Dosing For A 20 Long

[r.w.girard]

Hey all,

I'm still having staghorn algae problems in my planted tank and I am not sure what I should do about it. Everything that I have read seems to indicate a lack of CO2 but I have been dosing considerably higher than recommended for quite a while and so I am not sure what is going on... I am not sure if dry fertilizers are more effective than Seachem products, but I have been using bottled fertilizers as I have slowly been using a wider array with time. Any the tank description:

20 gallon long planted pretty heavily with Cryptocoryne wendtii and Sagittaria subulata with two 17W T5 bulbs that are on around 8 hours a day filtered by an Eheim 2217 canister at full capacity [which I cleaned out - with tank water - a week ago].

I have been dosing according to the Seachem website although I have recently tried to increase the CO2 in order to better stimulate growth and to get rid of the algae. This has not worked.

Two other notes that may be helpful: 1) I had had green spot algae but scraped it off and it has not come back, 2) my Elocharis acicularis has not grown in at all over the past couple of months, it is not dead, it simply does not grown, even when pruned.

I do a 50% water change every week and I have been pruning very heavily over the past few weeks to remove affected leaves but none of this seems to be working. So I am wondering, could it be that I need to dose more nutrients? Do I need to dose more CO2? I cannot add pressurized CO2 because I am leaving the country for two months and I really want to find any answer before I leave [that gives me two weeks]. Any advice and comments would be greatly appreciated. If anyone could recommend a dosing regime, I would greatly appreciate it. If anyone has any advice on fighting stag horn algae, that would be greatly appreciated as well.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

will you be able to keep up the Excel dosing while your away as if not you will get algae as soon as you stop dosing and go away. What nutrients are you dosing? And I take it its 20gallons?

 

[SO19Firearms]

Top of the pile - Make sure everything is nice and clean - gravel etc

two 17W T5 bulbs that are on around 8 hours a day

The first thing to consider is that as you're not dosing CO2 you have no way of raising the CO2 levels. You can add more liquid carbon which will also have an effect as an algaecide, but it still isn't CO2.

The final two and a half points to consider are your flow, lighting and a half look at your ferts....
If your flow is no good the carbon and any dissolved CO2 won't be getting around the tank effectively giving you low CO2/Carbon in that area. If that isn't the case an option would be to reduce the light timing which according to Liebig's law will reduce the need for CO2...
The half point to consider and if it's just staghorn you have it is half a point as it tends not to be fert related - but make sure you're dosing the full range of Seachem's ferts - Nitrogen, Phosphourous, Potassium and Flourish at probably higher levels than recommended as you're using Liquid Carbon.....


IMO

 

[r.w.girard]

Thank you so much for you comments.

I am sorry this wasn't clear. I am dosing the full range of Seachem fertilizers: Flourish (5mL x2), Trace (5mL x2), Nitrogen (1.5 mL x2), Potassium (1.5mL x2), Phosphate (3.25mL x2), Iron (2mL x2) and I ran out of Excel so I switched to API CO2 Booster, which was the only product available at the time. The quantities and frequency are as per the Seachem website's dosing calendar. I was dosing 2mL of CO2 daily but switched to 3mL since the tank is 20 gallon long tank, so the footprint an plant volume of a 29 gallon tank. But I am now trying at 5mL since it still seemed to be that too low.

Also, and I know everything thinks this is true about their own tanks, but I do keep it very clean. And I have reduced the photo period. I suppose I can try increasing the fertilizers to match a slightly larger tank [30 gallon]. And there really is plenty of flow: the Eheim 2217 is rated for up to 159 gallons [how, I don't know], with 264 g/m rate of flow. And it is currently at full capacity. I had had it at 75% but was worried that there was not enough circulation so I upped it. Plants and fish got pushed around a bit more than before but the algae stayed the same.

And I will be continuing with all of the dosing while I am away. My girlfriend will be taking care of fish in my absence. I just want to keep things as simple for her as possible before I leave for two months.

Any more ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[SO19Firearms]

Still lighting for me then. But somebody probably has a good suggestion

 

[r.w.girard]

Still lighting for me then. But somebody probably has a good suggestion

Thinking that you might be right, I bought a timer so that my lights turn on and off automatically at the same time every day. I have it set to go on at 10h and stay on until 13h30, when they go off for two hours, coming back on from 15h30 to 20h, making an 8 hour day. We'll see if that helps. I might cut it down while I am gone by an hour or something. I have the lights set to go off in the early afternoon because the weather here gets quite warm and I was worried that the extra light would boil the fish/shrimp/etc. Is that a reasonable thing to do or any I risking it getting worse?

 

[Geoff-]

Thinking that you might be right, I bought a timer so that my lights turn on and off automatically at the same time every day. I have it set to go on at 10h and stay on until 13h30, when they go off for two hours, coming back on from 15h30 to 20h, making an 8 hour day. We'll see if that helps. I might cut it down while I am gone by an hour or something. I have the lights set to go off in the early afternoon because the weather here gets quite warm and I was worried that the extra light would boil the fish/shrimp/etc. Is that a reasonable thing to do or any I risking it getting worse?

I would stick to one "day" with the lights on continuously for 8 hours, it's a more natural cycle for the plants. You won't boil anything by having lights on in the early afternoon, lights will add a few watts of heat to the tank but not significant unless you are really struggling to keep your tank temperatures down (in which case your first step should be to increase air circulation from the room, via the tank, and back out again.. the evaporative cooling effect will help keep a lid on temps).

If your temps are too hot you need to leave the lights off for a couple of days until the temps drop. A 1 hour gap in the afternoon won't do anything.