# Asking for advice.



## F1_Cobra (Nov 8, 2009)

Hello all, I'm a newbie to the world of aquatic plants and have been dabbling with adding plants to my main tank for a couple of years now with limited success. I'm disabled on a limited income and live in rural Arkansas where the only pet store is just too nasty to purchase anything from and with our limited budget, ordering online doesn't' happen very often, so I don't have access to all the products I read about here, so i'm asking for advice on what I can do with limited means to cure my algae problem?

The attached pic shows my main tank that has mostly apontigentens(sp?)grown from seed obtained from Walmart.....and a couple of other larger plants obtained from Petco by my neighbor who occasionally makes trips to a larger town and has purchased a few plants for me....i'm sorry I don't know any of the plant names. Mostly, the plants do ok.....I used to feed them Excel till I ran out and haven't been able to afford to order any and just use some plant food by Tetra.....I do 50% water changes on a weekly basis...usually....I get lax about that sometimes.

Anyway, over the past few months i've developed a pretty bad algae problem that the H202 doesn't take care of....I think you guys call it BBA??....It turned my tank into a lush charcoal colored long shag carpet for lack of a better term....lol. I removed most of it by hand, and replaced all the large rocks and driftwood, but I can't seem to get rid of it all together.....what do you guys recommend? Did I cause this problem by stopping the use of Excel?

Thanks for any help you can give.....I look thru this site with amazement and wonder....the beautiful tanks you folks put together is just incredible, and I can only hope to one day have a planted tank as beautiful.

PS....I'm also attaching a picture of a 10 gal tank I just put together to entertain my granddaughter with, and I don't know what kind of plant my neighbor got for me...can you identify it?

Thanks again,Michael


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

The plant in the 10 gallon tank is a beauty, but I don't recognize it as an aquatic. Watch it closely.

Regarding the BBA, in the long run, start trying to establish a foreground plant that will eventually take up whatever the algae is making a living off of. There are usually some RAOK packs on the For-Sale-Or-Trade forum where all you pay is the shipping and you can get a good variety of plants. Other than that I can't really comment, as I grow more algae than I kill, so I obviously have no room to talk.

Regarding planted aquariums on a tight budget, check out the El Natural forum. The ideal situation in this case is that a thin organic horizon provides many, many years of CO2 production for your plants plus micros and other goodies, the feeding of and waste of fish provides macros, and the plants return the favor as a super-efficient filtration system and provide oxygen back to the fish. Once it's all settled in you do some very seldom, if ever, maintenence.

Stay out of the mud,

Darren


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## F1_Cobra (Nov 8, 2009)

I would be very interested to know more about these "RAOK" packs you mentioned? I"m sure that stands for something but I haven't a clue.....lol. Acquiring aquatic plants on a budget can be tough so i'd like to know more.

I have looked the El Natural forums...in fact my large tank is basicly set up kinda like what they recommend in that I put down topsoil along with some organic matter I got from a local stream as my base media then put some a gravel/oildry mix on top of that.....Its never required much maintenance and has done ok till this algae problem cropped up....I hate the thoughts of pitching all the plants and ripping down the tank just to rid myself of this problem...which could just come right back I suppose if my tank is lacking something.....like those foreground plants you mentioned? I'd sure like to have some, but i've never seen any at Petco, but i'm finding when it comes to aquatic plants the local pet shops I have around here don't have much to choose from and what they do have doesn't always look healthy enough to purchase so my tank really is lacking in the number of plants I wish it had....That could be the whole problem huh?

Thanks for the advice.


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

You don't have any fast growing plants in there. Try cutting back on your light. Yes, I believe it's happened because you are not adding excel anymore. Excel is a carbon source for the plants. It helps the plants grow fast enough to use up the nutrients so that there is not an imbalance causing the algae to grow. Excel squirted directly on the algae will kill it. If you got more excel you could squirt each days dose in another area and it would be gone. Of course if you didn't correct your imbalance it will return. Have you thought of DIY CO2? It's cheap. 
http://www.gpodio.com/diy_co2.asp
Look at this thread too. It tells how to get the CO2 into your tank. It's also cheap.
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/diy-aquarium-projects/44053-tiny-super-efficient-co2-reactor.html

RAOK = random act of kindness. People will post a RAOK in the forsale forum. They will usually give the plants away for just the price of shipping (about $6). Here is one that is offered right now. 
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/sale-trade/65020-raok-neo-s-freebie-low-medium-4.html

The plant in your 10g is not an aquatic plant. It's a house plant. It will die in the water.


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

What part of the world are you in? I don't have anything right this minute, but in a couple of weeks will probably need to do another trim on some Hygo. polysperma. It's not a foreground plant by any means, but grows super fast even without added CO2 and it really doens't care much about how much light you have either. It just plain grows, and may help out a little.

Obviously I'm not going to send you anything you don't want, but I'll give you a shout out if I need to do a trim in the near future and you can see a pic and decide then.


