"Shawn" wrote in message
...
I'm not a chemist. Can someone tell me what KNO3 is and where I can buy
it
? I've been battling green water algae for a couple weeks now with no
success. I'm 2-day past a 5-day black out. I wrapped my 55gal in a heavy
blanket and duct-taped it shut. 5 days later I took it off and had
crystal
clear water ! I was so happy. However, it's not been almost 3 days since
I
took off the blanket, and the green water is reappearing. I was just
looking up UV sterilizers online but then I saw this post below, and I'm
wondering if that might be a fix without having to buy UV equipment. I'd
like to solve this problem as inexpensively as I can !

KNO3 is Potassium Nitrate. It's used primarily to add Nitrates if your tank
is short of Nitrate.

Most tanks are not short of nitrate. Tanks that are short of nitrate
normally have lots of light ( more than 2-3 watts per gallon of flourescent
light) and injected CO2 at around 15-30 ppm CO2, and lots of fertilizers.

Green water is unliely to be solved by addition of KNO3. Best bet is to
use UV sterilization of the water column to kill the algae spores.

Regards
Graham.




Thanks - Shawn


Thanks Marvin,
I have read up on UV sterilizers and was
wondering if they would be a solution. I will check it out and see
what
happens.

Before investing on an equipement. kepp Light and CO2 on, dose KNO3
1/4 tsp every other day.

Just try
Dominic