Algae and plant recovery notes

• pH: 6.8
• Temp:
• KH:
• GH:
• NH4:
• NO2:
• NO3:
• PO4:
• Iron:
• Dosing: 5 mL Flourish, 0.5 ppm iron chelate
• NO3:PO4 Cumulative Dosing Ratio:

Notes:
I've noticed that the green dust that usually builds up on the tank walls hasn't made it's appearance so far this week. I wiped it down while running the diatom filter last week, so the filter probably filtered out the green dust algae as well as the green water algae.

The water is still relatively clear so far. I've been cautiously dosing Flourish and iron chelate in an attempt to try to ramp up plant growth back to full speed. The algae that had been suppressed by the green water has been slowly returning (fuzz, thread), thought they have never been too much of a problem in the first place, so I'm not too concerned about them.

The "brown sludge" algae has still been appearing this week, despite my increase in nitrates, so probably it is not related to too low nitrate levels. There goes that theory. I will continue to keep an eye on it.

A lot of the Rotala indica/rotundifolia has been growing stunted. I don't know if it's because of a deficiency in micros or if it's because of the reduced K/Ca/Mg Equilibrium dosage. I had recently reduced the Equilibrium dosage to lower the GH from 8-9 to 5-6. I had originally lowered the dosage in order to see if the holes/brown patches in the java fern was related to an excess of potassium or related somehow to the amount of K/Ca/Mg. With the lower Equilibrium dosage, I haven't seen any of the browning in the remaining java fern plantlets so far, but it is too early to come to any conclusion. I will first dose more of the Flourish/iron to see if that solves the Rotala stunting problem.

I've noticed that the CO2 bubble rate has crept up again (2.1-2.2 b/s). The angelfish were taking a couple gulps from the surface. Sometimes, toggling the solenoid on the regulator off/on helps the bubble rate stabilize. I toggled the solenoid and lowered the bubble rate back to 1.8 b/s again.