Water question

[ljtan55]

These couple of months I've been plagued by brown algae. The tank was set up in April, so its been only about 3 months, I'm doing plenty and plentry of water changes, about 25% every two days, but it got so irritating that I thought I'd check my water to make sure everything is ok.

So anyways my nitrates/nitrates are good, ammonia zero, kH is very low, pH about 6.0, which is slightly worrying, but cos I have discus, tetras and rams they all doing good.

The thing is my phosphates are 2.0, which is probably why my algae is going out of control according to the guy at the shop. So I bought phopho-zorb to try and reduce it short term. The question is, how would I decrease phosphates in the long term?

And should I be worried about the water hardness? Oyster shells, and kH stabilizers were his solution but I don't particularly like playing around with the pH if I can help it. Apparently water in my area is soft, which is a complete opposite from Dunedin where I came from so I'm not sure what I can do about it. Any thoughts or advice?

[suphew]

The soft water is good, just leave it alone.

As for the PO4 to control it you need to work out where it is coming from, my guess would be that you are feeding frozen food to your discus, this is one of the problems with discus and why owners do such large water changes. I used to do about 50% weekly as well as running two fluval 204 filters on my 4 foot tank, breeders will often do 50% every day or two because they feed heavily to get fish in condishion.

Also brown algae can indicate lack of light (as well as the nutriants to feed the algae). Adding some more light will help the higher plants grow and use up some of the nutriants that the algae is currently using.

[Freakyfish]

Definalty the phosphate is coming from your fish food

All fish food will give off phosphates in your aquarium

Try feeding a minimum amount of food

Generally when a discus breeder is feeding alot of food and doin alot of water changes is because of Ammonia and Nitrate rather then phosphate

Phosphates help bloom algae

You can always try a fast growing plants

Val is great

so is duckweed

A heavily planted tank is great for Discus and helps keep your water perfect

Id be worried about the low KH reading of your water

Ph can fluctuate very quickly without a hardness level

This can be down without affecting your PH

Oyster shells will raise your PH

Id use a KH buffer

Brad

[ljtan55]

Thanks suphew and freakyfish for your advice. I've got indian ferns and swords at the moment, and I think I've just run out of room for more plants. I'll try cutting down on the food.

I've introduced 4 more otos (7 now) and they're really mowing down all the brown algae, if they keep doing what they're doing I might just ditch the phos-zorb and let them go hard.

Thanks again~!