snails? Shrimp? HELP!

[steelhumm]

ok..just noticed that the gravel and stone in my tank is green...whats the best critter to eat this algea? I have read that snails and shrimp are teh way to go? help please!!! Leaving for LFS in an hour or so.

:help:

[Kashta]

Snails and/or shrimp are always helpful. But you should solve the cause of your algae problem first before adding new stock, so you know you'll have a well-balanced system that you can sustain.

What's the tank size, lighting, water conditions? How long has it been set up? How long do you run the lights? Any plants? Is it getting natural sunlight, even indirectly?

[stezatois]

your lucky i want algae for my amano shrimp and for the nerite snails

[bazil323]

I agree with Kashta. Fix the original problem, or you will just have a vicious cycle going. Most algae problems are because either you aren't doing enough water changes or you have too much light. Try doing at least weekly 50% or greater water changes as well as limiting the amount of light that your tank gets.

If you try to "fix" the problem by adding inverts, you will just be adding more to the bioload, more so with snails I think, which will actually encourage the algae growth. And then once they eat all your algae (if they manage that) you will have to supplement their diet with algae wafers, etc. And believe me, it is so easy to accidentally overfeed inverts because you don't always know if they find the food and if they've eaten it.

[steelhumm]

thanks for the help.... I went to the lfs to check a few things out anyway but they only had ghost shrimp. I got 10 of em but mostly cause I figure they'll get eaten in a day or so anyway.

Tank is a 55 gallon planted, been setup for a few months now... I am running about 2.5wpg...only running the lights for 6 hours a day. I bought a tester at the store tonight...hope to have time tonight to test it. I did a 30% water change today...hope that helps somewhat. At this rate I won;t need to buy moss cause the algae on everything is going to look like moss soon enough

[Kashta]

I'm not very knowledgeable about planted tanks, unfortunately. But many here are and they'll come along to help with better info. In general terms, I read a lot alot about how hard it is to get the fert dosing just right so the plants are growing fast enough to use up the excess nutrients already there, which is what's feeding your algae. Your lighting is strong, but it's not a real long photo period so you wouldn't cut that back. Depending on what kind of plants you have, you could lessen the wattage for some of the time by burning one bulb instead of two... that sort of thing. Other than that, it's only been a few months and everybody gets a lot of algae with new planted tanks. It's really a fine line.

For better advice, I think they'll also want to know if you're using CO2, what ferts and what dosing, what kind of substrate is under there, how heavily is it planted, and so on. If you're not using CO2, I think most folks recommend root tabs and Flourish to give the plants a boost, thus outcompeting the algae.

Oh, and someone's bound to ask you for pictures. :)