I need help with live plants

Hello all thank you for taking time to read this.
My tank is a 20 gallon long with 4 female bettas, 8 cherry barbs, and 2 young mollies, shrimp. And assassin snails.
My plants arent growing very fast I dose flourish once a week. I have algae growing I'm constantly having to clean it. Many of my plants have algae on them.
I really need help getting algea under control and my plants to grow faster. Plant list is jungle val, dwarf sag, dwarf chain sword, a lilly I just added, ludwigia broadleaf, java ferns, and frogbit. What should I do?

 

I'd stop dosing flourish for a while.

Dial the heater back a bit.

Perhaps use some liquid carbon to help clean the leaves.

Replace some of the plastic decoration with Rotala, bacopa, hygrophila plant species.

 

I'd stop dosing flourish for a while.

Dial the heater back a bit.

Perhaps use some liquid carbon to help clean the leaves.

Replace some of the plastic decoration with Rotala, bacopa, hygrophila plant species.

Okay I will definitely try. And what temp should I use. My tank sits right at 78. What carbon should I use. Idk a good brand. And I have a bunch of rotala in my pond I will add some. Thank you very much.

 

Do not use Seachem Excell with Vals. They will not do well and may die.

Excell is a good product when used with the rest of the Seachem line. I use 7 of them. It is just that it can be harmful to vals and sag plants. You can adapt them to it but it takes time and effort.

 

Do not use Seachem Excell with Vals. They will not do well and may die.

Excell is a good product when used with the rest of the Seachem ling. I use 7 of them. It is just that it can be harmful to vals and sag plants. You can adapt them to it but it takes time and effort.

Thanks for reminding!

 

Do not use Seachem Excell with Vals. They will not do well and may die.

Excell is a good product when used with the rest of the Seachem line. I use 7 of them. It is just that it can be harmful to vals and sag plants. You can adapt them to it but it takes time and effort.

Thank you so much. What ferts would you recommend. My aquarium light is an aqueon led hood. I have a normal white light and a beauty max the one with red and white. And around 11 I turn on the beauty max buld run that for 2 hours then run both bulbs from 1 to about 4 then at 4 I turn off the beauty max and just run the white till about 11pm so 12 hours of changing lighting. I'm thinking of lowering the lighting. But I really need to get the right nutrition to the plants as well. Especially the dwarf chain swords the val is growing good. Just to much algea on it.

 

Sags, vals, these are true aquatic species. It is interesting to find out why people so often claim liquid carbon seems to do more harm than good. Most plants in our hobby are bog plants. I recall that many bog plants develop a thin CO2 layer around the leaves when submersed. Perhaps this is involved.

Anyways, all conditions you create to propagate plants are also conditions to propagate algae. There might be a few combinations that actually serve plants better, but if I would be convinced, I would probably write a book about it.

I'll point out the first based on my own experience, then I'll point out the general observation by so many hobbyists that works.

My own observation is that in 1) very low light conditions, 2) shallow tanks that are 3) unheated, with only 4) water changes and perhaps sometimes does NPK fertilizer, you can grow a few plants without any algae issues. You can also grow many plants, but the NPK dosing goes a bit up.

I am doing this for at least 10 years and it never fails.

Instead of a shallow tank, I suspect it can be done in a normal tank, with perhaps some CO2 injection.

Plant growth, however, is very slow. Do I care? Absolutely not. Plants look green / healthy. Maintenance is a water change every 2 weeks to a month.

Now the general observation shared by many.

A lot of plant biomass given the tank volume. It doesn't matter if the tank is CO2 driven, or not. A large plant biomass seems to make algae hesitant to reproduce. We don't know why this is. Biochemical warfare is a likely candidate.

If you spot algae on plant leaves, I assume the plant is not strong enough to apply defensive chemical mechanisms. And then a downward spiral begins. Algae and biofilm cover the leaves, making gas diffusion (CO2) troublesome.

