Brush and Staghorn Invasion

[Radek Z]

My 240l (55g I guess) is going through the brush and staghorn algae invasion. The tank is restart of the previous tank (same size) which cracked early December. I have managed to save the filter media and the tank did not go through the cycle (virtually no NH4 or NO2 spikes to speak of).

It's moderatelly planted tank (bacopas, cabombas, swordplants) and I have 8 serpaes, 8 black phantoms, 3 red eyes, 8 black mollies, 4 clown loaches, 3 ottos and 3 SAEs.

The water chemistry is: Temp - 26.4 C; pH - 7.5; GH - 7; KH - 5; NH4 - 0; NO2 - 0; NO3 - 12.5; PO4 - 1.5 ; Fe - 0; O2 - 5; CO2 - 5.9 (based on tables).

I do 60L water change every week and there are two canisters with bio media only (EHEIMs withtotal rating for about 500L). Light is 2 x 38W fluorescent tubes.

Couple of questions: what's the best way of dealing with the algea? How close am I to overloading the tank with the fish (it's still looks quite empty but the number of fish is quite large)?

I really appreciate help with the algae - I have read a lot of posts and it seems that most of the suggestions are mechanical removal? Is that right?

By the way: WAY TO GO MARS ROVER TEAM! Buth that does not belong here...

[OrionGirl]

Not only wouldn't I add more fish--I'd take some out. You have lots of fish, some that will get big.

For algae--controlling nutrients is your best bet. With a high fish load, that means more water changes, and probably more plants. I would manually remove as much of the algae as you can, and probably do a bleach dip on the plants that will stand it (heavy, broad leaf plants do fine in a 1:15 bleach mix, for 1 minutes or so--rinse before putting them back in the tank).

[Radek Z]

I forgot to say that most of the mollies are young (one month old) and eventually these mollies should move to keep my small 10G tank going.