I've tried reading as many threads here and guides elsewhere as I can, but I can't make this work for me and it's really starting to put me off of keeping fish. Hopefully people here can help my address my specific problems and I can get on with the tank again!
PLANTSI've never had much luck with plants, my experience has been of the "buy them, watch them slowly die, replace them" variety, but once I got settled into my new house I decided it was time to give it another go and try to really get to grips with my fish tank.
I don't even know what kind of plants I have, but they were all bought as plants that didn't need to be kept in special substrate and could be either grown on ornaments (or came attached to ornaments) or would float in the tank. I've attached photos of my plants, there are three pieces of what I think is Amazon Frogbit, two of the broad-leafed plant and three of the narrow-leafed plant (Java Fern, perhaps?).
The Amazon Frogbit looks like it's disintegrating and the leaves turn a yellow colour before becoming detached.
The broad-leafed plant has holes in it and looks like it's being nibbled. I've seen articles advising that such holes indicate a lack of phosphorus, but I dose once a week with
Easy-Life ProFito, which claims to be everything the plants need, so I should hope it's not down to a lack of nutrients.
The narrow-leafed plant has brown patches on some of the leaves. I'm not sure what this means but when I see other people's photos, their plants are green, not brown, so I'm assuming it's a bad sign.
ALGAEFrom online guides, I've identified my algae problems to be green spot algae. It's on the glass and on the tank decor - I haven't noticed it on plants or wood, but it grows on two fake rocks I have in the tank, along with my heater and filter. I've been dosing with
Easy-Life AlgExit which claims to work on almost all forms of green algae. It doesn't appear to be doing anything so far, but I'm still dosing when I clean the tank because I figure I might as well. I have to wipe the glass every week and every few weeks there's a big clean to scrub off as much of the algae as I can, but it just comes back every time.
GENERALThe tank is in the conservatory. I usually keep the blinds shut, so it doesn't get direct sunlight, but the room does get a lot of natural light when the weather permits. There's an air stone in the tank, and the lights are on from 8-10 in the morning and 4-8 in the evening. I do one 50% water change each week (and when I've really gone to town on scrubbing the algae, this gets up to about 75%) and use
Tetra AquaSafe when changing the water, along with the ProFito and AlgExit above. I feed daily in the evening and don't overfeed - everything gets eaten, there isn't anything left sitting around.
The tank contains 7 panda cories, about ten amano shrimp and 1 cockatoo apisto. Nitrites and ammonia read zero with the API liquid test kit, and nitrate is in the 20-40ppm region, which is the same as my tap water. The pH is about 7.6 and my water hardness is 6.66dH.
Algae thrives, plants do not, fish/shrimp seem fine. Any ideas?