Journal Recovering from disaster: My 120P journey.

[bradquade]

@mrtank50 I'm sorry you're going through this as well. It's a really weird algae and I hope we can find a solution. I make my own micronutrient mixture following the Burr740 recipe. The dosing is below (in PPM). Ignore the first column that says "Per dose". That's what I was dosing 3x weekly. I'm currently dosing daily as outlined in the final column to a weekly total Fe of 0.42PPM.



I make the fertilizer solution by mixing the following into 500 ml of RO water. I've used a similar micronutrient dosing strategy for almost 8 years across many tanks and it has been successful, so I have a hard time believing the micros are an issue.
0.5 g Ascorbic acid
0.2 g Potassium sorbate
5.68 g 11% Iron DTPA
320 mg manganese sulfate monohydrate
548 mg boric acid
290 mg zinc sulfate monohydrate
34 mg copper sulfate pentahydrate
12 mg sodium molybdate dihydrate
3.36 mg nickel sulfate hexahydrate

My macros are also DIY using potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate monobasic, and potassium sulfate. Weekly dosing is 34NO3-10PPM PO4-44 PPK K with a 50-60% water change weekly. I generally dose lower, but others have suggested the algae is attacking the plants because of low macros and I'm testing that hypothesis. Remineralization is also DIY using calcium sulfate dihydrate and magnesium sulfate heptahydrate. Tank is remineralized to an accumulation target of 30 PPM Ca and 10 PPM Mg.

In my case, I'm not convinced the issue is from fertilization. Since I'm going crazy trying to figure out what is happening I setup a new tank in January. The goal was to see if the issue is my care routine, one of my tank reagents, or something inherent to the 120P. I started the tank with all very unhealthy plants from the 120P that were covered in algae on every leaf. I rinsed them before adding them, but within two weeks the algae took over and covered every surface in the tank just like what is happening in the 120P. I was very discouraged for a short time, but continued regular maintenance and dosing. Within the past 5-7 days the algae just started dying. Leaves that were absolutely covered are clean and intact. The hardscape is fairly clean without any major effort. Everything is just now starting to put out healthy growth. This is the most basic setup of all time with CO2 diffused with a chop stick to 0.9 pH drop, a $20 light from Amazon, Fluval Stratum (which in my experience is a very weak soil that required fertilization from day 1), the same fertilizers dosed at slightly lower levels, the same micros, the same RO water, the same snails, and a similar maintenance routine that is performed half as frequently. There's still some tufts of algae and I need to clean the glass, but this proves that the algae is beatable with a normal care routine and there is something off in the 120P.



The two biggest differences between the tanks are pH and soil age. The new tank has a pH of 6.3 at max CO2 and the 120P has a pH of 5.2-5.5 at max CO2. The pH in the 120P is much more variable measurement to measurement and I believe this is because the buffering capacity of the soil has long since run out. Even with the pH fluctuations, I maintain a 1.3-1.5 pH drop from CO2 every time I check it (which is often because I would normally attribute this algae to poor CO2). There's also the new vs old soil argument that can be made in terms of tank cleanliness.

Below are some pictures of the 120P as of this morning. Notice that it is a disaster with algae attacking even new growth (except for the Bacopa colorata)? The plants are growing reasonably quickly. The tank is cycled and dosed appropriately. Do I just need to wait it out?

 

[Sb1415]

Did you try API Algaefix on the tank or did you just experiment with it in a separate container ?
The Algae looks very similar to what i had in mine, 3 doses of API algaefix seems to have helped mine. Still waiting to see if it is going to come back.
I might suggest trying it in your tank if you have not already, it definitely needed multiple doses.

 

[Koan]

Did you try API Algaefix on the tank

Just be aware that there are over 700 reports on Amazon and many reports on plant and fishkeeping sites that Algaefix kills fish and snails, apparently unpredictably and even when used as directed

As with any herbicide, scaleless fish like loaches, plecos, cory cats, and potentially Labyrinth organ fish like bettas and gouramis, as well as snails and other inverts, are going to be at highest risk but mass deaths of many species have been reported.

