Hey guys I've mentioned this problem im having in another post but It seems to be getting worse. Just the plants seem ti be getting an algae on them and it's turning the roots and all my guppy grass brown and fuzzy my plants where living but not growing so I upped my light as directed and started using flourish. And that's when it started don't mind my yellowish tank just added a few pieces of drift wood one with anubias and even it is starting to die off. I do weekly water changes and my levels all are in the good. . Another thing worth mentioning is I have a few plants that I up rooted and left floating and they seem to be ok
Its a 70g I have a t5 set up with 2 28 w bulbsthat's non ho. Then also a t8 set up with 2 20 watt bulbs that I was also running but with the 2 of them I was starting to get some algae
Your problem could be diatoms (not algae) these grow from light and nutrients which you added both to your tank. Nitrates are a great food source for diatoms which happens sometimes after the tank gets cycled and not enough water changes. What kind of light are you using? Wattage? kelvin temp? type (pc,t5,t5ho)? What size is your tank? how many gallons a week are you changing? sorry you had not replied when i started typing
Initial thoughts are excess light and nutrients, but that's pure speculation at this point in time. Is it hair algae? easily removed? What sort of plants do you have? Do you know their requirements? If they are root feeders, then dosing flourish (I assume you mean Flourish Comprehensive Liquid), may not be too beneficial, some root tabs may be better. This is all speculative, dependant on the type(s) of plants you have. Here's a link to my favourite algae reference It may help you identify and understand what's going on.
As for your picture, it shows you have diatoms. This is a very common form of algae. With all the recent changes, not surprising. Viewing your profile, I believe the following to be true of your tank..... 70G tank 40W T8 and 56W T5NO Plants include Hornwort, Java Fern, Guppy Grass, Moneywort, Green Cabomba and Anubias Water Parameters are 0, 0, 40, 7.0 pH, 83F Now for my questions.... What is the color spectrum on your lights? Do you have 6700k (daylight), 10,000k (white light), actinic (blue) or some other color temperature of lighting? How many hours a day are your lights on? How much and how often are you dosing Flourish Comprehensive? Are you dosing any other ferts, such as root tabs? Are you using any form of CO2 supplementation? Liquid, DIY or injected? I get the impression you do not know what all your plants are. Can you post pictures? Exactly what plants are in your tank? Anubias and Java Fern are rhizome plants that need to be tied to driftwood, rock or other decor item. Cabomba is a high light plant with a very high demand on ferts and CO2. It would not surprise me to hear that it isn't doing well. One thing that is concerning is the level of nitrates. Are they constantly running at 40 ppm or higher? This could be a sign of too much fert or of too little water changes. Sorry for all the questions, but with so little info to go on, it is very difficult to determine why the plants are not doing well. All I can tell you at this point is that you have diatoms in your tank.
Thanks for the response. I do weekly id call it 40% water changes I just started the fert I have put it in 2 times a week apart I used root tabs when I first put in the plants. The plant that you said was dieing or likely would im assuming its the tall growing plant I moved them to a smaller tank with more light to try to save it. My nitrates are down now I need to update that to around 20ppm. All the plants you named I believe to be correct. So how so I go about solving this? Is it to late for my plants? My light runs kind of alot about 10 hours a day.
I would only have the lights on about 6 hours a day. Keep up on water changes. Start dosing a little less for now, until the diatoms go down. And when adding new things to an already running tank only do it one at a time, Not all at once it kind of "shocks" the tank. Give it a little time to get use to the new light, ferts, co2, or whatever it may be. hope this helps!!!
I wouldn't say it's too late yet. One thing to keep in mind (IME), plants can take a week, sometimes 2 to respond. I'll wait for Dena to reply as it's been a while since I was playing around with my balances, and am a bit out of touch.
So, you used root tabs when adding your plants. When was that? If your plants have only been in your tank for a couple of weeks, I would wait a couple of weeks as many go through a die back while digging in their roots. Something else to monitor for is how the leaves are changing. Are they yellowing? Do the veins stay green? Are the veins yellowing? Pinholes? There are many, many more symptoms of deficiency in plants. I agree with cutting the lights back a couple of hours. The reduce light may help to balance better with the ferts. Something that helped me when dealing with issues is to take close up pictures of each area of your tank. Many times I've overlooked something that became obvious with the pictures.
