Thanks for your reply Jody. I have increased my bubble rate to 38 per
minute. As far as the pearling goes it would be nice to just see my
plants
. I am still trying to locate a phospjhate test but you are probably
correcrt that they are high. The thing about the fish load is this was an
established tank and I have not added any fish for at least a year. I will
however be adding a timer and cut back the light to 11 hours a day.
"Jody" wrote in message
...
Your nitrates are a bit high, and probably phosphates too if you could
measure. You seem to have some bigger fish that could create a large
bioload on your tank. Make sure you are not feeding too much; once a day
is
enough, and only as much as they can eat in five minutes. Actually, you
should get rid of some of the big guys, especially any big plecos.
For a 55g, I would think you need about a bubble of CO2 per second. Look
for pearling on your plants; if it's not there you are probably not
injecting (or dissolving) enough CO2. You also need to make sure you have
a
few fast-growing plants to help absorb the nutrients. The Cabomba is
good,
but you need others.
Also, you might want to put your lights on a timer. You said 10-12 hours,
and that's a 20% difference. Since you are not sure, could it ever be
more
than 12? A timer will cut out the guess work; set it for 11 hours and
monitor the results.
Jody
"Doug Sheely" wrote in message
...
I need some advice please. My recently converted fish only 55 gallon to
a
planted tank has a severe algae problem. When I converted to a planted
tank
I increased my lighting to a 110 watt power compact strip light on for
about
10-12 hours a day. After converting a month ago I had some algae growth
but
it wasn't too bad and I was able to control it by scraping the sides and
25
% weekly water changes. Today the tank is totally green with algae that
appears to be in the water. My plants are doing OK. Here are my water
readings as of today:
PH 7.8
nitrate 20ppm
ammonia 0
nitrite .10 ppm
KH 322.2 ppm
GH 35.8 ppm
co2 injection 18 bubbles per minute from bottle into co2 reactor.
hob canister filter with micron filter installed.
Fish Load :
4 med angels
1 rainbow shark
2 black skirt tetras
3 bala sharks
2 pearl gouramis
1 silver tip shark
1 pleco
2 pictus cats
2 big cats ???
1 clown loach
substrate small gravel
Sorry for such a long post but I would appreciate any comments or
suggestions.