 

[bradquade]

Did you try API Algaefix on the tank or did you just experiment with it in a separate container ?

I've been dealing with this Algae for 1 year as of this month and tried dosing AlgaeFix in the tank last summer. My strategy was to remove as much algae as I could during water change, do one 7.5 ml dose immediately after water change, and then do a second 7.5 ml dose halfway through the week. I did this for a few weeks before I decided it was having no effect. This was the time when I tried H2O2 , APT Fix, Excel, and combination of all of the above. My frustration is starting to peak again and that's why I tested it again outside of the tank a couple weeks back. Since it didn't help and I'm wary of using algaecides, I haven't tried to use it again in tank and I'm unlikely to try it again. My next course of action will be removing the substrate and replacing it with blasting sand. The tank will get one more trim cycle before I go that direction.

 

[Leadmewhereyoudare]

I just reread through the entire journal and this is so far beyond my skill level. I happened to be reading through random sites and ran across this. Immediately made me think of your journal.
See the part about older cec substrates becoming saturated with traces and desorbing those into the water column.

I know this site is mainly pushing a different methodology but I found it interesting regardless as I’m starting my tank with very old aquasoil as well.

Perpetual Preservation System - Nutrient imbalance TE

 

[bradquade]

Thanks for sending that information. I appreciate any input since this is also clearly beyond my skill level as well. I'm open to any possibilities at this point and will try anything that has not been tested. In Solcielo's journal, it looks like they were dosing 0.7-0.9 PPM weekly (0.1-0.12 PPM Fe daily) using a chelated trace mix. A few weeks ago I was water changing every 3 days and was only dosing 0.3 PPM Fe weekly and the result was very pale tips on some of the plants. I posted a picture of Syngonanthus Rio Negro giant in post #52 and you can see the change in color for pale green to normal green when I upped the dosing of micros. In my case, I think my micro dosing is closer to the bottom end than the top end.

With that said, I'm starting to think that my issue is related to the substrate and that's part of why I'm leaning towards changing it. I wonder if multiple years of tap water caused it to absorb something that reached a level that plants (or the microbial community) are having a hard time tolerating. Maybe I didn't clean it enough in the early days and theres a massive amount of mulm build up thats feeding algae in the water column. Maybe it did absorb some micro that's inhibiting plants growth as suggested by Solcielo. All I know is the tank is behaving as though its on the 3rd to 4th week of cycling despite being setup for 2.5 years at this point. I really don't know what's happening here and I feel like I've made every change possible over the last year to try and nail this down. At this point I'm willing to spend $30 on blasting sand just to see if a full tank reset can help me beat the algae as easily as it was beaten in the smaller tanks.

 

[TRyan]

I wonder if it would help to remove all plants, livestock and get in there with your hands and really stir up the substrate. Fill with water at the same time, cleaning out all the gunk until water is clear. Might be worth a try first before doing a reset with new sub?

I read on @GreggZ's journal that he does this yearly to keep an uber clean tank.

 

[mrtank50]

Guys, I think I’ve siphoned the substrate at least 100 times. I even replaced it completely with brand-new soil. Right now I’m using soil that is about 3–4 months old.


There must be a mistake somewhere in what I’m doing — we’re clearly missing something, but I just can’t identify it.


For the past 3 days, I’ve been doing localized treatments with 50% hydrogen peroxide and then performing 50% water changes. After each water change, I dose 10 ppm nitrate, 1 ppm phosphate, and 7 ppm potassium (this is not my usual routine — I’ve only been doing this for the last 3 days). There is still no reduction


Today I’m going to try a 20:1 nitrate-to-phosphate ratio:
10 ppm nitrate, 0.5 ppm phosphate, and 7 ppm potassium.


My issue is exactly the same as @Bradquade’s. I honestly don’t think this problem is related to NPK.


