The lights are on timers

Inga

Alright, I got timers for the aquarium lights and set them to exactly 8 hours.

I dose with Seachems Flourish 2 times a week.

I added Root tabs to the substrate for the heavier feeders.

I cut out all the leaves that had algae on them.

What more can I do to pump my plants up again without getting any algae?

I used to have my lights on for 9 1/2 hours a day without issue. The darn algae is a tough nut to crack, it seems. Once you get some, it doesn't go away without a fight. For awhile I was beginning to think it was winning but now, I may have turned the corner. I am not seeing any new algae and hopefully all the plants I cut down will start to regrow some healthy leaves. I cut the grass like plants down to the bottom so hopefully they can return to their former glory as well.

Any suggestions as to what else can be done are welcome.

Geomancer

Unless you have a lot of plants, maybe only one fertilizer dose a week. If you put more in than the plants can use, the algae will happily use the extra.

A little algae isn't bad though either, it consumes ammonia and nitrates the same as plants, and is more natural. But if it's out of control, reducing the light (intensity and/or duration) is your best defense.

Maxillius

I had problems with algae in my aquarium even after reducing light and trimming and heavy scrubbing and less ferts,
even did one more water change a week and it dident stop it completely
I read about the algae scrubber on here
Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!
so I decided that maybe If I did something of the sort it may help, so what I did was simply to stop cleaning the exit of my filter since it was always regrowing back anyways now its tick with algae might not be pretty but the rest of the tank is doing a lot better with algae I guess that by letting them establish there they take up the excess nutrients in the water for the rest of the tank and since i have a medium planted tank id say just that is enough!
I do still have problems on my Anubias but .... supposedly I'm not the only one hehe I'm gonna move them soon in the shade and it should help!
anyhow I'm going away from the subject hope this helps if the light reducing and ferts reduction doesn't help!

Inga

I think at this point anyone looking at my tank would say "you don't have algae" but it annoys me that there is any in there. It annoys me that because of my stupidity my once very healthy, heavily planted tank looks somewhat bare now. I am sure that in no time it will be lush looking again but I am struggling with the balance. It seemed so easy before and now, I am impatient with seeing growth. I swear that before I was forever clipping plants as they were growing so fast and now they are not growing. They took a hit so I can't expect them to do much right now. They are likely going through a rest and recuperation period. Hopefully that won't take too much longer.


Max, Thanks for the idea. I am not sure I want to get into all that but I appreciate the idea. At this point I am staying as low tech as possible.