Algae Cycle? Nitrogen? Someone HELP!

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mack606

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Feb 15, 2004
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Vancouver, Canada eh
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Hi,
I have a bad hair algae problem in my tank. I don't have a very good understanding of what type of balance/imbalance algae needs to survive. Heres my little tank setup:
  • 10 gallon tank
  • 2x13W flourecent bulbs (its pretty bright)
  • Fish- 2 ottos, 3 small zebra danios and 2 snails
  • Cleaning routine- 30% water change, gravel cleaning and algae scrubbing once a week
  • Filter- Top Fin 10 "hang-on" style filter with carbon in the media
  • No plants

When I add plants, for some reason my algae seems to grow even qucicker if that makes any sense. What do you suggest I do to limit the growth of algae?
 

got_nailed

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Mar 26, 2004
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When you plant your tank you need to over plant the tank. This will starve your algae. You might want to use some Co2 for the first few weeks with those lights. I would get a bunch of the stem plants that fit your tank type. Before planting get the nitrates down as low as possible. I would go with daily water changes with gravel vacuum. You will get some algae at fist that might last a while but you’ll have to live with it. When you get your plants get a lot of stem plants and you should pull through this.
 

Hound

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Feb 20, 2004
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26 watts over 10 gallons of water for more that say 30 minutes a day should equal a tank full of algae. A couple of bunches of something like anacharis could probably go a long way to keeping the algae at bay, but I'm fairly certain there are other plants you'd rather have in there.
 

daveedka

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Jan 30, 2004
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I would do a 4 or 5 day blackout, Allow no light at all ( you can do this with a planted tank also) Next step is big frequent water changes to strip the tank of nutrients as much as possible. It's hard to do but try to get your nitrates down well below 20 the lower the better if you have no plants. Reduced feeding will help with this immensely. In all honesty if you don't have plants, I would cut the light to minimum or none at all after the blackout. If you plant plants as said above, you will deal with some algea, but healthy plants will eventually take over. 2.6 WPG is pretty high light, I'm not an expert but everything I've read says you will need Carbon of some kind (flourish excell, CO2 etc. ) in order to keep things in balance.
 
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