I have three tanks:

• Tank 1: 4 ppm NO₃ – 0.4 ppm PO₄ – 4 ppm K
• Tank 2: 9 ppm NO₃ – 0.9 ppm PO₄ – 7 ppm K
• Tank 3: 18 ppm NO₃ – 1.8 ppm PO₄ – 18 ppm K

The result is the same in all of them.


I really hope that with your help we can finally solve this.

 

[bradquade]

I like the idea of removing everything and cleaning up the substrate. That's something I did multiple times prior to joining scapecrunch though.

In late spring of last year I removed everything, cleaned the substrate/glass, and replanted. During this process I ran my hands through all of the substrate to pull up any dead roots/plant matter and tried to mix up compacted areas near the center of my tank. Afterwards I did a few large water changes to get rid of the mulm that got introduced into the water column. The algae returned pretty quickly.

During fall I did it again, but this time I was more aggressive and removed all of the substrate, put it in buckets, and ran water through it with constant agitation and draining until the water ran clean. I wanted to remove the substrate this time because the back left and right corners of the tank were really compacted and had turned kind of mud-like. When this process was done I added a new bag of UNS controsoil that was the wrong color, resulting in the multi colored substrate I now have. I followed up by water changing multiple times to remove mulm from the water column. The algae came back again.

Whenever I replant I'm also fairly aggressive with mixing up the substrate because I agree that a clean substrate is important. Sadly, this does not seem to help all that much. When I say that I've tried everything I can think of other than completely replacing the substrate, I really do mean it. There is something very, very strange happening here and I guess I'm not the only one dealing with it.

@mrtank50 What type of soil do you use and do you have any idea what the pH of your tank water is? Have you tried using an inert substrate to see if the problem persists? I've seen a couple mentions of similarly tough to beat algaes and one of the people that was successful mentioned that they added KH during cycling to keep the pH higher and give beneficial bacteria a better environment to grow. pH is one of the key differences between the 10 gallon that beat the algae, the shrimp cube that doesn't grow the algae even when its directly introduced to the tank, and the 120P that is the algae farm.

 

[BenB]

Your plants have done better since your started using the RO water. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that whatever was in your water the last few months, might have absorbed into your substrate and is still percolating out maybe continuing to cause you problems.

 

[mrtank50]

I like the idea of removing everything and cleaning up the substrate. That's something I did multiple times prior to joining scapecrunch though.

In late spring of last year I removed everything, cleaned the substrate/glass, and replanted. During this process I ran my hands through all of the substrate to pull up any dead roots/plant matter and tried to mix up compacted areas near the center of my tank. Afterwards I did a few large water changes to get rid of the mulm that got introduced into the water column. The algae returned pretty quickly.

During fall I did it again, but this time I was more aggressive and removed all of the substrate, put it in buckets, and ran water through it with constant agitation and draining until the water ran clean. I wanted to remove the substrate this time because the back left and right corners of the tank were really compacted and had turned kind of mud-like. When this process was done I added a new bag of UNS controsoil that was the wrong color, resulting in the multi colored substrate I now have. I followed up by water changing multiple times to remove mulm from the water column. The algae came back again.

Whenever I replant I'm also fairly aggressive with mixing up the substrate because I agree that a clean substrate is important. Sadly, this does not seem to help all that much. When I say that I've tried everything I can think of other than completely replacing the substrate, I really do mean it. There is something very, very strange happening here and I guess I'm not the only one dealing with it.

@mrtank50 What type of soil do you use and do you have any idea what the pH of your tank water is? Have you tried using an inert substrate to see if the problem persists? I've seen a couple mentions of similarly tough to beat algaes and one of the people that was successful mentioned that they added KH during cycling to keep the pH higher and give beneficial bacteria a better environment to grow. pH is one of the key differences between the 10 gallon that beat the algae, the shrimp cube that doesn't grow the algae even when its directly introduced to the tank, and the 120P that is the algae farm.

