Algae infestation

N

necigrad

AC Members
Feb 7, 2007
291
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0
Las Vegas, NV
I've got a ton of black hair algae (I think) and some minimal green algae on the acrylic. I added 2 otos yesterday, so hopefully that will help. I was going to replace the actanic light with a daylight, but after seeing the algae, I figure another 32 watts of light will REALLY cause algae problems. I'm just leaving it off for now, and may cut the daylight down to 10 hours, as it's currently at 12.

My other infestation (snails) doens't seem to make a dent either. I hope that adding the two Otos will help, but they've only been in there for 12 hours or so. If they can't keep up, I may add one, or possibly two, more. That should also help make them feel more comfortable. I kinda hoped my Albino Corys would jump on the algae but they're just not interested. They apparantly thing that leaves are actually hammocks for midday siestas or something.
 
In my experience Otos wont eat that nasty hair algae. You're probably overferitilizing the tank if you're fertilizing at all, especially if you're not using any CO2 and with such little lighting.. If you're adding iron or any wide range micro fert, you're just feeding the algae.

Otherwise you're going to need to balance ferts in your tank for the plants you have. There's really no other way to do it.. give them some CO2 or dry ferts (try not to overdo iron)

I now have a heavily planted tank.. if I add too much iron the algae will grow. If I stop using Excel (Carbon.. or CO2) the algae grows, if I don't add potassium, the algae grows, if I run my lights for too long (4WPG more than 10hrs) the algae grows, when I didn't have enough lighting the algae grew. if I overfeed, the algae grows. If i mess up any one of those items I'll have an algae outbreak

the snails wont eat the stuff, they'll just eat your plants (or dead parts of the plant, especially if you keep them well fed). Most of these algae eaters prefer the slimy brown algae most new tanks get and wont eat some of the harder to get rid of stuff.

If you want to get rid of your snails add a Yoyo Loach. I don't care how many you have or how big the loach is, the snails will be gone within hours.
 
You may be right on the overfertalising. I've done numerous waterchanges, and when you WC, you redoes the ferts. I'll stop that for a while, then maybe addit back i now that I'm not doing frequent changes. Been using Flourish.
 
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