Big maintenance day tomorrow and will be planting the new additions - plus rooting out the last of the doomed H.Costata...
Still pondering this question of lighting in the tank, particularly with the specific notion of where natural light fits in with, or set against, the tank lights... I'm so tempted to turn the lights down a fraction more even, maybe knock another quarter hour off perhaps... Then logic tells me to leave well alone while the BBA is receding...
Difficult not to get drawn into the conclusion that too much light is behind the BBA, as I'm sure it's probably not that straightforward, but I'd be tempted to advise anybody suffering from BBA to reduce their photoperiod significantly after this experience...
Interesting take on the carbon aspect
@Helen I can say that I think following Adam's advice (
the planted tank guy @ Wharf) to the letter meant that I only boosted the fertilisers without adding any carbon and this didn't seem to do a lot of good until I did start adding carbon and thus bringing that entire notion of balance under the microscope... It strikes me now that it is unwise to add fertilisers in large amounts without adding carbon to complete that nutrition picture as a whole...
For the record, here's what I did in terms of trying to follow that advice and amounts of fertilisers added etc:
24th April 10ml TNC Complete added, with a view to dosing twice a week at two thirds of the recommended weekly dose each time... No carbon added...
Then following chats on the forum here, switched to 3ml TNC Complete daily from 26th April... Still no carbon added...
3ml TNC Complete added daily, without carbon up to and including 7th May...
8th May dropped TNC Complete to 2ml per day... Still no carbon yet...
11th May started adding 0.5ml TNC Carbon along with the 2ml TNC Complete...
17th May boosted Carbon to 1ml per day and still on 2ml per day Complete...
22nd May boosted Carbon to 2ml per day and still on 2ml Complete...
28th May dropped both Carbon & Complete to 1ml per day...
Still on the 1ml each of TNC Carbon and TNC Complete now and tank has that "lushness" about it again at the moment... Will maintain these levels for a while now and see how things progress...