Cynobacteria!

Do you object to floating plants at all?
Duckweed has worked wonders for me, I had cyanobac outbreak, mind you I did reduce lighting levels for a bit, but that with the floaters helped ALOT.
I also found that if you keep your plants fed, IE ferts and whatnot, it can really help.
I think I am right with cichlids in that you cant really plant the tank too much?
Lots o' plants usually help any algae outbreak, plants tend to win nutrient battles
One more note, more a question then anything, I found that when I raised my temp the outbreak happened, I have since lowered and have seen no re-appearence of it....so, does algae favour higher temps?

Hi,

I recently set up two 10 gallon tanks with potting soil substrates.
On the 5th day blue green algae appeared and soon started to coat everything.

I removed as much as I could and added Maracyn (erythromycin) at half the recommended dosage. 24 hours later there were no new outbreaks and the the BGA that I had missed was grouped
in a few dark green clusters that were easily removed. Since then the tanks have been clean of BGA.

There are others approaches that don't use antibiotics.

Good luck!

Bill

A 3 day blackout cost nothing, works in the same if not less time.
Your problem is one of plant nutrition, not algae. Killing it will not cause it from coming back.

Clean off what's there, do a 50% water change, add KNO3, at about 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gal. Do a 50% water change when the balckout is over, add thesame amount of KNO3, and keep adding about this same amount of KNO3 once or twice a week.
Clean your filter also.

This works and addresses the long term problem.
It also cost nothing to kill the BGA. Hard to argue with FREE.

Your plants are already suffering from a lack of nutrients, the light will never make or break any tank for 3 days. How do you think they ship plants?

Regards,
Tom Barr