Re: long list of problems

[cfonda@sentientconsult.com]

Jay,
     First of all, your pH and Hardness values look fine.  What you should
be concerned about are the nitrate and phosphate levels.  You need to bring
these down.  In addition, you need to get your algae (especially the slime)
under control.  These two goals are related.  This algae is most likely
choking out your plants.

Here are my recommendations, with a little explanation:
1)  Check how much you are feeding your fish.  Be especially careful not to
overfeed.  Excessive feeding can be a major source of chemical imbalances,
especially nitrate and phosphate.  (Don't underfeed either, though.  Some
people have starved their fish to death in the hopes of controlling their
water chemistry.)

2)  Increase your water changes for the next few weeks/months.  Make sure
you are using pure water.  (Either get yourself an R/O unit or use the
water from the fish store you mentioned.)  Make sure to vacuum the gravel
bed thoroughly with each water change.

3)  Change to a different gravel.  If the gravel you are using really is
"Bits of walnut", it will decay over time in the fish tank and increase
your levels of organics, phosphates, and nitrates in the water, as well as
decreasing your oxygen levels.  Personally, I use a layer of Flourite
covered with a layer of sand.  The sand helps prevent my fish from injuring
themselves on the Flourite.  I understand the temptation to use organic
matter as a substrate.  Your plants probably loved it early on.  But the
eventual decay can carry a heavy price.  I am of the opinion that your
fish, with the wastes they produce, will provide ample nutrition for the
majority of plants.

4)  Use less chemicals.  The simpler your regimen, the fewer points at
which the system can break down.  The only R/O water conditioning product I
like is Aquarium Pharm.'s Electro-Right.  This is a simple solution of
electrolytes and trace elements, with no extra buffers.  I would only worry
about increasing the hardness if you have plants that cannot tolerate
excessively low hardness values.  If you feel the need to use a nutrition
supplement for your plants, I would recommend one of the Kent products.

5)  Change your peat more often.  It 'wears out' after only a week or two.

6)  Decrease your lighting period to around 8-hours for the next two weeks.
This will diminish the amount of light the algae are receiving and help to
kill it.  It also affects your plants, but because they are larger and more
robust, they will usually outlast the algae.

7)  Consider adding a "do it yourself" carbon dioxide generator to the
tank.  This is cheap and will give your plants a boost, in addition to
helping to stabilize your pH in an acidic state.

Basically, these recommendations have two goals:
1)  The increased water changes and decreased lighting period are intended
to manage the problem in the short term.  The water changes will help to
decrease the levels of phosphate, nitrate, and organics in the tanks in an
immediate fashion.  The decreased lighting will help to kill the algae in
the short term.

2)  Changing your substrate, decreasing the number of different chemicals
you are putting into the system, and controlling your feeding are intended
to manage the levels of nitrate, phosphate, and organics in the system in
the long term by managing your inputs to the system.

In my system, I use only deionized water with no additional chemicals for
my water changes.  This maintains my hardness values close to zero and pH
between 5.0 and 6.0.  I change 25% of the water weekly, vacuuming
thoroughly each time.  Right now, I use power filters with a sponge and
filter floss in each filter.  I change the filter floss once a week and
rinse the sponges around once every 2 months.  Basically, I rely on the
food I feed my fish, and the subsequent wastes they produce, as the only
source of nutrients.  However, I keep mainly sword plants, cabomba, myaca,
java moss, and java ferns (the java's for their filtering ability), all of
which can tolerate an almost complete lack of hardness.  I still have
occassional outbreaks of slime algae (I feed my growing out tanks fairly
heavily).  I simply siphon off the slime algae with each water change and
decrease the amount of food I give the tank for about a week.

I hope this helps some...

Good luck,
--Cliff




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