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I've got a 24" x 12" x 15" with 1 freshwater lamp, and one plant grow one thingy tube, and one daylight plus (recent addition) which gives me about 2.5WPG

I'm growing Eleocharis acicularis - dwarf hairgrass, which is sprouting up everywhere but doesnt get as tall as the originals planted (not a bad thing) and seems to be covered in brown aglae

Vals and Limnophila sessiliflora like weeds, but again the lower leaves on the sessiliflora seem to be developing a covering of brown algae.

other plants include Anubias barteri v. nana, Cryptocoryne willisii, and Crinum thaianum.

My questions are:

• After the recently aadded light, should i now be looking at adding Co2?

• Will this help clear the brown algae? I thought new tank were e to this, mines been running... well since before i joined here!

• Any other thoughts?

Oh yea almost forgot lol i've also got hair / staghorn algae which is quite annoying.

Last edited by chrism at 30-Nov-2004 10:05

CO2 will definitely benefit your plants. Light is used by plants to convert CO2 into nutrient carbon and oxygen. Without adding CO2 the plants have only limited use in the light, and so their growth is slowed down (although some plants use the carbon found in the water, but these are not many plants). Adding CO2 will give them something to munch on and their growth will be much faster, and your lights will be put to a proper use.

CO2 will basically help you with algae. Plants need Light, CO2 and nutrients to grow. If you add CO2, your plants will grow faster and will use more nutrients, which will be deprived from the algae, therefore causing it to starve. Whether it will clear the algae or not is a different matter. There should be an equilibrium of all three for algae to disappear. However, reaching that equilibrium is a little hard, so it's a matter of finding the best dosage of the three for your tank.

The bottom line: Go for it.

It took about 6months for my 55g to go through the brown algae and start to get green varieties. After a few weeks of green algae that's starting to go away. If you have enough light the diatoms will get out competed and if you have enough plant growth the other types of algae will get out competed. This is so long as the diatoms are not munching on something in your tap water like silicates or high phosphates but I still think it would get taken over by green algae eventually. It takes time and for me some algae eaters so I can see in my tank till it balanced out better. My otos loved the stuff and multiplied a few times so I went from 2 to 8 that I can count. I'd say my 55g is still considered a very new tank even though it's been set up for 8months now.

ah right ok gotcha, so my tanks still new, and the algae should start to fade away with time, but adding CO2 will speed up plant growth which is quite likely to help speed up the time for algae to go... so im adding CO2

expect another post about PH swings and CO2 soon hehe

Just don't get the yeast in the tank like me I used my 10g for experiment and had to strip it a few days ago. I ended up with something like 80ppm co2 and then 1/3 of the mix dumped in the tank and made a real mess. My tank was full of white goo. I lost some java moss but that's it.

haha ooops!! Thanks for the tip wouldnt have funny if you'd lost more than java moss