My GDA Battle-Documented

Both of my tanks have been taken over by green dust algae. There seem to be two approaches to dealing with this. One involves removing the algae and doing massive water changes until it clears up. The other involves letting it grow...and grow...and grow until it dies on it's own, usually taking 3-4 weeks followed up by wiping off the dead algae and a massive water change. Both involve keeping up regular dosing. Since I have two tanks both consumed by the GDA, I have decided to conduct a little experiment using both methods. At this moment, I am about 12 days into the experiment.


Below are pictures of the tanks.

Specs:

Main Tank:
45g
Heavily Planted
Pressurized CO2(green level via drop checker with 4 dkH solution)
EI Dosing(NPK, Plantex CSM+B)
Medium Stocking
Direct Sunlight part of the day

This picture of the main tank was taken after a day of scrapping algae and a 60% water change


I will post another picture in 2 or 3 days when it's covered in GDA



Office Tank
46g Bow
Medium Planting
Pressurized CO2
EI Dosing(same as Main Tank)
Overstocked
Indirect sunlight most of the day

This picture was taken 12 days into the experiment:



At the start of the experiment I upped my phosphate dosing and reduced my lighting period by one hour in both tanks.

In the Office Tank, orange platies have started munching on the GDA. SAE's do as well, but not like the platies. At the moment, it seems the GDA isn't growing back, or at least not as quickly as the platies are eating it

Look at the picture below:


The red section, at the moment, is the thickest part of GDA. The blue section is where it is blotchy due to the platie munching. You can't really see it, but the black seciton is where the newest growth has started to brown. And finally, the yellow section is the section of lowest GDA density.


Not suprisingly, the red section is where the tank is closest to the window.




Further update:

Main Tank: I dropped the blinds in the window where it gets the most sunlight from. I also decreased the photoperiod down to 8 hours.

Office Tank: I have two bulbs. I don't have a timer on this light yet, so I turned one bulb on for while I'm at work today, and I'll turn the other on when I get home today, whereas previously both bulbs have been on all day.