been pearling like crazy... wondering if it really is such terrible stuff? No just kidding I know it is - no way would I add it if there was more livestock in there.

Wills

Wills said:

Since I added the Excell the plants have been pearling like crazy... wondering if it really is such terrible stuff? No just kidding I know it is - no way would I add it if there was more livestock in there.

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What are your water parameters. GH, KH? Are you using RO/DI and adding water hardeners?

What are your lighting periods? CO2 injection rate and drop checker colour?

What are you dosing?

In my journal thread you'll see my planted tank and it has no stag horn or other nasty algae at all. This was achieved without using Excel or any other chemical treatments.

Advanced Aquarist said:

What are your water parameters. GH, KH? Are you using RO/DI and adding water hardeners?

What are your lighting periods? CO2 injection rate and drop checker colour?

What are you dosing?

In my journal thread you'll see my planted tank and it has no stag horn or other nasty algae at all. This was achieved without using Excel or any other chemical treatments.

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Having some issues with my tap water at the moment its slightly softened and the kh has gone down. I think the most accurate readings I have at the moment are GH 14, KH3. My ph is 6.6 through the photo period, 6.8 from the tap. No water hardners. I have a nitrate reading of 25ppm from the tap and it does not seem to be rising in the tank but never dips below 20. The tank is currently home to a few amano shrimp.

I dose 5ml of Tropical Premium daily and I have a 66watt Twinstar SM running at 70% for 6 hours a day. My fire extinguisher is nearly out but before the blackout I have just done I was getting to the right green colour through the photo period and back to blue when the lights were off with an airstone.

My tank is quite a common aquascaping tank and I can see a bunch of people that dont have the issues I have. I've got to the point where Im fairly confident that the things I need to change are.

• I need to go down the RO route as I dont think my water is ever going to be right.
• my filter isnt big enough
• I should move to inline Co2 rather than a diffuser.
• I should have glassware rather than steel so I can put a lilly pipe on to get better flow and distribution

When I see others setting up an Aquascaper 600 as a high tech they go for the Oase Biomaster 600, I got the 250. I think with the higher flow of the 600 through a lilly pipe would prevent the staghorn building up.

The issues with this are that its very expensive to take these final steps and I cant justify it - looking at the RO unit I'd need and the upgrade to the filter (less what I think I'd be able to sell the 250 for) I'd be looking at £500 plus the ongoing costs of salts I'd need to add regularly which when mixed with the cost of fertiliser and Co2 canisters is just unviable for me.

Feeling quite down about this tank today, really wish I could sell this set up and get a bigger tank and go back to my first love of American Cichlids. Been thinking a lot of a big 4 foot with Nicaraguan Cichlids and Rainbow Fish... So when I'm faced with upgrading my tank in the way described above it feels like the cichlid tank is more viable...

In the meantime I'll keep going with this one I do enjoy maintaining it and I think when the lockdown is over and I can add some fish I'll feel better about it but yeah not sure this is for me long term...

Wills

RO units are less than £150 for under sink. You'll need a post DI filter too to get the remainder out of the water. This will pay for itself in the long run because you'll have a perfect foundation to control your water chemistry.

You do NOT need a biomaster 600, the 250 is fine for what your tank. There's this myth about 10X tank turnover and that's just rubbish. CO2 stability is a myth too. CO2 and flow are not that particularly important. Don't believe me? Wait and see in my journal when I show you my 4' tank, flow is about 3X tank volume and CO2 is less than 10 mg/l, my drop checker is always blue. I hardly dose nutrients at all and don't have the algae issues you have, and my tank is heavily planted, I had to drop off massive amounts of trimming to my LFS two days ago!

You get rid of the staghorn by depriving it of the fuel that it needs. Its caused by excess nutrients, but that's a delicate discussion in order to pin it down.

And FYI I have a 3kg CO2 bottle that's been running for 145 days now. I'm doing 1.5 bps (90 bubbles per minute) on the bubble counter. This is on a 360 litre tank. At this rate it's going to last at least a year!

