Getting plants to thrive in Fluval Spec V

Bit of a problem. Bought a Fluval Spec V about 2 months ago for my office (plan to get a betta). Did a complete fishless cycle, which finished about two weeks ago. Upgraded the stock light to a Finnex Planted+.

Planted two amazon swords, some red ludwigia, a moss ball, and have some java moss growing on some spider wood. Right now have two amano shrimp running around.

Started by keeping lights on around 10-12 hours per day. That led to some significant algae problems, so I started dosing 0.5ml of Flourish Excel every other day. I'm also dosing 0.5ml of Seachem Flourish twice per week.

Plants aren't doing all that great, and now I'm getting what looks to be like very thick, dark green, mossy algae, especially in the java fern, and the top of the sponge filter is covered in this stuff. What am I doing wrong? Should I reduce the duration of lighting? Increase the CO2? Please help! Don't want to add betta if plants are falling apart, but also don't want to delay getting betta to the point where tank needs to cycle again.

 

Definitely shorten the lighting period to 8 hours. I honestly wouldn't recommend using liquid ferts with the plants you're keeping, having excess ferts in the water column is why you're seeing an algae outbreak. Use roots tabs for the swords and some of the nutrients will leach into the water column slowly and in low doses, which is perfect for the other plants you have. Keep dosing Excel as you have been.

 

That's definitely waaaay too many hours of light with that fixture for that tank size. I'd definitely cut that down to 6-8 hours. A split photo period would help too.

Two swords in that tank size might be too much. These things have huge root systems and get really big.

How are you keeping your cycle going? Are you adding ammonia to the tank?

 

Thank you both! The swords are micro-swords, if it makes a difference (maybe that just means they are sold when they are smaller?)

I'm (trying) to keep the cycle going by tossing in an algae and a catfish pellet every day or so. The shrimp go crazy for then, then I do a 1-2 gal WC every few days. When the tank was being cycled, I had the ammonia up to 4 ppm daily, so I figure there are a lot of bacteria there. I still test every 2-3 days, and tank is consistently around 5 ppm nitrates, which tells me the cycle is still good.

Thanks for the advice on the plants - I desperately needed it!

 

So ammonia and nitrite are now zero?

 

Yes, got the tank to the point were it could convert 4 ppm of ammonia (the janitorial strength!) into nothing but nitrate in less than 24 hrs. Figure that would be more than enough to handle the bioload of a single betta and a few shrimp.

 

Yeah, I'd say that's plenty for a betta. haha