About To Tear My Hair Out Over This Algae

[snazy]

And does the drop checker change colour when you take it out of the tank?

 

[stubzy]

ofc, its blue in the morning, and after a few hours it changes colour to green. so its deff reading the Co2 in the tank

 

[snazy]

That sounds good.
 
How do you dose the ferts, how much and how often? And how often and how big are the water changes?

 

[stubzy]

once a day following the recommended dosage on the bottle 5ml per 250 ltrs on the neutro Co2 so 1ml a day on that, and 10 ml per 100 ltr on the neutro+ so 6ml daily, the water changes i do once a week and 20 ltrs so roughly 25-30%


my tank is a 55 ltr and i have an arcadia ecoaqua 30watt LED light http/www.aquaessentials.co.uk/arcadia-ecoaqua-30w-led-spotlight-tropical-p-5998.html, a very powerful light, the photo period i was using as i stated above is 8 hours per day

 

[snazy]

Have a look on the bottle of neutro+ and see what exactly ppm levels of nutritients that dose gives you.
For example the ones I use the recommended dose increases nitrates by just a couple of ppm. But in a planted tank with injected CO2+liquid carbon you'll need way more than that, like 10 times that dose to achieve at least 20ppm. Same goes for the rest of the ferts and since it's a complete fertilizer, you may need to increase it too.
 
Decreasing the lights is a good thing. 30W leds are way more powerful than conventional 30W light and you may have way too much, so you'd need to intoxicate the fish with CO2 to cope with the light demand.

 

[stubzy]

it doesnt say on the neutro+ what ppm it should be, just the dosage, and yes it probably is the light

 

[snazy]

it doesnt say on the neutro+ what ppm it should be, just the dosage, and yes it probably is the light

That's not very good because you have no idea how much you are dosing and more likely it's not enough for such a high CO2 tank.
 
I'd invest in dry fertilizers, way cheaper, will last way longer and you'll know what you are doing.

 

[SO19Firearms]

so you'd need to intoxicate the fish with CO2 to cope with the light demand.

 

it doesnt say on the neutro+ what ppm it should be, just the dosage, and yes it probably is the light

That's not very good because you have no idea how much you are dosing and more likely it's not enough for such a high CO2 tank.

I just thought I'd quote 2 very important parts of dealing with algae in a planted tank made by Snazy - so they're together.

1. A drop checker isn't an indication of having "enough CO2" - It shows (generally) that you might have a reasonably safe 30ppm. If you've got 1000W of light above your tank for 12hrs a day because your grandad used to - It's irrelevant,
2. It's sooo important to know what you're dosing in terms of Plant food. Fertiliser laws aside, we can now say outright that certain large brands are nothing but watery trace mixes, so we'd rarely recommend them on a forum like this, but blindly using a brand that doesn't say what's in it is a step backwards even from that. Although on the flip side I have a bottle of Super Sciency water and handful of magic beans I can sell you for just £5.99 - Far better than anything you've used before......