And on the consumptions of salts and fertilisers, you are using an AIO fertiliser which will only give you grief in the long run. I dose macros and micros separately. If I were to work out how much I was dosing in terms of fertiliser costs it would be less than £1 a month!! I'm NOT joking. Plants don't need that much, a little goes a VERY long way. The electrical cost of the lighting (208 watts for four 4' T5 lights) is higher than my fertiliser bill!

Advanced Aquarist said:

RO units are less than £150 for under sink. You'll need a post DI filter too to get the remainder out of the water. This will pay for itself in the long run because you'll have a perfect foundation to control your water chemistry.

You do NOT need a biomaster 600, the 250 is fine for what your tank. There's this myth about 10X tank turnover and that's just rubbish. CO2 stability is a myth too. CO2 and flow are not that particularly important. Don't believe me? Wait and see in my journal when I show you my 4' tank, flow is about 3X tank volume and CO2 is less than 10 mg/l, my drop checker is always blue. I hardly dose nutrients at all and don't have the algae issues you have, and my tank is heavily planted, I had to drop off massive amounts of trimming to my LFS two days ago!

You get rid of the staghorn by depriving it of the fuel that it needs. Its caused by excess nutrients, but that's a delicate discussion in order to pin it down.

And FYI I have a 3kg CO2 bottle that's been running for 145 days now. I'm doing 1.5 bps (90 bubbles per minute) on the bubble counter. This is on a 360 litre tank. At this rate it's going to last at least a year!

And on the consumptions of salts and fertilisers, you are using an AIO fertiliser which will only give you grief in the long run. I dose macros and micros separately. If I were to work out how much I was dosing in terms of fertiliser costs it would be less than £1 a month!! I'm NOT joking. Plants don't need that much, a little goes a VERY long way. The electrical cost of the lighting (208 watts for four 4' T5 lights) is higher than my fertiliser bill!

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Ah thats interesting I thought you were going to go the other way

For RO to work in my house I'd need a direct unit rather than one you store the water in (trust me I've tried every which way) and those kind of units at the speed I'd need put it at around the £300 mark.

Staghorn is most commonly caused by high flow and low Co2 levels (plus excess nutrients) which is why I was thinking a smaller filter than most would be causing the issue where the flow is highest as I cant control excess nutrients right now.

Advanced Aquarist said:

RO units are less than £150 for under sink. You'll need a post DI filter too to get the remainder out of the water. This will pay for itself in the long run because you'll have a perfect foundation to control your water chemistry.

You do NOT need a biomaster 600, the 250 is fine for what your tank. There's this myth about 10X tank turnover and that's just rubbish. CO2 stability is a myth too. CO2 and flow are not that particularly important. Don't believe me? Wait and see in my journal when I show you my 4' tank, flow is about 3X tank volume and CO2 is less than 10 mg/l, my drop checker is always blue. I hardly dose nutrients at all and don't have the algae issues you have, and my tank is heavily planted, I had to drop off massive amounts of trimming to my LFS two days ago!

You get rid of the staghorn by depriving it of the fuel that it needs. Its caused by excess nutrients, but that's a delicate discussion in order to pin it down.

And FYI I have a 3kg CO2 bottle that's been running for 145 days now. I'm doing 1.5 bps (90 bubbles per minute) on the bubble counter. This is on a 360 litre tank. At this rate it's going to last at least a year!

And on the consumptions of salts and fertilisers, you are using an AIO fertiliser which will only give you grief in the long run. I dose macros and micros separately. If I were to work out how much I was dosing in terms of fertiliser costs it would be less than £1 a month!! I'm NOT joking. Plants don't need that much, a little goes a VERY long way. The electrical cost of the lighting (208 watts for four 4' T5 lights) is higher than my fertiliser bill!

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Do you use RO water?

Wills said:

For RO to work in my house I'd need a direct unit rather than one you store the water in (trust me I've tried every which way) and those kind of units at the speed I'd need put it at around the £300 mark.