My tank details are as follows:

• Tank 1: pH 5.6 – Masterline Soil (1 year old)
• Tank 2: pH 5.2 – ADA Amazonia (3–4 months old)
• Tank 3: pH 5.4 – ADA Amazonia (7–8 months old)

I increase pH by reducing CO₂. For example, if CO₂ is around 40 ppm, I lower it to about 25 ppm. Yes, the algae recedes when I do this, but I never thought this was directly related to pH or bacteria. I assumed that since CO₂ decreases, nutrient uptake slows down, and because nutrients are not depleted as quickly, the situation temporarily improves.


However, another hobbyist I know had exactly the same issue. He completely stopped dosing fertilizers and additionally used a liquid phosphate remover. After one month, his tank was completely clean — and the problem never returned.


Since I keep rare plant species, I don’t want to completely stop fertilizing. My plants wouldn’t survive a full month without nutrients.


I still suspect the initial trigger is excess iron. When phosphate becomes limited relative to iron, the problem seems to start. And even if iron is reduced later, phosphate may continue feeding the algae once it is established.

 

[bradquade]

Your plants have done better since your started using the RO water. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that whatever was in your water the last few months, might have absorbed into your substrate and is still percolating out maybe continuing to cause you problems.

I 100% agree with this. The switch to RO made a huge difference very quickly in terms of plant growth, so there clearly is something in the tap water that the plants didn't like. The tank was fine for 1.5 years immediately after setup and it was probably because the substrate was new and absorbing whatever is bad in the tap water. I thought for sure that 6 weeks of RO would fix that issue, but maybe whatever is bound to the substrate doesn't want to leave.

 

[Koan]

the substrate was new and absorbing whatever is bad in the tap water

Aquasoils are designed to have an high cation exchange capacity or CEC Sodium Na+ is a cation so it would your soil would bind up sodium over time, competing with potassium calcium and magnesium at the root-soil interface, as well as aggravating plant-specific specific sodium toxicity. This is one reason a hallmark of sodium toxicity is a lack of rooting

 

[bradquade]

This is one reason a hallmark of sodium toxicity is a lack of rooting

Thanks Koan. Very interesting information that matches what I'm seeing still. My plants are still rooting extremely slowly in the 120P. It's faster than what I saw before the switch, but much slower than I remember from my tanks in Texas. For example, I propagated a stem of Pogostemon Kimberly and the roots had only grown 0.5" in nearly 2 weeks. To me, that seems unusally slow. This idea of calcium/magnesium/sodium balance also makes a previous observation from last fall make more sense.

Prior to this whole algae mess, I typically ran my tank with 15 PPM Ca and 5 PPM Mg. I switched to 30 PPM Ca and 10 PPM Mg when I had tried everything related to regular tank maintenance without any positive effects. Making this switch resulted in a very rapid increase in plant growth that lasted a few weeks before slowing down again. It's possible the increase in divalent cations kicked out monovalent sodium ions from the substrate and the rebalancing of the cations in the easily exchangeable portion of the substrate was enough to help the plants in the short term. I should check to see if there's literature about high levels of calcium/magnesium reducing the toxicity associated with sodium. The implication is that I could rescue my soil by soaking it in RO+Ca/Mg. It is painful for me to consider tossing so much ADA aquasoil into my garden/houseplants.

However, another hobbyist I know had exactly the same issue. He completely stopped dosing fertilizers and additionally used a liquid phosphate remover. After one month, his tank was completely clean — and the problem never returned.

Interesting that your tanks have such low pH. I'm not suggesting every low pH tank has similar algae, but low pH tanks seem more likely to get this particular algae. Since iron chelation is related to pH, I wonder if that could connect the pH and iron to harmonize our individual hypotheses. It doesn't match perfectly, but maybe it's worth considering and discussing more.

