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About me:
I've been keeping planted aquariums and shrimp breeding tanks for almost a decade and for the majority of that time aquariums were my primary hobby. In 2021 I had ~30 tanks running simultaneously containing almost 200 types of plants that I had collected over a 5 year period and more than a dozen types of shrimp. In this time, it was harder for me to not setup new tanks than it was to grow any aquatic plant sent my way. Below are some of the tanks I've kept over the years.






At the end of 2021 I moved from Texas to Massachusetts and gave away all of my plants, tanks, and shrimp to friends I had made over the years. It took some time to find a permanent place to live so I didn't have any tanks until I was unexpectedly given an ADA 120P in summer of 2023.

The early days of the 120P:
I went through the typical tank start growing pains with a diatoms phase, green hair algae, and every other issue one would expect from a new tank. Even with the new tank difficulties, it only took me 2 months to get to a healthy tank again. For the next 1.5 years, everything went smoothly and the tank went through many iterations.

Setup on June 28th

Diatoms outbreak on July 19th

Green hair algae outbreak by August 18th

Everything was cleaned up and growing great by September 1st

The start of the disaster:
In February 2025, I started running into issues. BBA started growing in small tufts on the substrate and green hair algae started attacking the old growth on the plants. I'd run into this issue in the past and was usually able to fix it pretty quickly by dialing in the CO2, cleaning the substrate, cleaning filters, and replanting only the most healthy tops of the plants. Even after doing this multiple times, I haven't had any luck fixing the algae. It always comes back


The start of the algae

Multiple trim and replant cycles along with some new plants

Relatively clean after a trim and replant cycle

10 days later

Where I am today:
I'm getting so frustrated by the persistent issues that I'm about ready to shut down this tank. As a last ditch effort, I purchased a pack of healthy plants from Burr740 to see if healthy plants can help me get through the algae phase and get back into a good place.

The tank as of January 2nd 2026. The healthiest plants in the tank were received earlier this week from Burr740.

Really poor color on my plants with a lot of green algae on the lower leaves. The nice looking bacopa is from Burr740. The original stems of Bacopa have barely grown in the last month. If I pull them up, there are very few roots.

Another example of the old growth issues. The Limnophila mini vietnam also has not grown at all in the last month. Lots of algae grows on the substrate as well.

Another comparison of Burr's Ludwigia sp. red vs mine. Very slow growth and poor rooting.

Really weak older growth on Rotala sp. singapore and poor coloration compared to Burr's plants. This plant has always been very easy for me to keep and this is part of why I'm thinking there is something big that I'm missing. Didiplis diandra is another easy plant that keeps melting at the base and its making very little progress because of this.


Below is the key information about the tank.
Tank size: ADA 120P (120 cm x 45 cm x 45 cm)
Lighting: 3x NiloCG Prizms ran at the lowest setting for each channel. Lights are on for 7 hours a day. I want to increase the lighting, but any time I do the algae gets significantly worse
Filtration: Oase Biomaster 600 and a SunSun HW-303B. There's a spraybar on the bottom left that points along the length of the tank at substrate level and the other output is on the top right corner of the tank pushing the opposite direction.
CO2: Vertical reactor on the SunSun filter and a Sera reactor on the Oase. CO2 comes on 4 hours before lights on and turns off 1 hr before lights off. Drop checker is yellow when lights turn on. The pH drop is ~1.4-1.5 at lights on (5.8 at lights on and 7.3 when water is fully degassed). Plants start pearling within 10 minutes of the lights coming on.
Substrate: A mix of ADA aquasoil, Fluval stratum, and Controsoil. A bag of Controsoil was added ~2 months ago to try and give the plants a boost. The remaining substrate is from when I setup the tank and is almost certainly not providing much nutrition or buffering capacity.
Water change schedule: Weekly 70-80% water changes with tap water coming from the MWRA (water report here). KH is ~2. GH is less than 1(3.7 PPM Ca, 0.7 PPM Mg based on the report). Water is treated with sodium carbonate at the water treatment plant to increase the pH to ~9.2, but the pH rapidly decreases after the water comes out of the tap. One potential issue is the tap water is extremely cold. It comes out at ~50F and I add a mix of water from the tap along with heated water. The temperature drops to ~60F for 2-3 hours whenever I water change. I don't keep any livestock so I'm not sure if this is a problem. This was not something I needed to consider back in Texas.
Remineralization: I add 22 PPM calcium and 6 PPM magnesium at water change
Fertilization: 20N-6P-26K is added immediately after water change. A second dose at 10N-3P-13K is added halfway through the week. Micros are Burr740's most recent recipe dosed at 0.15 PPM Fe 3x per week.
Temperature: Tank is heated to 73F during the winter. During the more mild parts of the year I remove the heater and go with whatever the ambient temperature is.

It looks like I'm doing everything right on paper and based on my past experience keeping tanks, but there is clearly some major issue ongoing. Right now I'm thinking its inconsistency in the CO2 that I'm just not seeing (I just started the CO2 2 hours earlier last week because I was noticing the drop checker wasn't always yellow at lights on), not enough light, or too cold of water during water changes. I want to keep some records through this journal to keep myself engaged with the tank and to make sure I'm being consistent with everything. I'm also hoping some additional eyes can help me see where I'm going wrong because I really, really miss having a nice looking tank.