Thoughts on preventing green water again...

• pH:
• Temp:
• KH: 4
• GH: 5
• NH4:
• NO2:
• NO3: 10-20
• PO4: 1.5
• Iron:
• Dosing: 5 mL Flourish, 2.5 ppm KNO3
• NO3:PO4 Cumulative Dosing Ratio: 17.5:1.55 = 11.3

Notes:
Here are the before and after pictures:

Green water a couple days ago

After the flocculant/diatom filter treatment

Here is a picture of the diatom filter in action:


Here's the filter after a couple hours:


The plants seem to not have grown much/at all during the worst of the green water. The algae was probably sucking down all the nutrients + blocking the light from the plants. There also wasn't much green dust algae during this time. The dwarf hairgrass seems to be a bit yellow, some of the blades dying, perhaps from lack of light. There's also a fine grey powder that is coating most of the plants, probably the particles that fell out of suspension from the flocculant.

Tthe green water seems to have been triggered when I uprooted my Rotala indica/rotundifolia and trimmed it back heavily. The rotala is the fastest growing and provides the most plant mass to my tank. I like to replant the tops, since they're nicer looking, but that means I'm always uprooting the bottom half. It grows like a weed, so I have a tendency to prune it back drastically just so I'm not always constantly pruning it. I always do a 50% water change after mucking around the tank, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Someone recommended that I should boost the biological filtration (ie getting a bigger filter like the Eheim 2050), but I don't really want to buy another filter, at least for now, because of the cost and lack of space in the aquarium cabinets.

Here are the changes I will probably implement to try to avoid green water:
--Try to prune back the plants less severely
--Do a 70-75% water change instead of 50% if I'm uprooting/pruning plants.
--After the water change, add a dose of bacteria starter (hey, it can't hurt)
--Think of replacing some of the mechanical filtration media with more biological filtration media in the AquaClear filter.

Another thing I've been thinking about is to get the Eheim sludge extractor so I can really vaccuum up all the debris. The debris always seems to collect faster than I vaccuum up during my weekly water changes. I'll probably wait, though, till I get the UBYAG (Urge To Buy Yet Another Gadget).

I added another 1 tsp of baking soda, to raise the KH from 4 back to 5. I also dosed the micro fertilizer (Flourish) at night today to see if it is any different from dosing it in the morning. The water has grown slightly cloudy by the end of today, I hope that it doesn't grow any more cloudy...