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28-07-2005, 10:59 PM

wrote:
Ive got the same problem.

What do i need to test to ensure i ;have good water quality?

I do ph, nitrite, ammonia, gh/kh tests at the moment which are all fine.

You would need to test for phosphate and nitrate also, a tank with fast
growing plants in may actually be nitrate and phosphate defficient, it
depends on your tank. You should aim for a low nitrate reading and low
phosphate reading, below 5ppm for the phosphate, I wouldn't worry about
nitrate that much. You can remove phosphate with something like rowaphos
in the filter.

But really I wouldn't worry about algae on the front glass, you could
add some ottocinclus cats to clean it but I'd just use an alage scraper
and not get too hung up about it. You can never fully eradicate algae
but far more worrying and detrimental to plants would be something like
hair algae, which you don't mention.