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Why is that? As long as you have a cold water supply at adequate pressure you're good to go. They're cheap. A post DI would add about another £20 to the cost. You only need to make less than 100 litres per day. You don't intend to change the water EVERY day do you? I usually change my water every 4 weeks - not every week.

Wills said:

Staghorn is most commonly caused by high flow and low Co2 levels (plus excess nutrients) which is why I was thinking a smaller filter than most would be causing the issue where the flow is highest as I cant control excess nutrients right now.

Click to expand...

Not true. It's caused by imbalance of nutrients. If you look at MD Fish Tanks on youtube he doesn't use CO2, runs his tanks for 12 hours of light a day and doesn't have that much high flow. He doesn't have staghorn.

I find it really odd that they go to the poor flow, low CO2 excuse for nearly every algae aliment??!!! They want you to up your flow rate to 10X tank volume per hour, some even go as far as put a flow pump into their tanks!!!

If people are so worried about flow they can get a "visual picture" by doing what the fluid dynamicists do: drop a dye to see the mixing. In my case I use calcium carbonate because from time to time my KH drop and I need to raise it again. It's a white powder that takes a few days to dissolve completely, but all you do is to put some in a plastic tub like you get your in vitro plants in and put that near the outlet pipes and you'll see how the water mixes. In the case of my tank with 3X tank volume turnover (not 10X as these idiots recommend), it merely takes a few minutes and the whole aquarium water becomes a uniform white mist. I've got plenty of "dead spots" but somehow over those few minutes the flow found its way to mix everything in. . .

High flow is only a nuisance to plants in the sense that it could dislodge them, and can annoy fish if they're not suited to the strength of the currents.

CO2 itself is a secondary issue. I tell you again that I'm running less than 10 mg/l and I have no BBA, no BGA, no staghorn, etc. . and my plants still pearl. Some scientist states that for natural sunlight at full strength on aquatic plants they only need 40 mg/l CO2, and full strength natural sunlight is a LOT more light than any of our aquarium lights can provide. We're talking about 1000 - 1500 PAR!!!! They only get a 10th of that in our tanks, so why would you want to even put 30 mg/l of CO2, the plants can't even use it at the light levels we're supplying to them.

Like I said, MD Fish Tanks doesn't use CO2 and he grows plants fine.

Advanced Aquarist said:

Why is that? As long as you have a cold water supply at adequate pressure you're good to go. They're cheap. A post DI would add about another £20 to the cost. You only need to make less than 100 litres per day. You don't intend to change the water EVERY day do you? I usually change my water every 4 weeks - not every week.



Not true. It's caused by imbalance of nutrients. If you look at MD Fish Tanks on youtube he doesn't use CO2, runs his tanks for 12 hours of light a day and doesn't have that much high flow. He doesn't have staghorn.

I find it really odd that they go to the poor flow, low CO2 excuse for nearly every algae aliment??!!! They want you to up your flow rate to 10X tank volume per hour, some even go as far as put a flow pump into their tanks!!!

If people are so worried about flow they can get a "visual picture" by doing what the fluid dynamicists do: drop a dye to see the mixing. In my case I use calcium carbonate because from time to time my KH drop and I need to raise it again. It's a white powder that takes a few days to dissolve completely, but all you do is to put some in a plastic tub like you get your in vitro plants in and put that near the outlet pipes and you'll see how the water mixes. In the case of my tank with 3X tank volume turnover (not 10X as these idiots recommend), it merely takes a few minutes and the whole aquarium water becomes a uniform white mist. I've got plenty of "dead spots" but somehow over those few minutes the flow found its way to mix everything in. . .

High flow is only a nuisance to plants in the sense that it could dislodge them, and can annoy fish if they're not suited to the strength of the currents.

