# Could this be the cause of my green water?



## trckrunrmike (Jan 31, 2005)

So I read that more plants = less green water. Recently I did a big pruning and cut/replant lots of plants. Before I did the pruning my plants were huge and reached the top of my 20 gallon but now they're about 5 inches tall. So right now I have a lack of stem plant mass but I have tons of hairgrass and glosso. Seems a little bit weird. BTW this tank has been established for over a year.

Or could it be that I changed bulbs on my CP fixture?

Heh, after this I have combatted all algae except for hair algae. *crosses fingers*


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Did you uproot a lot of plants during your pruning session?


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

> Recently I did a big pruning and cut/replant lots of plants.


As Matt hinted at, that very well may be your problem. Substrate is a weath of food for roots beause all the decomposing food and waste that releases ammonia and other goodies. Uproot a lot of plants and all that goes into the water column and will likely cause GW. To prevent this next time, try doing a decent water change after any major uprooting. Having a large plantload can also combat this. You said you put in tons of hairgrass and glosso, but they might take a while to acclimate before they soak up all the "N".


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## trckrunrmike (Jan 31, 2005)

Yes indeed I did a lot of uprooting. In fact, I put my tweezers into the substrate and moved it around a little bit, the Onyx was compact so it was hard to replant plants.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

My guess is that you may have released too much NH4 from the substrate. Since the plants were just uprooted/trimmed/replanted, they probably were not growing fast enough to uptake the NH4 that was released. A large (50%+) water change after substrate disturbances works well in eliminating the NH4 that gets into the water column during tank maintenance. 

When I find that I can't do a water change right after uprooting a lot of plants, I simply run a diatom filter on the tank. That seems to eliminate the GW before it gets out of hand. Hard to do if you don't have a diatom filter, but I find a HOT Magnum with the included micron cartridge and some diatom powder works excellent.


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