Hence my remark to make sure the leaves remain clean. I use neocaridina shrimp and snails for this. This is not possible in your tank, hence my remark about liquid carbon.

In sum: if you replace the decoration with plants, you are changing the conditions for the better. Nobody has the exact answers. This is biology, not construction. It is all about probability management.

By the time you have a healthy planted tank, you could take out some of the plants and put one of the decorations back.

To answer: what fertilizer should I get?

In your last statement, you said "Especially the dwarf chain swords the val is growing good." What makes you think the answer then is in another fertilizer?

CO2 and light are the growth factor, but only if all the minerals are acquired. Seems to me this is the case.

 

Biochemical warfare is a likely candidate.

That in combination with an extensive microflora would be my theory ... of course I have no way of confirming this besides observations.

It's something I could observe extremely well in my tanks with extreme light strength, confirmed by experiments.

Nitrates running out? -> Thread algae
Phosphates running out? -> Spot algae
All nutrients available? -> Good bye algae

I'd assume thread algae can use phosphate extremely well and are efficient with nitrate use, spot algae is the other way around.

Funny enough, this only applies for heavily planted tanks with strong light and a ton of CO2. Reduce light or use very little plants -> More nutrients lead to more algae. Maybe because the plants can not produce enough repellent in this situation and/or the microflora is not as extensive?

My take would be that not only do the plants actively combat the algae, but also promote a healthy microflora on the plants that make it impossible for the algae spores to settle.

This is also quite noticeable that more than once I had algae only on the hardscape, but never on the plants themselves.

Sorry for the heavily off-topic post.

On-topic: Seeing the surface agitation my guess would be too little CO2.

 

Sags, vals, these are true aquatic species. It is interesting to find out why people so often claim liquid carbon seems to do more harm than good. Most plants in our hobby are bog plants. I recall that many bog plants develop a thin CO2 layer around the leaves when submersed. Perhaps this is involved.

Excell is not really co2 even though it is sold that way and i've found it will severely damage vals in some cases. This is my non-co2 29 that is 4 years old - i've not cleaned algae from it in about 3 years; it has a few spots but not a lot.



Here are a few comments: First you do not need to 'dial down' your heater; betta like temp around 80 and that is fine. You do need to dial down the lights a bit - there isn't enough details in this thread to comment on how much. It takes a while for things to 'balance' and until they balance it will be a bit 'rough'. Dwarf sag will grow very very slowly as well as anubia. Root tabs seem to work better for dwarf sag and vals but is not required. Too much fertilizer isn't great.

The light is probably too intense and on too long and reducing it will reduce the algae. Plants work on the order of months until they adjust to your aquarium. Once adjusted they will grow faster but of the plants you have the stem plant and vals will grow the fastest. Also you need to adjust your scape a bit based on how you want the final product to look. You really don't want the vals right up front. They are small now but eventually they will get larger.

My understanding is that too much fertlizer is generally not a bad thing but it won't make the plants grow faster and it will waste money. Generally speaking we give our plants too much fertlizer (more than they need) and they can get by with smaller amount though a lot depends on the minerals in your tap water; how often you do water changes and fish concentration.

 

Excell is not really co2 even though it is sold that way and i've found it will severely damage vals in some cases. This is my non-co2 29 that is 4 years old - i've not cleaned algae from it in about 3 years; it has a few spots but not a lot.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Some plant species have developed a superhydrophobic coating on their leaves. It is argued that bog plants have such a layer also, that actually helps them to maintain a gasfilm submersed. This is one of the adaptations of bog plants to live partially/dynamically in water.

I'm noticing that plants harmed by liquid CO2 / glutaraldehyde, are aquatic plants, not bog plants. It would be interesting to know if the difference is substantial and what might cause it. The coating popped up.

I think the effect of having a constant temperature on plant metabolism is a little underestimated. But if the Betta is leading, sure keep it up.

Lovely tank, Linda

 

I think the effect of having a constant temperature on plant metabolism is a little underestimated. But if the Betta is leading, sure keep it up.

