Hi. I've been lurking here awhile, time to post something.
I've been keeping an aquarium for 8 years now, mostly successfully. More on that later.
My 72 gallon bow-front recently developed cracks in the frame, so I replaced it with a 90 gallon. I was able to move my old gravel, filter media and about 65 gallons of my old water to the new tank, so no cycling problems. Nitrites & ammonia are zero and never spike.
My goal is a peaceful freshwater community tank, planted but not heavily planted, and I don't want to futz with it continually. I currently have some corys, clown loaches, neon tetras, black neon tetras, Buenos Aires tetras, rainbows and a couple of oto's.
As I said, it's a 90-gallon tank, with a Fluval 405 canister filter. Filter media is/was carbon and the BioMax ceramic thingies.
Water here in Colorado is from snow melt, so it's real soft. My test kit doesn't have GH/KH tests, just a "water hardness" test. It reads about 50-60ppm. My tap water is pH 7.4+. This is where my problem begins, I think.
Ever since I began keeping a tank, I've fought problems with free-floating algae - ugly green cloudy water. I've always cleared it up using a HOT-250 filter with the micron cartridge and some diatom powder. If it was especially bad I'd throw in some Kent ProClear. The problem would usually re-occur in a few weeks or a month. I recently installed a UV water polisher and so far so good - my water is crystal clear at this point.
So ... a week ago I removed all of my "plastic plant-shaped objects" and replaced them with live plants and a chunk of driftwood. Looks real nice. I removed the carbon from my filter so as to not interfere with the plant food supplement. Filtration at this time is mechanical/biological only. If I can keep these plants alive for a month or so, I'll probably double the plant load.
Here's my problem:
I have always used a product called "Proper pH 7.0" to bring down the pH of my tap water when doing water changes. Yesterday I re-read the directions on the jar and it said that it should not be used in an aquarium with live plants, as it's a phosphate buffer.
Well, I've never heard any controversy about phosphates, so I went online and Google'd it.
Wow! From what I read,
a phosphate-based pH buffer is essentially "Purina algae chow"!! That's probably what caused my algae problems all these years!
I expect the phosphate levels in my tank are off the chart due to the use of a phosphate pH buffer. I see that Aquarium Pharmaceuticals makes a phosphate test kit, I'll get one and see.
I understand that there are products I can put in my filter to scrub out phosphates. Are they any good? Worth the trouble? The UV polisher has the algae under control at this point, so is it better to just control phosphates with regular water changes? Will my new plants bring down the phosphate levels appreciably?
...and what are some good pH control products that don't contain phosphates?
Thanks for any thoughts you might have,
Mike
The plants love the PO4 and Out Compete the algae.