CO2 itself is a secondary issue. I tell you again that I'm running less than 10 mg/l and I have no BBA, no BGA, no staghorn, etc. . and my plants still pearl. Some scientist states that for natural sunlight at full strength on aquatic plants they only need 40 mg/l CO2, and full strength natural sunlight is a LOT more light than any of our aquarium lights can provide. We're talking about 1000 - 1500 PAR!!!! They only get a 10th of that in our tanks, so why would you want to even put 30 mg/l of CO2, the plants can't even use it at the light levels we're supplying to them.

Like I said, MD Fish Tanks doesn't use CO2 and he grows plants fine.

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Really great advice - I've watched a lot of MD and seen a lot of discussion on why he has so much success and as few people are certain he is very lucky with his water, he has said before that he has very soft water and no nitrates from the tap. So in that respect there is a bit of luck to it as in where you live. Though seeing you are from London I dont think I can complain - I've seen so many members here from London with water harder and nutrient rich than mine. Probably why you use RO.

The way you described the RO process I hadnt acutally thought of it that way. I was anticipating running the water directly to a bucket in the kitchen, mixing the salts and putting it in the tank. But mixing a big vat for a few weeks at a time is probably more achievable. Our kitchen doenst have a utility area its all part of the living space so I couldnt leave stuff out for days at a time. But I do have a basement (that needs sorting) and some kind of water butt could be put down there with the intention of storing 100-200 litres of water at a time that I'd be able to bring upstairs in some kind of container. Between the two tanks I'm looking at 40 and 15 litres each change - I have been doing 2 a week but with better quality water that would be able to cut that down. I mean doing 2 water changes a week just to control algae is rather stupid...

Being able to mix my own water would open up my options for fish too, I think on the first page of this journal I talk about wanting to set the tank up for red eye red tail puffers and that hasnt gone away.

One thing I've struggled to get my head around with RO water is how do you heat it up to add it to the tank? Most of the containers I've seen are plastic so would be wary of putting an aquarium heater in there?

Thanks for going into this much detail I really appreciate it you are answering a lot of questions I've been banging my head with for a while.

Do you have any recomendations for which RO unit to get?

Wills

@seangee uses a kettle

MD's water is better than mine. Still he has problems with BGA on his discus tank. This is a sign of issues with his water. It only requires slight issues to cause these problems. The reason why I recommend RO/DI is so you can have soft water and control what goes into it. You start with a clean slate.

I have one of those white 105 litre water containers that I occasionally top up every night. Overnight I can make about 50 - 70 litres. I decant the water from this from time to time for top ups in my tanks. If I'm doing a water change I'll fill it full for use later on.

My house is naturally warm, so even though fresh RO water is cold, over the course of a few days it warms up to the surrounding temperature. In my setup it's about a 3 - 4 degrees colder than the main tank temperature (I'm running 25 celsius for my planted tank), the fish don't really mind, it only pulls the temperature down about 1.5 degrees considering the percentage of water I'm changing.

Since you're only doing 40 or 15 litres a time I'd just boil some RO water in a kettle and use it to raise the temperature in the mixing container. If you need your storage container to be warmer consider cladding it in insulation or something. Again this is a question of quantity, so just use some common sense.

If you really want to raise temperature on a water storage tank then I would look into getting baulkhead fittings so I can plumb a pump line to the container (my water storage container comes with one as standard that I don't use), you can then run a circulation pump and buy one of those inline heaters, so you won't need a glass heater in the storage tank touching the plastic with the possibility of melting it. It's for this reason I don't recommend thermofilters like the Oase since inline heaters are available - why waste filter media space? Personally I don't like heating large water storage containers because it can cost a lot in electricity.

Water change on my 360 litre planted tank consists of draining the 105 litres out of it and then pumping the 105 litres from the water container via a eheim 1048 pump. 30 minutes tops. I then add the water hardeners, GH and KH. That's it.

RO units you can get anywhere, you can even ask your local aquatic shop. I use RO Man or Osmotics. Units are less than £100 if you want a non under sink model. I use RO water for drinking and cooking purposes too.

mbsqw1d said:

@seangee uses a kettle

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just as I was posting when you pipped me to it.