Quote:
Originally Posted by MediaOne
thank you everyone! here are some more comments:
Carissa: This is very interesting indeed. Let me mention a few more things:
gH is 4 degrees via a Hagen test kit, and apparently 28 via a pinpoint conductivity monitor. I don't trust the
conductivity meter at this time and so I stick with the hagen. Our water is extremely soft here - no calcium or
magnesium. For example, if I complete a 50% water change I have to add about 2 tablespoons of Barr's gH booster.
Next to CO2 the only other variables I have heard are important to check during a BBA outbreak are nitrate and iron.
I believe my Nitrate to be correct for two reasons: 1) My leaves are not turning red (on the certain species I have
observed to change during low nitrate levels). 2) When I reference check my nitrate levels against a calibration
fluid (20 ppm, made from the directons on this forum) they are always slightly higher than the calibration.
This leaves Iron ... and my Hagen test and dosing seems to be excessive. In the coming weeks I am going to focus my
efforts on the iron and trace levels, while holding the other parameters constant. You mention to watch all variables:
trust me, I only run aquariums in this way.
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Well, it's definitely not hard water in and of itself being the issue. I'll be interested to know what happens. I don't think it's nitrates in particular, again in my tanks I have run anything from near 0 (accidentally) to 50ppm of nitrates and haven't been able to trigger any bba or really any other algae for that matter by changing nitrates. What's your KH? I'm assuming it's probably low if your GH is low but just curious. I should start overdosing one of my tanks on iron and see what happens.