Help with lighting - is this low, moderate or high?

[riverlanddiscus]

I have a 4 foot tank with a new double high output 54w Kelvin tubes. 2 x T5 lights. Just wrote everything down on box. Will this suit all plants or thise with moderate light requirements. Hav had them for 3 weeks and algae if getting out of hand. Just got some Seachem Flourish. Did a 50%water change last night and put 5 capfuls in. Any other suggestions??

Temp 29
Ph 6.1
GH 60
KH 10
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 40

Wow! never had nitrate that high before.

PS All fish look godd, Blue diamond was laying eggs this morning. Rummy noses very red.

[rwel4809]

how many litres does your tank hold??

[riverlanddiscus]

250 litres so my hubby tells me. I will check.

[riverlanddiscus]

240 litres I have just measured it to be.

[ILLUSN]

your just shy of 2w/gal, so technicly its a low light tank, but wity t5's you could argue its a medium

[fish_r]

do u know what kind of algae ur getting ?
5 caps of seachem flourish is way too much and i would say this is contributing to ur algae problems, from memory ur supposed to use 5ml "1 cap" per 200ltrs.
flourish also only covers mainly micro nutrients so u also really need to add macros "NPK" too nitrogen/phosphorus
/potassium to get a proper balance going in the tank.
i would suggest u do a 50% water change and dont fertilize for a few days and get a hold of some NPK.

now u have higher lighting it would also help to add Co2 now as this will cut down on algae issues a little too.

also do u know the kelvin rating of the tubes u got ?

[riverlanddiscus]

kelvin rating of 10,000.

Bright green along lid, dragging into water and a very difficult to remove brown on my sword leaves.

The bottle said for the first time - got the new lights and didn't add any ferts for 4 weeks - to add 1 capful for every 40 litres.

[riverlanddiscus]

NPK? Is that from a lfs or gardening place.

[ILLUSN]

bunnings, get some potasium sulphate for p and you should be right, sounds like hair algae near the surface and diatoms on the leaves, once the tank beds in it should clear up, more co2 will help ALOT.

[fish_r]

if it's 5ml per 40ltrs u are using flourish "excel" not flourish. they are 2 different ferts. that explains it then :)

as for the ferts i use a dry mix from a place called simplegrow in sydney for micros and for my NPK "macros" i'm using ADA green brightly special lights. i am getting great results using these ferts and now get bugger all algae.

as for the tubes u could use one tube thats 10,000k and 1 tube that is 5,000k that way u will cover both red and blue spectrums needed for good growth better, this will also look good to the eye and bring out the colour of ur fishes too. aquamedic do a 5000k T5 tube called planta.

[riverlanddiscus]

Thanks to all that helped.

Apparently I may need co2 - so fish_r, when you planning that trip to the Riverland.

;P

[riverlanddiscus]

How come my emoticon didnt work?

[riverlanddiscus]

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