Help With Hair Algae

[StevenF]

 
Ok Steven i'll check phosphates again today.
 
After adding the fertilizer i noticed that the plants got a boost but algae got it too.

That can happen.  However the more important thing was that you did see the plants respond.  That likely means that the plants were likely short on some nutrient.  Which one we don't know.  Hopefully now they will recover and start to out compete the algae for nutrients.  continue the once per week water cycle, fertilize once a week, and remove as much algae as you can to help the plants.  Remember to base your fertilizer dose based on the water you remove during the water change, not the total size of the tank.
 
If the aquarium looks no better in a week we can try reducing light on time by another hour or two.  

 

[don_kihotis]

Hi Steven,
 
so i should calculate the fert based on the 20% of water change i did today? Is it possible that the previous dose i did this week is still in the water? Hasn't been consumed by the plants or got vaporized?
 
I did some tests as well. 
NO3 = 0
KH = 4
PO4 = 0.05% (i attached a photo of the reading)
PH = 7.5
 
 
Thanks for the help,
Chris

 

[don_kihotis]

Regarding light hours, i have reduced them from 12 to 8.

 

[StevenF]

 
 
so i should calculate the fert based on the 20% of water change i did today?

I always add fertilizer to my tank after a water change.  But the does is always based on the amount of water removed.  If done this we the amount in the water will stay stable.  If however you doesed based on the size of the tank fertilizer levels will climb.

 

[don_kihotis]

Hi Steven, thanks for the tip.
It makes sense. I was thinking that during the week the plants would consume a certain amount and/or some of it would also get vaporized so i was about to calculate the dose based on the size of the tank.
 
Do you know this product?
http/www.ebay.de/itm/151893267863?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&var=451082610673&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
 
Would it be of help in my case?

 

[StevenF]

 
Do you know this product?
http/www.ebay.de/i...=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

No I had not seen that.  However looking at the pictures, information and videos it appears to pass electrical current through the water.  Passing current through water sp[lits the H20 into O and H2 or OH and H.  Other molecules int he water will also split.  A similar device is used in Brakish or salt water swiming pools.  The current splits the water but for the salt it goes from NaCl to NaoH and HCl.  HCL is hydrochloric acid and NaOH is sodium hydroxide a strong base.  Minutes to hours later HCL and NaOH recombine to form H20 and NaCl.  Its a good way to keep the swimming pool clean.  The HCL and NaOH are toxic to plants and Algae.  Your tap water probably has a small amount of salt in it and will have sulfates, nitrate, and carbonate salts.  Alll will break down the ato acid molecule and a base molecule due to the current.  So dispite the claim it is not harmless to plants and fish.  Those water changes may or may not strongly stress the fish and plants.  The amount of stress will probably depend on how hard the water is and its alkalinity.  Also it appears to be from China so the quality may be questionable.  if they designed the electronics right it would be safe to you.  But if they did it wrong you could get a shock if you touch the water.  I cannot recommend it.  

 
 
It makes sense. I was thinking that during the week the plants would consume a certain amount and/or some of it would also get vaporized so i was about to calculate the dose based on the size of the tank.

If you look at your fertilizer it has sodium, potasium, cacium, and magnesium. iron and others These are all metals and they will not evaporate.  Nitrogen However will slowly evaporate because it is a gas.

 

[don_kihotis]

Wow impressive knowledge Steven. Thanks for the analysis. I won't be buying that.
Cheers
Chris

 

[don_kihotis]

Hi Steven,
i thought to bump this thread with an update. I have studied further about algae and planted tanks in general and i have realized my mistakes or at least some of them.
First of all the CO2 i was injecting was less than what it should. The green color i was seeing on the drop checker was light blue, not green. Now i have increased it and the checker has a nice lime green color (see picture 1). As a result the PH dropped from 7.5 to 7.0 and the KH increased from 4 to 5. If i am not mistaken that translates to 16mg per Liter (see picture 2).
 
The second major mistake was my lights. My T5 may had been 39W but that alone wasn't enough for the plants to make photosynthesis. One of my tubes was pink flora and the other was yellow which means 4000K. Now i have replaced the yellow with a daylight 6500K and the pink with a new tube since it's recommended to buy new ones every year. I found Giesemann tubes to be of top specs (see pictures 3, 4 and 5). The CRI of the daylight tube is of class 1A which means a value of over 90.
 
