Green Algae no nitrates

[fabio]

Hi guys, I’m a beginner and I started my 20 gallons planted tank 3 weeks ago. I have 2 guppies and 1 platy in it.
I’m having troubles with my water parameters. From more than 2 weeks I have 1ppm ammonia, 0 nitrite and 0 nitrates. I’m treating the water with seachem prime and I added aqua forest bio life in my filter.
I can’t see any improvement. I’m stack on this parameters and I was giving it some time to let naturally start the cycle. In the last 3 days I noticed green algae coming up on the glass and on the gravel. I’m just wondering if there is a correlation between algae and the 0 nitrates level at the moment.
What could I do to bring the water parameters at an acceptable level ?
Thank you in advance!!

Water temperature 78
Ph 7.6
Gh 180
Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm

[Andre]

welcome to the club... lots of great people and a mountain of knowledge to be shared as well..

First off... what are you using to test your water parameters?

[fabio]

Thank you!
I’m using API water test kit.

[Andre]

Great!... water test kits are the way to go..

What type of filtration are you using?
Are you doing daily water changes? How much are you cleaning the tank?

I'll share a couple things with you and this might help..
First off test daily and at this point test only ammonia and Nitrite, once you have nitrites showing up on your test then start testing nitrates. (just a way to save the nitrates bottle and not waste)
What i did while i was learning the fish cycle was to log your readings from day to day which will help you visually see the changes happening in your tank.

FYI - the tank cycle can take some time to get setup and can vary in time, (4-6weeks) it can be shortened with fish but that can also be a chore to handle as you have to be on top of daily water changes etc.

[gabor129]

I agree with Andre. Also how long is you light cycle? Algae can feed on different macronutrients not just nitrogen. Phosphate being one of the main things. Unfortunately fish foods are very high in phosphate. If you overfeed you eventually can get algae problems!