Hi All, I hope your well. I have to say I've enjoyed the fact that the pubs are open again and particularly my rugby club, just a shame there's no rugby in sight.
I've been moving on with my, relatively new tank and was about to get more fish and plants but the green algae has struck. Its all over the plants (I now know one isn't a proper aquarium plant) I have and the ornaments. More detail below but I'm wondering if it's normal at this point or I'm over feeding.
The tank is an Aqua Vogue 245 Litres: Depth: 45.0cm | Width: 120.0cm | Height: 55.0cm.
I took delivery 21/5/20. I put in standard gravel but also 4 shallow plastic take away boxes filled with tetra complete substrate and planted a few plants into these boxes at the back and a few smaller plants directly into the gravel at the front. I left it a while then slowly added the fish over a three week period.
The current stock list is 6 black neon tetra, 1 Platty
, 3 Five striped barbs, 1 black widow tetra, 1 bristle nosed pleco, 1 dwarf chain loach
, 2 three spot Gourami, The community creator tool puts this at 28% stock.
The plan is to make up the shortfall where I have shoaling fish then add a couple of rainbow fish
I have been trying to do water changes weekly of about 40 ltrs. I didn't do this at first but have been for last few weeks. I've had a brown algae attack and this has now gone.
I feed weekly with a plant food. I feed the fish flake food daily and alternate each day with a few dried shrimp pellets plus an algae wafer 1 day and some frozen daphnia the next. Maybe that's to much but, the flake all seems to go quickly and the fish get very active when feeding?
I do regular water tests and my Nitrate level has been slowly growing, its at 40ppm (could be higher) now and I did a pwc yesterday. Everything else is low and PH at a steady 8. The water is hard.
So what I'd like to know, if you have the time is;
Is green algae just normal at this stage?
Am I feeding too much? I appreciate that's difficult to know.
Am I doing the right things?
Should I add more plants now.
Would it be a bad idea to add any fish now?
Thanks.