Third mistake the fertilizing. I only used micro and then stopped it completely. The plants stayed without nutrients and algae took advantage. I tried to buy Tropica's specialized fertilizer but i couldn't find it locally so i bought from a seller who makes his own ferts (see picture 6). I got 1L of PPS Pro (macro) and 1L of Trace Mix.
 
Furthermore i have added a few more plants now to increase the mass in the tank hoping that the plants will use all the nutrients and starve algae to death. I don't know what else i can do. 
Unless i use Hydrogen Peroxide which has great and instant results but i have read that it kills shrimps and i wouldn't want that. 

 

[don_kihotis]

By the way Steven, even Tropica's staff were impressed with you.
I had a small conversation in youtube and i was given a few tips by one of their experts, after he reviewed my threads here.
 
Here is the reply: 
 
 
Hi, 
just quickly checked over your threads about your tank. Here are my thoughts:
 
1) Wattage is an expression of how much electricity is used, not the output of light from a lamp. It is (still) easier to understand and relate to, for most people, though. The adviced correlation (=w./l.) is only valid for the T5 fluorescent bulbs, and cannot be used for LED´s. LED is another way of producing light, and will have a very different output. This will affect growth of both algae and plants. 
 
2) Your light should really not be on, for more than 8 - at very max. 10 - hours a day. Use a timer to ensure this. Plants can not utilise longer periodes of light.....algae can !!
 
3) Your tap-water seem to be partially destilled sea-water. This is comparable to R.O. (Reversed Osmosis) water, and therefore very poor in nutrients, that plants need to grow healthy. Adding all micro- and macro nutrients is therefore an absolute must.
 
4) Your plants look a bit "leggy" on the pics.  This can be in-sufficient light and/or CO2......but in this case more likely from lack of nutrients. Plants will then re-direct nutrients from oldest leaves, to keep growing parts alive (=top), and old leaves will die off.
 
5) Plants need a well-balanced mix of all nutrients, to thrive successfully and perform. Dosage is influenced by how much plant-mass is present and on how fast plants are growing. Fast-growing plants will of course consume more fertiliser faster. I recommend you read up on the E.I. (= Estimated Index) method. This will keep your plants well fed at all times.
 
6) Your tank is - in my opinion - lacking plant-mass, to bring biological balance fast. This will very often lead to uncontrollable algae-attacks.  You do not need to go buy a lot of more plants.....but you should purchase a few "helping plants". Those are fast-growing plants, that bring plant-mass fast, adding to fast maturity and thereby stability of your tank. This will then make algae-attacks far more controllable. Limnophila sessiliflora is in my opinion an out-standing and quite cheap "helping plant".
 
7) Next time you are re-doing your tank, do consider a thin layer of substrate, beneath your bottom layer. Thist will work as a "nutrient buffer" for your plants, storing nutrients, that algae can not reach.
 
8) I am very happy, to see you already have a resourceful and knowing "menthor" in StevenF on your thread. Keep in contact with him, since he really gives you good and insight-full advice.
 
Hope this is of some help, and that you will enevitably get the beautifull, balanced tank, you deserve.....

 

[StevenF]

thanks for the updates.  Sounds like you are making progress.    Athough i would like to see a picture of the tank.  I have neaver had a CO2 tank so I am not 100% familure with them.  I hope things keep going well. The reply from Tropic is interesting.   One thing to note, the picuture of your fertilizer shows potassium nitrate, potassium sulfate, potassium phosphate.  With all of those having potassium you could get exces  levels and that can push up your alkalinity and PH.  I have seen that in my tank.  This is just a warning to watch out for this. i have seen that occur in my tank.  If it does occur it is easy to fix with a larger water change.  I don't know how yet to avoid potassium based fertilizers. 

 

[don_kihotis]

Hi Steven, 
thanks for the warning about potassium. I will check the PH again. I need to find and buy a Potassium tester though.
 
Here are some pics of the new plants. I will take some more photos of the whole tank. So far algae is stable as it was before the latest upgrades of the tank.

 

[StevenF]

Your plants look a lot better.  However what really strikes me is that the hair algae is still in the same place on the substrate.  When I had air algae it was always in the plants.  Not coming out of the substrate.  Is there something unique to that patch of substrate?   Was there once a large plant there or a different type of substrate?  
 
