You're not going to like this.
The reason why you are getting algae is because of excess nutrient dosing. Your tank is barely planted, so where do you think all that excess nutrient goes?
The most common reaction is to reduce light because it can reduce uptake of the algae also, and slow everything down, but the problem is really still there.
There is nothing wrong running 10 hours a day. I started with 9 hours a day, then 10, and now on 11. Soon it will be 12 hours a day light with ramping up and down done by a program. I'm doing this because I want to mimic what the plants and fish naturally experience in the wild. It won't be a set time, it will go on and off according to the sunrise and sunset times of a particular location, which varies according to what time of the year it is, as it should be.
My planted tank only just had a water change today, this after not having one for almost 10 weeks. I actually wanted to see if I could induce some algae in the tank two weeks ago by dosing excess traces. I was using, and will not do so anymore, Aqua Forest micro for the traces. This dosed at 2.5ml every TWO weeks. Much, much lower than their recommendations, and even then I was experiencing some algae issues. I decided to dose 5 ml instead of 2.5 ml, and within a few days some GSA on the S. Repens, green tuff algae on the Blyxa bush, and the leaves near the top surface etc. . . It was slowly getting back to normal now, and a water change and some removal has significantly stop the extra algal growth. This was just with 5ml on a 360 litre tank. I did not change anything else, I certainly did not reduce my lighting hours or intensity.
I have no idea of the composition of Tropica Premium but I'm willing to guess that it's got a lot of iron, and very little zinc. AIO ferts are terrible (unless of course you're paid to use and promote them). It shouldn't be the norm to have lights on such reduced hours, we should be giving the plants what they get in the wild.
