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BPB's 75 gallon planted


Bpb

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So there are two possibilities that I have experienced with planted tanks, one would be a bacteria bloom but that is more a white colour, the second would be a suspended algae bloom which in my experience was brownish green. The bacteria bloom will go away on its own with some filter floss and time (you could speed it up with clarity) the algae bloom was a bit harder but with the level of co2 injection and the plant load in the tank I find it hard to believe you have an algae bloom. If it is an algae bloom go lights out for a couple of days (sheet over the tank if possible to get it all dark) and see if that will put a dent in it. The dark period won't hurt established plants like you have so you should not have to worry about them.

Another option is to start dosing some clarity and seeing if your filter floss can not take care of the problem.

If I remember right you are using an inline co2 reactor so you should not be stirring up the substrate with the injection and I really doubt your filter return is causing the problem.

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I'll let it roll for a while. Doesn't bother me that much. It's probably an algae bloom of some sort. At this point the tank has been running for 4 months now I believe so any new tank stuff should be past

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Here goes starting from bottom to top:

Sprinkling of well rinsed caribsea special grade aragonite, sprinkling of Epsom salt, sprinkling of mutate of potash, 1" layer of miracle gro organic potting mix, 3" layer of caribsea floramax black, rodi water filled and water changes 50% per week, 4 tbsp of GH booster per week with water change, ferts are all GLA brand dry powders. Monday, Wednesday, Friday it is KNO3 (1 teaspoon), KH2PO4 (1/8 teaspoon), and K2HSO4 (1/8 teaspoon). Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday it is CSM+B (1/8 teaspoon) and iron chelate (1/8 teaspoon). Also dose 13 ml of flourish excel daily. Lights are 4x54 watt t5ho (2 giesemann midday 6000k, 2 giesemann aqua flora pink). Photoperiod is front two bulbs 5 hours , back two bulbs 5 hours, with a 1 hour overlap where all 4 are running. It's two separate fixtures

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That seems like a heap of nutrients, I would almost consider cutting back a little bit to see if your problem goes away. While the plants will usually out compete the algae if there is more nutrients than they can utilize there is not much they can do.

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Right side of the tank beginning to take definite form. I learned I had been trimming all wrong. After watching videos and reading instructions from Xiaozhuang on plantedtank.net., I changed my way of trimming and it's been a few weeks. Really happy with the result. Snapped a pic immediately post trim yesterday. The left side is a little less composed because the Limnophilia sessiflora and dwarf sag look over grown, but happy with the direction at any rate

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Another FTS. Was gone all weekend and came back to some serious growth. Couple things needed. Shrimp. Have a bit of algae on the substrate. Looks to be a hair/stag horn type algae. Second. New plants. Want to replace several species with more reds. Third. Major rescape. Need to juxtaposition different plant colors and growth type/leaf shape better

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Algae growth while the plants are showing serious growth means there is way to much nutrients in the tank, if the plants are growing you should never see algae because it is out competed so easily by the plants.

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Thanks emu1sive! It's a never ending process of trimming and moving and water changes. 10x the hands on effort as to compared to the reef tank.

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Thanks emu1sive! It's a never ending process of trimming and moving and water changes. 10x the hands on effort as to compared to the reef tank.

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That was my experience, compared to my old Iwagumi style even the maintenance on my picotope was a breeze, five minutes once a week compared to a several hours of trimming plants, dosing fertilizer, and other jobs.
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It's worth the effort to me and I knew it was coming when I decided to go this direction. Never was interested in the minimalist zen type look of the iwagumi scapes. Constructive criticism of my own scape is that I can still see some of the back glass and a spot of substrate in the middle. I was going to try a third foreground plant like HC possibly, but I think i'll just trim the S. repens and manually spread it out

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So from my experience with the Iwagumi if you don't have really fine substrate the small carpeting plants will struggle. I used black fluorite sand which let it grow easily but it made a mess every water change until the carpet was complete which took a month or two.

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Any ideas on these deficiencies? Hygrophilia thai is developing holes in the leaves. The Nesaea Golden is having some really spiraled and twisted new growth. Same with the Alternanthera Reineckii. Really wrinkly slow producing new growth. Thoughts? I know the second two are some of the more intermediate/challenging stem plants to make happy. But the hygro Thai is a nuisance and tough to make unhappy. Everything else is full and thick. Just these three species are struggling

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Simply lowering my light levels has done wonders for tank health. The Nesaea golden is coming around and the crowns on the lower portions look terrific. Bba and gsa are all 99.9% gone. I don't see any anywhere so if there is any it's hiding in the dark. Pretty happy with the overall look of things. The only thing still struggling is the AR which I may give up on temporarily. It's easy to acquire. Did a huge trimming today. The right side looks much more composed than the left. The Limnophilia sessiflora, dwarf sag, and downoii all just grow so fast it looks ratty in a hurry on that side. I've considered simplifying and culling one or two of the plants on that side and either getting new stuff or moving duplicates from the right side over. Here's a before pic.

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And after. I forgot to trim the downoii so tomorrow morning I'll be chopping that down to the substrate level. Too bad there aren't any interested locals on this plant because it's not super easy to come across this amount of it, healthy, and free. Oh well. To the compost it goes.

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I also am saving some of my lobelia cardinalis trimmings you can see floating up on the left and I'll be planting those in pots outside. That's actually not a true aquatic plant and can develop some really nice looking red flowers if grown terrestrially

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  • 1 month later...

2 hours and a 5 gallon bucket packed and heavy full of trimmings that went to compost...I probably could have made $100 on these on planted tank. Anyhow. Trim and rescape. Added Ammania gracilis

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Before

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After

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That's one thing we are really lacking here is an LFS. If we had one I wouldn't have this overloading montipora syndrome in my reef tank. I'm to the point of cutting frags and culling them because I have nobody to sell them to and no local store to take them.

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  • 5 months later...

Well in my own typical fashion, I decide I want something, and even if it's cheap, it takes me a year or more to buy it. I've always wanted angels in my fw tank. So me and the little one finally went up to the store and picked out the biggest ones.

Acclimated super slow because the store has wildly different parameters than my own tank. They're doing awesome though. In one day have already picked off most the guppy fry in the tank.

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