# Ok what am I doing wrong?



## Mad Professor (Oct 3, 2008)

My 44 gallon is not going to well.

I swapped out a 10k/act03 bulb with a 10k/6700k and I'm still getting brown stuff every where.

All I have are these two pieces of wisteria and one piece of java fern not very big, but not growing or adapting at all to thee tank.

I don't know what the problem is.

Do I not have enough plants in the tank absorbing all the resources causing my the brown/diatoms to go crazy.

The light is set on a timer to turn on at 4PM and shut off at 10PM.
I have 4 Tiger Barbs, 2 black skirts, 3 emerald cory cats.
I do bi-weekly water changes 50-75%, and I don't dose the tank at all, but do have a bottle of flourish on hand, just in case.

What am I doing wrong? 

Please be sure to bring some 2x4 to beat me till I get it right.
:chair:


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## zyglet (May 16, 2009)

I think... 1 watt per gallon is usually good for freshwater... unless you have a really tall tank then 1.5 to 2.5 watts per gallon is ok. The brown stuff is probably algae from too much light.... are you trying to have a planted tank or a really bright fish tank???? cause a shallow tank and a plant bulb would work better then the 10K


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## Mad Professor (Oct 3, 2008)

RESURRECTING THIS THREAD! COME BACK TO LIFE! COME BACK! IT'S NOT YET YOUR TIME!..

SERIOUSLY! ***? Changed out the bulb about month ago and now I have all green algae with some brown diatoms.

Plants are growing new leafs but at the cost of it existing grown ones

**** is killing my wisteria.

Too much light? I've been playing with it jumping from 6 to 8 to 12 hours.
At 6 hours, light algae but extremely slow growth on plants.
At 8 hours, medium to heavy Algae, slow to ok growth on plants, normal like in the 20Gal.
At 12 Hours, Extreme algae, fast growth on plants.

The 44 gallon below, I've taken today. BTW in the middle of PWC, water cloudy from stirring the gravel up and scrubbing the glass.

little blurry, took it with my BB phone. Also Sorry for the slow load, it's on my personal web server.

The wisteria.



























It used to look like this two weeks ago.









I moved it from the 20 gallon into the 44 gallon.


but my 20 gallon isn't suffering this problem, it does have some algae but it's manageable.




































Yes I know, old cd-rom drives very ghetto.

The 44 gallon had some rocks but the algae over took it and I had to remove it and black it out and UV it to DESTROY THAT F-ING ALGAE!

Sorry for the cussing but this is frustrating.

What should I do?


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## jones57742 (Sep 8, 2007)

Mad Professor said:


> What should I do?


MP:

1) Tell us the wattage of your fixture (although I anticipate that the bulb is a 24" - 65W bulb and I assume that you replaced your 6700K/10000K bulb with a like bulb);

2) Do not get frustrated as you do not have "a real algae problem" (believe me in that I know what one of these looks like) but just a significant nuisance here and at 1.5WPG you should not be experiencing your observations;

3) You are probably overfeeding and/or your filtration equipment is in need of cleaning;

4) Purchase some Flourish and double dose for a couple of weeks; and

5) Per


Mad Professor said:


> Do I not have enough plants in the tank absorbing *all the resources* causing my the brown/diatoms to go crazy.


If you are dosing with fertilizer cease doing so for now.

TR

BTW:

A) Nice hex tank!

B) Via observation of the photographs you may be "somehow" getting phosphate in your tank water.


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## TheOtherNewGuy (May 4, 2009)

less wattage and longer tiem for the light to b on maybe?...i know my grass is growing easy bc its grass in a 3/4 watt per gal tank approx....and my african sword i had in my big tank got moved to a tank with more light and is now growing much better....i bought these palnts from the pet store and they looked alive and well there but they started to die off i just trimmed it down and they seem to be growing better...kinda like give it a reason to grow....and if your not adding stuff i would...btw what does it mean when it says a mineral is chelated?


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## Mad Professor (Oct 3, 2008)

Yeah corallife 30" fixture with 24" 65 watt 6700k/10k dual daylight bulb it replaced a 50/50 bulb act03/10k.

Well it got really bad when I dosed the tank with flourish. Just green everywhere, gravel was brown, Plants look like that wisteria. It was so bad that I couldn't take the pictures until I scrub the glass clean.

I never clean my filter or filters, there's nothing to clean, it just ceramic rings and bio-stars in a mesh bag.