Since you have three individual tanks, have you considered cramming as many plants as possible into two tanks and then doing the phosphate removal treatment on the third? If phosphate removal works out, you'd be able to fix up one tanks, move plants back into it, and then do it in a second tank. You could also try adding 1 dKH to bump up the pH a little bit if you wanted to test if acidic conditions favor the algae. Not many plants would care about 1 dKH.

 

[Koan]

literature about high levels of calcium/magnesium reducing the toxicity associated with sodium

I could rescue my soil by soaking it in RO+Ca/Mg

Yes calcium application is a treatment in sodic soil remediation sounds like a great approach!

Easy enough to set up a little test tank once you've done this, and evaluate rooting activity

 

[bradquade]

Thanks to everyone for engaging with my journal and trying to help me work through the issues my tank has been having. It's been great having such a strong community to discuss with and I appreciate all of the thought that has gone into understanding the issues my tank has been facing. After the additional discussion with Koan yesterday, I made the decision that I'm completely restarting the tank. I said to multiple people that I would roll with the issues for some more time, but I can't do it. I've been busy with work this week and haven't had the chance to manually remove algae and it is such a mess I do not want to deal with it anymore. Check out the close up images below to see just how bad the tank gets when I don't have the chance to spend multiple hours each week removing algae.



I finished work a bit early today and spent a couple hours resetting the tank. I drained the water, removed the substrate, and bleached the inside to remove any algae that was stuck to the glass. As I was removing the substrate, I realized the the bottom 2/3s was really cold, which suggests that the heated water does not get as deep into the substrate as I thought. If Koan's hypothesis about sodium absorption is correct, leaving the tank to continue running would not fix anything because the sodium free RO water does not get into the bottom layers of the substrate that quickly. Afterwards I washed the interior with tap water and then shop vacced the remaining substrate, mud, and water out. There was A LOT of mud, which could be another reason I've been having issues with DOCs.

Once this was done, I filled the tank with three 50 pound bags of medium grit black diamond blasting sand. I gave it a quick rinse in tap water, drained the tank, and then refilled with RO. TDS is 8 PPM and RO is 7 PPM, so there isn't an appreciable amount of tap water remaining. The water is also not that cloudy, so this seems like a good start. I'll finish filling the tank tomorrow when I have another barrel of RO ready, clean both filters, extensively clean every plant, and then replant. Hopefully this change gets me on the right track again.

 

[Naturescapes_Rocco]

Honestly I think this was the right call. Sometimes the best thing we can do is just put in the effort for a reset. Looking forward to seeing your progress with BDBS !

 

[BenB]

I said to multiple people that I would roll with the issues for some more time, but I can't do it.

This is where I was with my original build last year. I finally figured out what was wrong, the tank was turning around rapidly, and part of me wanted to keep bulldogging it, but in the end, I was just over it and did a reset. Unfortunately the whole process, and the next problem, and, like you, my recent bout with fuzz algae has left me a bit burned out, but I'm hanging in there.

Good luck on the next round!

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Sorry if I missed it or not, but did you ever revisit the water temperature at water changes?

 

[bradquade]

Sorry if I missed it or not, but did you ever revisit the water temperature at water changes?

It's very easy to miss in the walls of text that I usually write. The water temperature at water changes was addressed in three different ways.

1) When I switched to RO I added a heater set at 90 degrees into the water bucket next to a circulation pump and turned both on before I started tank work. This was sufficient to heat the water bucket from 55F to at least 62F before the change. Usually it was higher because algae removal is very time consuming

2) I started changing less water more frequently. 50% water changes resulted in much lower temperature swings than the 70-80% that I was doing with the 55F tap water.

3) I changed the in tank heater out for a Chihiros Heater Pro. This was helpful because I can change the heater power to get the tank up to temperature in 1-1.5 hours even if I did a colder water change. This wasn't necessary most of the time though with the previous two changes.

With these modifications, water changes dropped the temp to mid to high 60s at lowest and the tank would be up to 73F within 1-2 hours. This was significantly better than the tank sitting between 55 and 65 for half a day as the old heater struggled to heat the tank.