16 years old aquarium with hair algae
It was given to me when I was 14. And I would love to say thank you to everyone who is sharing fishkeeping advice on the internet. Forums like this allowed this tank to turn from a brown algae wasteland into a thriving habitat.
Secondly, it might not be very obvious, but this tank is suffering from hair algae. It grows mild fuzz on everything close to the surface of the water, damaging hornleaf and vallisneria. I had to get rid of a huge bush of hornleaf because it turned into one big lump of algae. The remaining bits are tucked in anubias so they won't get covered with algae but would continue growing and consuming nitrates. They grow well, a few centimetres per day.
Tests say water is clean. Light four hours a day, but strong (can't say how much in lumens as lamps are cheap and god knows how truthful the labels are). Making light day longer makes algae grow. Lowering light stops plants from growing, especially vallisneria. For now I have put one light in the back so the vallisneria is blasted with light and hornleaf can grow in lowered light. I can't afford to buy a good lamp with a dimmer and it's hard to find one that would fit in this stupid triangular aquarium, so I have to juggle what I have.
Weekly water changes, heater to 28 degrees, filter, compressor both day and night. The only thing this aquarium is missing is a co2 pipe, but aren't they for super clean aquascapes? I used to have this aquarium in a flawless condition without co2 when I had bigger fish in it.