I think you might want to try a deep substrate cleaning.  to clean my tank I have a hose attached to a stiff plastic tube.  Once I start the water syphon, I stick the hard tube all the way to the bottom of the substrate and move it around to remove any organics (mulm) that may have built up. Try to avoid the area right around the plants.  you don't want ot damage the roots there. The organics may also contain phosphates and nitrogen but it they may not register in aquarium test kits.  So maybe the algae is feeding on something in the substrate such as dead roots from a plant that died there or a different substrate or a rock leaching nutrients into the water.  It's a long shot but its all I can think of at the moment.

 

[don_kihotis]

Hi Steven 
 
actually the algae is not coming from the substrate. It's found on various spots but mainly on the Eleocharis and Moss. I am attaching 2 more photos. I have marked the algae covering spots on one of the photos.
 
The big plant in the middle which is exactly under and near the center of the lights had a few leaves covered in hair algae but i removed them carefully from the bottom. I took the pics after cleaning so the algae is visible on the Eleocharis and Moss mainly.
 
Today i will try some spot treatment with Hydrogen Peroxide. I won't dose to cover a percentage of the total volume of the tank's water but just a little directly on algae to see how it reacts.

 

[StevenF]

Don how did the hydrogen peroxide work out?  At one time I was thinking of using it but didn't.  Thinking more about your problem a couple of things come to mind.
 
You found your light were old and replaced them.  A good catch.  Earlier you tried adjusting  the light on time to see if that would help.  Now that you have replaced your bulbs it may be worth your time to try a longer or shorter light on period.  In the past that didn't work but with the new bulbs it might.   As to your new bulbs they should work fine since they cover the entire spectrum the plants need.
 

 
 
The plants stayed without nutrients and algae took advantage. I tried to buy Tropica's specialized fertilizer but i couldn't find it locally so i bought from a seller who makes his own ferts (see picture 6). I got 1L of PPS Pro (macro) and 1L of Trace Mix.

I cannot read the labels on the bottles.  But based on what i can see it covers at least nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, and sulfur.  Please check and make sure it also has calcium, boron, iron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, zinc.  
 
Tropica mentioned Estimated index.  The central idea of the Estimated index is that if all nutrients the plants need are present at levels  slightly higher than the plants need the plants will out compete the algae for nutrients.  It seems to work for many people.  So please make sure your fertilizer is complete.  If you are unsure and if you still have the Seachem fertilizer put some of the Seachem in with the powder fertilizers as an experiment.
 
 
if you have good growth of your plants you will have to prune them.  I currently have to trim my Anacharis weekly  and sometimes it pearls (oxygen bubbles form on the leaves).   How often do you trim your plants and have you ever seen pearling?  If your plants are pearling you probably have for fertilizer mix correct and the CO2 levels correct.
 
I hope this helps or give you some new ideas.

 

[don_kihotis]

Hello Steven.
Thanks so much for still replying for help. 
 
Well my lights were not old but wrong choices of my pet shop seller due to his ignorance. Ok the LEDs were my choice and got those from ebay. They were ok and plants were photosynthesizing but more demanding plants like the Eleocharis could not grow as a carpet. Maybe it was a problem of the intensity or of the distance from the light source. My main target was to grow a carpet so the LEDs had to go.
Then i got the wrong bulbs from my seller i.e. a pink tube for plant growth which was fine but the yellow 4000K was very insufficient. The the 14000K to replace the yellow one etc
Now with the Giesemann tubes (plant growth pink + 6500K daylight) it's perfect.
The plants are pearling all day long which means that they are photosynthesizing resulting in growth.
 
The CO2 looks to be ok. The drop checker gets a nice lime green color every day so i know the levels are ok. Also PH has dropped and KH has increased.
 
I did another change. When i first set up the tank i had placed the CO2 diffuser under the water pump so the gas was distributed in the tank perfectly. A pet shop guy told me that this is wrong because the pump is also producing oxygen while sucking and pumping the water into the tank so my CO2 is actually being destroyed by the oxygen. So i followed his advice and placed the diffuser into the tank and placed the water output of the pump above it so again the bubbles were being pushed and spread with the water flow. Now i have returned to the initial set up and placed the diffuser again under the water pump as i believe the pet shop guy is wrong. Now the plants are pearling even more. Like crazy.
 
Yes the plants are growing but they don't need trimming all at the same time. I will post more photos to update the thread.
 
I will ask my provider about the micro elements of the fert. I had also the idea of adding a dose of Seachem together with my other 2, just in case. I'll try that.
 
M