Justynkak
06-24-2016, 12:18 AM
Like in the title. Do you recon it would work? I have serious water supply problem and I'm in a rented house and living with parents which makes RO impossible. So I found this forum and after some reading I have mixed feelings.
Some of the posts said that algae scrubber can accompany plants, some said algae will eat nutrients way faster than plants and that adjusting it is hard. But all that was regarding water plants.....
My tap water is super hard 160, ph 8, nitrates 40-80, phosphates 5!, and I have old pipe system so I bet I got loads of metals in it as well. No aquatic plants survive! they supposed to love my water, but even Anubias is dying! Algae is 'consuming' everything!!!!! I gave up at some point with cleaning and draining the tank and left the algae be. After 2 weeks my tank was black, covered in brown algae :( I cleaned the substrate and went bare bottom, removed most plants and started a riparium, fish and emerged plants r healthy so I guess I'm doing something right.
The system is heavily stocked with oversized bio filter and mechanical filter with loads of stages to remove poops from the display, I keep polypterus and large Central American cichlids. I never have any problems with ammonia or nitrite and apart from horrible water parameters the system is very stable. The diet compose of whitebait every other day, one for each poly plus pellets, and twice a day pellet feeding for the cichlids with one siesta day. So I also have a hard time sizing the scrubber. Rules of thumb are based on frozen food in a cube... There r millions of containers with varying cube sizes....
Any input will be appreciated :)
Some of the posts said that algae scrubber can accompany plants, some said algae will eat nutrients way faster than plants and that adjusting it is hard. But all that was regarding water plants.....
My tap water is super hard 160, ph 8, nitrates 40-80, phosphates 5!, and I have old pipe system so I bet I got loads of metals in it as well. No aquatic plants survive! they supposed to love my water, but even Anubias is dying! Algae is 'consuming' everything!!!!! I gave up at some point with cleaning and draining the tank and left the algae be. After 2 weeks my tank was black, covered in brown algae :( I cleaned the substrate and went bare bottom, removed most plants and started a riparium, fish and emerged plants r healthy so I guess I'm doing something right.
The system is heavily stocked with oversized bio filter and mechanical filter with loads of stages to remove poops from the display, I keep polypterus and large Central American cichlids. I never have any problems with ammonia or nitrite and apart from horrible water parameters the system is very stable. The diet compose of whitebait every other day, one for each poly plus pellets, and twice a day pellet feeding for the cichlids with one siesta day. So I also have a hard time sizing the scrubber. Rules of thumb are based on frozen food in a cube... There r millions of containers with varying cube sizes....
Any input will be appreciated :)