When for flourish?

[Carlos & Siran]

We've finally got the AR850 set up and planted, been about two weeks now. A few days ago we noticed this slimy grey looking algae growing in the baby tears near the top of the tank, may be some kind of beard algae? We want to dose it with flourish but I've heard you can't do it too soon with all the excess nutrients in the water, so about when can we dose?, and also when can we add co2?

[breakaway]

Does your algae look like this - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43562&p=473353&? If so, get some Otocinclus catfish. They will destroy any brown algae.

I had huge problems after dosing flourish. My tank 200L and heavily planted: http://iforce.co.nz/i/5jdb5yey.jpg

I used to dose 4ml flourish as per the label every third day. Soon, I got a bad outbreak of hair algae (covering just about everything) and also cyanobacteria (green slimy algae). I was however able to fix this by turning off the lights for 2 days and then reducing the timing to 6 hours from my previous 12 hours.

I've also got a smaller (38L) heavily planted tank w/ 3 dwarf puffers in it: http://iforce.co.nz/i/sq00x1ra.jpg

This tank uses no fertilizers, or CO2. Just fortnightly water changes. There isn't a trace of algae anywhere except for the green spots which every tank has, and are unavoidable.

I'd advise that you tread carefully here. If everything is growing properly, there's really no need for flourish.

[Carlos & Siran]

Hi breakaway thanks for replying. No, this is it here

when it first grew it was a brownish colour, Siran dosed with Algae fix on Sunday, and it went white within a few hours, so we're hopeful it's dying

[Jennifer]

Yep. In a planted tank like yours, white or pink algae is dead algae.

I think you have the right idea with carefully monitoring your nutrients before adding anything else. I don't think adding Excel will hurt at this point, it certainly is a powerful algaecide, but it isn't necessarily going to help plant growth if they are not established enough yet.

The key is to keep your CO2 levels from fluctuating too much as that can cause a serious algae outbreak. Adding injected CO2 will certainly cause a big swing. Also, water changes will help keep gross nutrients down but it will also add a lot of CO2. It is best to add a bunch of fast growing plants to help use up the nutrients you have. This will allow the other plants time to establish. If you add Excel, add it every day at a rate of about 1ml per 30 litres of tank water. It is also important to keep trace minerals up so that the plants can utilise the nutrients (daily doing with Flourish comprehensive is easy and effective for this). A moderate photoperiod of 10 hours would be a good place to start. When you start seeing brown algae, increase surface agitation, temporarily decrease the photoperiod by a couple of hours and slightly increase the Excel (keep up daily dosing with trace nutrients). In no time your plants will be growing strong and lush and you will be able to inject CO2 and up the photoperiod (you will also have to increase nutrients at that point).

Of course you can go low tech and forgo all of that but your plants will not grow fast and you risk an algae outbreak if you overfeed or carry out frequent water changes.

Also, before you add any plants to your tank, 'sterilise' them so you don't introduce algae spores.

HTH

[Carlos & Siran]

Thanks Jen, awesome response. Yah, we think the algae came from our other tank, it was on the baby tears within a day or so, we thought that the spore was there in the old tank but with all the extra nutrients it just took off. We have no surface agitation in there at the moment other than the power head, as we have no fish in there, so you would suggest we sort that out first then?

[Jennifer]

Well, brown algae is almost a certainty in a newish tank but surface agitation will help that. You will want to keep in mind that once you get the plants growing well you will be adding CO2 and at that point too much surface agitation will drive off the CO2 that you are trying to keep in the water so really it is a temporary measure while you get established. It is not essential, but it will help. I know it isn't attractive but you can lower the water level so that the filter outlet creates more surface movement. If you can, wait to add fish until the plants are established. I have set up several tanks that way and not had any algae problems at all.