Hi,

I'm a newbie and have had my 10 gal, heavily planted tank running for almost a month now. In the last 7 days or so I've started to see a thin coating of hair algae on most of my plants.

substrate: 2 inches eco-complete + 1 inch medium/fine pea gravel

Lighting: 2 27watt CF's on 10 hrs/day
GH- 10
KH- 8
PH- 6.8-7.0
1 DIY CO2 bottle

I don't know what all the plants are called but they seem to be growing like crazy, sending out roots and runners.

Fish load added at the rate of 1 species/wk or so: (in order added)

some trumpet snails
3 pepper corys
3 Kuhli loaches
4 amano shrimp
6 cherry shrimp
2 dwarf puffers

ammonia levels have been 0 so far.

The only ferts I've added so far are 5 seachem flourish tabs in the substrate + an initial 2 tsp dose of FloraPride.

I'm going to try the EI fert dosing method using seachem products + florapride for iron. I'm still trying to figure out how many ppm I should be dosing if I dose potassium, nitrogen and phosphorous 3x/wk with iron + traces on the off days.

So, any thought on the algae? Would getting my dosing schedule going help? Or maybe I have too much light? Is that too many fish for a 10 gal? (I don't plan on adding any more fish ever, unless I lose some of these)

I don't have test kits for nitrite, nitrate, phosphorous etc... I'm sort of out of cash for the time being.

Any help or problems you can see with my setup would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Irene

I forgot to mention, temp stays around 25-27 celsius.
The tank's not filtered, exactly. I have a powerhead for cirulation with a sponge over the intake.

Here are some pics of the plants:




Thanks,

Irene

Not to get off track, but you do realize those shrimp have been relegated to the function of HorD'oeuvres for the Puffers, and Loaches...right ???

Just a thought... Prof M

You'll be wanting a bit more Co2 for high light. You can use multiple bottles of yeast but it's very hard to attain in excess of 26 ppm with small scale fermentation without going to specialty high alcohol yeast like Alcotec Turbo boosted with o2.

Not saying it can't be done, but it's difficult, and high yeild fermentation is short lived so you have to prepare and rotate bottles within weeks. Hence the o2 boost ! HTH Prof M

Turbo Super Yeast - making moonshine - 3 days

Personally I'd go tanked Co2...

Thanks,

I was hoping they wouldn't get eaten right now both the puffers and loaches are too small to eat the shrimp. Some people on the dwarf puffer forum have reported success keeping shrimp in the same tank...

I'll definitely check into getting more CO2, it seemed from the pH, KH and CO2 charts that it was up around 30ppm but I don't have expernsive test kits and they may not be super accurate.

Irene

You can make a drop checker for a couple of dollars or so, and you can buy one for a few more dollars. That would let you know how much CO2 is in the water now. No other method will do that.