Dead Tiger Barb causes massive plant growth

I've had a few tiger barbs for several years now in a 6 gallon plant tank. The smallest one was always ratty looking from being beat on all day by the bigger ones, yet he held on with hardly any fins for years.

This past week or so I noticed crazy plant growth in my tank. It has never looked better. Funny this is ... other than feeding them, I haven't cleaned the glass or done a water change in maybe 3-4 weeks. On top of that the co2 injector needs a refill and the lights are old. Yet the plants are going nuts.

Well last night I noticed I didn't see the little guy at feeding time. It's not a big tank, I am pretty sure he's dead. I am sorry to see him go, but he really had a hard life.

The tank looks amazing. How do you think I can keep this going? Throw a dead feeder fish in there? heh.. Plant tanks are kinda wild. SOmetimes dirty water pays off.

 

Feed the fish more or use a plant supplement. If your tank can handle the load everything wins by feeding the tank more. The planted tank thing is what my 75g was doing before I won the 6-pack.

 

My planted tanks go through algae explosions & growth spurts at different times too. I wish I could figure out how to keep the algae - sometimes it is really cool to see.
You might try fertilizer sticks to keep things going.

 

I dont even have a c02 injector, I have heard way to many stories of them failing and emptying the c02 tank in the aquarium, killing all the fish. My plants seem to do fine without it.;D

 

That is only natural that plants do much better when something organic begins to release nitrogen (NO3) into the water column. Try dosing KNO3 once a week, and you will noticed the difference. Keep the levels at 10ppm.

If you want to stop algae, keep PO4 at 2ppm (althought it may seem really high, it has no ill effects except for killing algae) and increase CO2 to 25ppm-30ppm. Remember if your plants are doing great; your algae will suffer.