Hi everyone! Below are some pics of my enemy. I am still playing around with different aspects of my tank in order to try and nail it however I am posting here to get your opinions on what type of algae it is. It's brown / grey, looks like spider webs, stringy, little bit slimy when out the tank, currently nailing my new carpet plants as well as slower growers such as my ferns and anubias. Tiny bit on my stem plants. Grows extremely fast. Whatever I remove in a day is back a few days later. After some research I found the following: Description: These are very general names for a wide variety of filamentous algae. Generally green and varying in length. I have listed some of the more popular filamentous algae under their own section on this page. Cause: A range of causes including low CO2, low nutrient levels and ammonia spikes. Nothing to do with excess iron as commonly thought. Removal: Can be very difficult to eradicate at times. A high plant mass with good CO2 and a good supply of nutrients along with constantly hassling the algae seems to pay off after a while. Removal by twisting around a toothbrush or similar. Overdosing Flourish Excel, EasyCarbo or TNC Carbon can help. Amano shrimps, Rosy barbs and mollies will often eat it. More specifically: Rhizoclonium: Description: Strands of fine green or brownish threads which are soft and slimy. Cause Low CO2 and poor water flow. Low nutrient levels. General lack of maintenance. Removal Increase CO2 levels and check nutrient dosing. Give the tank a good cleaning. Overdosing Excel, EasyCarbo or TNC Carbon should also clear it. Amano shrimp will eat it.
Looks like rhizo, sometimes it goes away on its own, but as the advice at the bottom of your post states a good cleaning will also help.
it looks too dark for Rhizoclonium.. I would go with a really bad case of BBA.. take out as much as you can.. heavy dose of excel, localized, lights off for 3 days.. water change, no feeding the fish.. dose nutrients.. then lights on after 3 days only for 3 hours a day, and slowly increase an hour a day.. CO2, clean water and excel will clean it.
Thanks all. For anyone interested i'll keep posting here as the war continues. Basically it started once I added on the new light, Finnex Planted + 24/7 ( high light as the tank is only 30cm tall ). Quickly added pressurized c02 after that and started dosing Scape Complete. Almost positive it's due to the high light. After manually cleaning the tank it grows back after 2-3 days with a vengeance. Definitely not due to poor tank maintenance. At the moment I am doing 2 water changes a week with lots of manual cleaning. Double dosing Excel as well as increased my Scape dosage to bring it more in line with the high light and c02. Definitely not because of low c02 either, as a lot of the sites state as being the cause of Rhizo. Added in a molly just to help make the tank more sightly, she is eating the stuff like crazy. Going to keep my tank stable for the next 2 weeks and see how it goes. If no improvement i'll do a 3 day blackout and go from there.
My 2 cents... Cut out Scape Complete, reduce light, and overdose Excel. I had a similar problem and this sorted it for me.
Have since done two big water changes with lot's of manual removal. Cut the Scape dosing down as I think it would be too much, started getting other algae as I think the phosphates were too high. Cleaned the filter out as well and did a bunch of trimming. Hoping that the plants take off more now but will monitor it closely.
Were you doing the daily Scape Complete dosing according to the instructions on the bottle? In my low tech it was too much and I started battling algae.. I'm now only dosing once or twice a week, but as I said, that's in my low tech..
I'm not 100% sure on the ferts causing algae, iv'e read multiple times that too much phophates can cause certain types of algae. Reading up is one thing however and actually experimenting with the different factors is another and that's when I really started learning. Things are a lot more under control now, thanks for the input everyone! All about finding the balance between lights, ferts and CO2 and it's different from one tank to another. Looks like iv'e got the right amount of ferts sorted now, slightly more than what the bottle suggested. So to sum up: I have quite a high light tank so I upped my CO2 as well as my ferts. Two big water changes weekly with lots of manual removal of algae. Light cleaning of the canister filter ( it had quite a lot of debris in it due to it not being a very old setup ) Will keep posting here if any issues arise for some more advice and suggestions. Have a great week all.
I doubt it, Luis but in low-medium light / planted tech setups, you got to watch the phosphates during the summer - it encourages green algae bloom. I believe it's more of an hygiene issue as in my case - my tank was very dirty when I did a massive clean up over the weekend and man, it was filthy. Even the canister filter was as dirty as hell. I blame the snails and poor circulation. So a rescape was in order for my tank and so far, so good, I'm hoping my massive clean-up has solved the issue and fixing the circulation problem on top of that. BBA was growing on the tips of my plants and every time I put my hands in, I felt like I was being shocked - the water was way too acidic too, if I remember correctly my pH testing kit was showing around 7.8 which was way too high. With phosphates, I get a lot of green spot algae on the glass - nothing I can do except scrub it off periodically and keep an eye on the phosphates dosage as well as circulation and make sure I dont have any obstructions in the way as well. I have another question that has been burning in my mind for a while - we have fungi that grows on dead things such as wood and so on. Maybe we should treat BBA the same way? Because so far, I've seen BBA grow on dead things - specially on wood and on inanimate objects such as intake and outake filter pipes, gravel, etc... Even on plants that are dying off. I've seen it in my own tanks too.
No. Issues are: - dirty tank - overfeeding fish - unstable CO2 delivery - too much light - not enough nutrients Nutrients in the water has never caused me algae.