Algae in an African Tank

TheFanatic

TheFanatic

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Apr 14, 2004
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This is my first serious African Tank. I once had a planted 55 with Dafodil's and yellow labs. Usually go with South Americans. But once I saw some of the crazy Africans I could buy I converted a 110 gallon to Africans.

My question is, how do I control Algae? Can the exotic plecos I love in my S.A. tanks handle the water conditions and aggression of an African tank? Ottos? SAE's?

The rub here is that it is also a planted tank. I know, plants and Africans don't go together. I was able to pull it off with dafodils and yellow labs. Going with peacocks and am thinking that I can pull it off.

How do I put enough light in there for the plants to thrive and keep the resultant algae in check?
 
Depends on the plants. Try some java fern or anubias and you wont need that much light anyways. Otos and SAE's are for sure a no. Some people can pull off having plecos in their African tank though generally I would advise against it.
 
jpappy789 said:
Depends on the plants. Try some java fern or anubias and you wont need that much light anyways. Otos and SAE's are for sure a no. Some people can pull off having plecos in their African tank though generally I would advise against it.
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Currently I have Amazon Swords and Jungle Vals. Was looking to add some anubias. Java fern would be cool too.

I was thinking a couple of bristle nose plecos could handle the aggression of the Africans.
 
I have a 75 gallon with a bristle nose pleco. He seems to be doing well; been in there about 6 weeks. I have a few Java Ferns in there. Been in there the same 6 weeks. They look all but dead. I mean, the roots seem to be alive but the the green leaves are all brown and partly/mostly see through now. There's no shortage of nitrates for the plants. Bright side is that the fish don't touch them.

I'm not thrilled with the performance of the BN pleco. He's cooll to look at but he can't seem to keep up with the algae. I've moved from brown algae to green in the past month.
 
jpappy789 said:
like any type of algae its best to find the source of the problem, ie too much lighting, nutrients (overfeeding), phosphates, ect...then just scrape it off.
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Gonna put the lights on a timer and have phosphate remover in the canister filter. I do fertilize. I'm hoping the reduced lighting and the phosphate removes will take care of business...
 
TheFanatic said:
Gonna put the lights on a timer and have phosphate remover in the canister filter. I do fertilize. I'm hoping the reduced lighting and the phosphate removes will take care of business...
Click to expand...

I think the fert will cause you problems, I used fert for my anubias and algae went mental (I use rowaphos and purigen in my filters), I've stopped using it and now just double dosing with seachem excel and it seems to be bringing the problem under control
 
jpappy789 said:
Bn's arent the best when it comes to algae anyways...
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I guess 'performance' will vary. My BN's are superb and make short work of algae:

10gal mbuna grow out tank with major algae problem (with BN pleco just added to the tank also in the shot):
before.jpg


A few days later:
after.jpg


I've begun intentionally 'harvesting' algae-covered rocks in a different tank for my BN's to 'snack on' since any algae in their tank is decimated and the mbuna's compete with them for the algae disks.

Algae coated 'snack' rock added to tank:
nightbefore.jpg


About 8hrs later:
morningafter.jpg
 
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