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## F1_Cobra (Nov 8, 2009)

Tex Gal said:


> You don't have any fast growing plants in there. Try cutting back on your light. Yes, I believe it's happened because you are not adding excel anymore. Excel is a carbon source for the plants. It helps the plants grow fast enough to use up the nutrients so that there is not an imbalance causing the algae to grow. Excel squirted directly on the algae will kill it. If you got more excel you could squirt each days dose in another area and it would be gone. Of course if you didn't correct your imbalance it will return. Have you thought of DIY CO2? It's cheap.
> http://www.gpodio.com/diy_co2.asp
> Look at this thread too. It tells how to get the CO2 into your tank. It's also cheap.
> http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/diy-aquarium-projects/44053-tiny-super-efficient-co2-reactor.html
> ...


Well TexGal, it sounds like I need to save up and get more Excel....ok, i'll do that. I have done the diy Co2 and it did seem like the plants grew faster, but I tired of dealing with the smelly bottle changes......Maybe I should hold my nose and commit to dealing with that again? Actually the smell didn't bother me much but the wife and daughter complained about it everytime....lol. I"ve still got my 3 liter bottle set up in the garage....i'll go dig it out and hook it back up if you think it'll help.....I suppose it can't hurt huh? I just have HOB style of filter with a biowheel and ran the bare hose into the intake....it makes the pump alot noisier when the bubbles hit the impeller...I need to build one of those small pump reactors i've seen a few people using. Thank you for your advice.

What is it with petshops selling aquatic plants that are NOT aquatic plants???? This is not the first time I've found out plants I purchased weren't really aquatic.....Heck I even purchased what was sold to me as an underwater aquatic crab and come to find out it was just a regular fiddler crab that lives on the beach....not underwater....Fortunately, I became aware of this just a day or two after the purchase and I set up a 10gal with a beach so he could get out of the water, and he lived there for over 2.5 years before he escaped and hasn't been seen since....lol. I dunno, maybe its just me, but it just seems flat out wrong to knowingly sell an item under false pretenses.....these places must know they are not selling aquatics right?? I don't get it...is it strictly a cash flow thing for them?.....Thanks once again for the info...Now I'm wondering if the other plant in the package I purchased is aquatic either....I'm sure glad to know about the RAOK....That may be how I go from now on.

Mudboots, I live in the Ouachita mountain region of Arkansas....Just a hop,skip and a jump north of Texarkana. Thanks for the offer, I'd love to acquire some of your clippings no matter what they are....with no more plants then I've got I'd be happy with anything. I've got a total of four tanks but we only use the one just because we had nothing to put in the other tanks, so I've got room to grow so to speak....lol....I just need to learn to be a better aquatic farmer.


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## Philosophos (Mar 1, 2009)

The advice here so far is exactly what you need to be looking at for a stable tank. Keeping your lights in line with your CO2 and nutrient levels is a principle that applies from the simplest of low tech up to the highest end systems. In your case, without compressed CO2, you'll want to keep lighting at lower levels. This will not prevent you from having a beautiful tank; the species may be slightly more limited, but good aquascaping and time spent reading can make for nicer tanks than what most people ever hope to have. What kind of lighting are you running right now?

Looking at your substrate, I'd tear the whole thing down just to get rid of that BBA. You'll save your self a lot of time and money in the long run. Do it just as you pick up a RAOK (before it arrives), and look for one with a lot of bulky, easy to keep plants. Keeping a high plant load really does make life easier when it comes to reducing algae, and you can sell or trade the trimmings later on down the line. Trimmings are a great way to cover some of your costs, even if it just means dropping some common species by a LFS for store credit.

-Philosophos


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## aquatic_clay (Aug 17, 2009)

I'd try to get some more excel as soon as you can. It's very usefull for killing algae. I ran out recently and had to wait about a week to get more and my tank was taken over with BBA a week after I started excel again it was gone. I would spot treat the algae with excel using a seringe (i'm pretty sure that's spelled wrong...). The link that Tex Gal sent over about diy co2 is really easy to make and will help out you plants. The trick is to get your plants growing faster than the algae and you shouldn't have any problems from there on.

As for the petco plant... I have no clue what it's called but I bought some of these and started out with 3 plants about 2 inches tall and now I have over 20 of them that are 12 inches tall.

Clay


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## F1_Cobra (Nov 8, 2009)

Well, I can't obtain the Excel just yet, but I did fire up the DIY Co2 today since sugar and yeast were easy to come by...lol. Thats bound to help till I can get some Excel headed my way. I"m gonna save tearing down the tank as a last resort. 

I ran across my old note pad while under the tank today and noticed I started this tank in Sept of 07.....that means i've had living aquatic plants for over two years now....wow...thats a personal best for me.....normally any plant would be dead with in a month of planting so lurking around this place has had its benefits....lol....Thanks to all of you and the good info you've posted.


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## F1_Cobra (Nov 8, 2009)

Well its only been about 5 days since I started back using DIY Co2 and surprisingly enough I can already see large areas of the BBA turning red....I'm still not able to purchase any Excel yet, but just adding the co2 seems to really be helping.


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

Just so you know, the plant that others told you was not aquatic isn't. They were right. More specifically it is a type of bamboo, and will sap all nutrients in that tank. Then it'll die. It's pretty sneaky on the petstore's part. 

Hope you get your algae problems resolved, i've got a few of my own. You're not alone


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