Plants & Algae

[jn]

I think you should take out your carbon. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think all the fertilizers you put in will be ineffective as the chemicals will be soaked up by the carbon. So if you're plants aren't doing their best, the algae gets the upper hand.

I'd also be tempted to take out the phos-zorb. If you're not overfeeding and you're doing regular gravel vacs and water changes your phosphates should be ok. (I think decomposing plant matter could increase phosphate too). Might be good to test a few days after you take it out.

What are your nitrates at? My tank is still very far from perfect (VERY!!!) but I find the algae really starts to take off when my nitrates start getting quite low. I test about 1/month (I do water changes about every other week or 10 days) so I get an idea of what they're at.

I recently had a pretty bad outbreak of hair algae and I used Excel at the normal dose rate every other day for a couple weeks and it went away.

I went too long between water changes and my nitrates dropped.

Those JBL balls are good for the plants that feed from their roots but I think stem plants need the nutrients in the water rather than in the substrate. Does that work with the plants you have?

I'm using JBL ferropol and I only use about half the dose they recommend cause I'm paranoid about yet another algae outbreak. Since then I think it's been going reasonably well.

Hang in there though! I'm sure you'll get it sorted.