Phosphates and Nasty Algae
Good day,
Giving a bit of experience I had with massive amounts of hair and black beard algae and our local water district with my 65 and how I finally got rid of it.
So initially I was running straight tap water in my 65, the water out of the tap had the following parameters.
PH - 7.5
KH - 4
GH - 4
I was bumping both the KH with baking soda and GH with Seachem Equilibrium to about 7-8 each due to certain plants I had and for shrimp. I was dosing ferts using the Estimative Index (EI) method, keeping NITRATES about 5ppm. Light duration was about 8 hours. Finally was injecting CO2 and getting the 1-point PH drop steady throughout the photoperiod.
Then after several weeks I started seeing literally massive amounts of green hair algae and then black beard algae everywhere. I would spend days and days and then weeks and weeks, removing hardscape and plants and cleaning\removing algae with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. It was getting out of hand. I spoke to Kyle here on Aquascapeguide and he suggested I test for Phosphates as elevated levels will cause nasty algae.
I received the Phosphate test kit and found my Phosphate levels were between 5.0ppm and 10.0ppm. I did some research on our local water district to see if they were adjusting their water parameters and sure enough they were injecting Phosphates into the water to prevent corrosion and having lead and copper from dissolving into he water supply. I also bought a TDS meter and it was reading 125-150.
So now I knew what was likely causing the algae outbreak (elevated Phosphate levels) and where it was coming from (our water supply). So I could not use our tap water anymore and decided to purchase a RODI system and I also purchased some Granular Ferric Oxide (GFO) and followed the directions to add to the canister filter.
Good news was the phosphate levels dropped almost instantly adding the GFO and performing a 50% water change with RODI water. The algae problem was now gone 😄. Phosphates are now 0.0-0.5ppm, TDS is at 0 and though "making water" as I call it with the RODI system is a lot of funtechwork, I'd rather put water in 7 gallon jugs then deal with that algae problem any day!!!