​

I think you should clarify this point as there is a difference between a constant temperature and a warm temperature. You can vary the temp without cooling it down significantly. Generally speaking my aquarium run 3 or 4 degrees warmer during the summer than winter and during the summer will likely be warmer during the day than night. Having said this i've not noticed a big impact between summer and winter cycles. In my use of excel i've not noticed much in improved growth but it does seem to do a good job killing some types of algae and in some cases plants will do a little better with the algae removed (though this is species specific). Having said this i think the thread creator issue is more related to lack of balance and time as I've noticed it can take plants a while to 'adjust' to a new growing environment and i would focus on address that issue before changing fertlilizer or adding additional chemicals. As i noted earlier i would adjust the light but specifics are difficult without details on the current setup. I will not as a 20 long the aquarium is fairly shallow. In addition long term i'd focus on shorter plants like crypts and smaller Echinodorus such as E. parviflorus 'tropica' or E. cordifolius "harbich"; though crypts tend to be easier to grow.

 

First a remark on the lights:

It is actually in line with your remark on the minerals. Very likely a waste.

Even without knowing the specs, you can almost always lower the intensity of lights, if CO2 is not injected. It will slow down algae a lot more than plants, because algae are much more efficient CO2 processors. If there's only 1-3 ppm CO2 in the water, bright lights and dosing additional minerals (apart from water changes and fish waste) is useless and only serves algae.

Once your tank has reached a healthy and heavy plant biomass, you can bring the lights back up without having to worry about algae (biochemical warfare). Likewise, you'll need to start dosing additional fertilizers, most likely.

 

Excell is not really co2 even though it is sold that way and i've found it will severely damage vals in some cases.

Same with Easy Carbon, it specifically says on the bottle that it can harm Val. In my experience it’s a waste of money for hair algae suppression, and might actually make things worse by further weakening sensitive plants.

lots of good advice here. I have been going through the algae battle and eventually, maybe I’m winning.

I had to do a number of things and adopt a grueling daily maintenance schedule (my tank is much larger) to get my unbalanced tank to start growing plants better than algae.
…. adding more Nitrogen, doing more water changes, adding more healthy plants and constantly scrubbing the bad film off plant leaves. Plants or leaves that are really unhealthy must also be removed regularly to avoid giving the algae additional momentum.

 

Having said this i think the thread creator issue is more related to lack of balance and time as I've noticed it can take plants a while to 'adjust' to a new growing environment and i would focus on address that issue before changing fertlilizer or adding additional chemicals. As i noted earlier i would adjust the light but specifics are difficult without details on the current setup. I will not as a 20 long the aquarium is fairly shallow. In addition long term i'd focus on shorter plants like crypts and smaller Echinodorus such as E. parviflorus 'tropica' or E. cordifolius "harbich"; though crypts tend to be easier to grow.

Fully agree.

I'll come back on the effect of temperature later, and probably in a separate thread. It's worth it.

That in combination with an extensive microflora would be my theory ... of course I have no way of confirming this besides observations.

It's something I could observe extremely well in my tanks with extreme light strength, confirmed by experiments.

Nitrates running out? -> Thread algae
Phosphates running out? -> Spot algae
All nutrients available? -> Good bye algae

I'd assume thread algae can use phosphate extremely well and are efficient with nitrate use, spot algae is the other way around.

Funny enough, this only applies for heavily planted tanks with strong light and a ton of CO2. Reduce light or use very little plants -> More nutrients lead to more algae. Maybe because the plants can not produce enough repellent in this situation and/or the microflora is not as extensive?

This is very interesting. Plants are able to store minerals for future use; hence the availability is less of an issue at low CO2 levels. In high energy tanks, the lack of a mineral, is compensated. I speculate that defensive mechanisms are sacrificed. That's a safe speculation, because we've seen so many pictures on different forums of green leaves that have algae on them.