Maybe the driftwood is the problem and leeching something into the tank. It's rapidly deteriorating, so I got to be very careful around it, chips of wood tend to come off. I want that small java fern to overtake it, but it's not even thriving.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

1- You fed the algae when you added Flourish. never add plant food when you have algae in the tank. Algae grow faster and get all the advantage.

2- Your lights are on for far too long. Cut back on them. Algae loves a long photoperiod.

3- Not enough plants.

4- The plants you do have are slow-growing, especially the fern. The wisteria isn't a slow grower, but apparently it has some problems. The javas aren't doing you much good at all, though.

All in all, I'm surprised that your algae problem isn't much, much worse.

Cut back the photoperiod, and change massive amounts of water to get rid of the flourish. Physically remove as much of the algae as you can. You could always try some algicide first, then do the massive water changes after it's done the job.

The brown diatoms just come with the territory in a new tank. They come, and eventually they go. Fighting them is a waste of time.


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## Mad Professor (Oct 3, 2008)

It's not a new tank, I've had it for 10 years, the current setup for 3 years, the last 6 months trying to get it going on plants.

I want a moss wall but I can't find any moss in orlando.


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## jones57742 (Sep 8, 2007)

Mad Professor said:


> Yeah corallife 30" fixture with 24" 65 watt 6700k/10k dual daylight bulb it replaced a 50/50 bulb act03/10k.


Either the Mod's have been playing with this thread and moving posts or I have "lost it here" (the latter is probably more likely!) as I thought that you had done this quite a while back and had just recently replaced that bulb with another.

There was probably "something wrong" with the previous bulb or it was "getting old" and hence its replacement partially contributed to your "outbreak".




Mad Professor said:


> Well it got really bad when I dosed the tank with flourish. Just green everywhere, gravel was brown, Plants look like that wisteria. It was so bad that I couldn't take the pictures until I scrub the glass clean.


MP: 

TOS and I usually "gee and haw" pretty well but not in this case.

In typical tank water conditions the addition of excess micronutrients, which is what Flourish basically is (CSM+B in the "dry fert world"), for some reason assists with algae control and I believed that you might also have been overfeeding but


Mad Professor said:


> Maybe the driftwood is the problem and leeching something into the tank. It's rapidly deteriorating, so I got to be very careful around it, chips of wood tend to come off. I want that small java fern to overtake it, but it's not even thriving.


The driftwood is not "leeching" but is decaying thereby producing ammonia and nitrites as well as the ultimate nitrate digestion byproducts.

Excess micronutrients, in my words, "act as a catalyst", for flora production in the presence of excess macronutrients (ie. the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates) and hence your "algae explosion".




Mad Professor said:


> I never clean my filter or filters, there's nothing to clean, it just ceramic rings and bio-stars in a mesh bag.


Your *ceramic cylinders* and *bio-stars* do need a thorough rinsing in WC water as the pores will become clogged and hence ineffective as surface area for digestion bacteria population.

Do you have mechanical filtration media in your filtration process prior to the ceramic rings and bio-stars?

TR


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## Mad Professor (Oct 3, 2008)

> In typical tank water conditions the addition of excess micronutrients, which is what Flourish basically is (CSM+B in the "dry fert world"), for some reason assists with algae control and* I believed that you might also have been overfeeding but*


Well I feed both tanks once a day 5 days a week, doing one big pinch for 44 gallon and two small pinches with grinding for the 20 gallon then I fast them on the weekends, I sometimes miss a day, but I don't compensate for it.



> Do you have mechanical filtration media in your filtration process prior to the ceramic rings and bio-stars?


The 44 gallon has HOB Canister Filter. The cartridge is a vinyl cage and the rings/stars are stored in this cartridge. Then a reusable sleeve slides over the cartridge and the cartridge itself is impaled with the water return pipe and sits inside the canister filter.


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## Toshogu (Apr 24, 2009)

Honest to goodness I don't think you have enough plants in your tank. I believe that's your base problem. Either reduce the amount of light you are putting into the tank or get more plants. i think that hex tank of yours would look great if you planted it more heavily.

If you plan on going that route i would suggest buying all the plants you want in it, all in one go. And do one massive planting. Theoretically that should suck out all the excess nutirients that you have in that tank within a week, along with 10% waterchanges daily.

I do really like that hex tank. planting it would be a fun too, just have to stick your really tall growing plants in the center and then just make sure to go down in size as you get to the edges till you got a 2" ring of ground cover on the perimeter.

Best of luck either way.


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