Algae Issues....

dmarhue

Registered Member
Aug 28, 2009
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0
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Hello Everyone.

I'm looking for a little bite of advice. I'm maintaining a tank in a retirement home. It is a 6O gallon tank with substrate, a few plants, 2 angel fish, 3 platys, 4 tetras, and 3 dwarf gouramis. It has a canopy with a regular flourescent light that came with the canopy.

Over the past month, I've noticed large amounts of algae accumulation on the substrate and walls of the aquarium. I believe that this is do to the fact that the tank is in a hallway in the home where lights are on 24/7. These lights are on for security, so they can not be turned off. The canopy is on a timer set for 9 hours.

I've been doing weekly water changes of about 10%. And I change the carbon filter, and floss once every two months. The filter is a canister filter.

What can I do to limit the amount of algae growth. I've heard that algaecides are harmful for the tank, so I'm concerned about using them. But, the algae is becoming unmanageable, and unsightly.

Does anyone have any ideas.

Thanks,

Devin
 
Sounds like you may be a bit restricted in what you can do.

Maybe more (low-light) plants to use up the nutrients that the algae is using? Bigger water changes might also help in that respect.
 
do you know what kind of algae it is? there is a link to some algae descriptions in my signature.

as a starter i would start doing 30% water changes weekly instead of 10%. it will remove even more 'nutrients' in your tank that algae will love to feast on.

how long has this tank been setup?
 
From your description of the algae I'm thinking it could be blue green algae. That actually might be a good thing in your case because you can kill it with meds and once it's dead it should stay dead. A picture would be great.
 
thanks for the help guys. I'll take some pictures on Monday when I got back to the home.

The algae on the rocks at the bottom the tank look dark brown in colour, but the algae on the tank walls look more green. A couple of weeks ago, the tank was over feed, because the automatic feeder was set for three drops, so I think that might have cause a big problem, by over feeding that week. I did a big clean last week with a gravel vac, so hopefully that will help

I have not fertilized at all, but I do have a CO2 setup (one of the yeast/sugar units). But, I had a lot of the plants die a couple of weeks ago.... I don't know if it was because the CO2 ran out, or if the fish ate them. So there was a lot of debris on the bottom of the tank when I did the gravel vac. I think I sucked most of it up when I went in a couple of days ago.

Thanks again for your help guys... This is a great site!

Devin
 
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