Will cutting back to 1wpg make an impact. I am thinking that at these levels the plants will use less and the algae more, I am liking the idea of a blackout right now, and will see where that gets me.
ID this algae.
- Thread starter TimmyB42386
- Start date
Excessive phosphates
I have not solved my algae problems yet, so you can take my reply with a grain of salt. Maybe someone who knows what they are doing can confirm the direction discussed here.
I am being told that one of the big issues is the phosphates that are very commonly found in most of our water and probably half of the additives we all use (get your fish box out and look at the labels on all the stuff). Phosphates are one of the issues the ecologists are always talking about (using soap with no phosphates... sound familiar?).
To remove these phosphates you can use water physically stripped of all minerals such as using only reverse osmosis water. Another alternative is to filter your water by using Phosgard or another such medium in your filter.
My experience so far...
When initially tested, my water was well over 2.0 ppm. After adding phosguard to one of the baskets in my fluval the phosphate level started to drop. I read out here on the internet that most algae cannot live with phosphates that are under 0.2 ppm so that has been my target.
When I have the phosphates below 0.2, it all dies and does not rebloom.. for a while. It has been tough for me to keep the phosphates that low.
This may be a direction for you to consider.
You asked about experience with reducing light, I do not know. I have not tried it and would not suggest to anyone that they try something that has not been suggested by another that has tried it and is not just passing on third party information or guessing. Do not listen to me about these light issues...but I can positively tell you that this is not a necessarily an excessive light issue. Water quality needs to be checked.
I had NO algae. I took someone's advice (exactly what I am telling you to avoid in the last paragraph). They said that using C02 and a coral-life light with 120 watts on my 29 gallon tank was most likely making the plants use nutrients in the water column faster than I thought. So I added Excel everyday and had algae on the sides and then string algae on the plants within a week. BTW, this is when my current nightmare began.
I am off of my soapbox. Take it for what it's worth.
tnx
-a
I have not solved my algae problems yet, so you can take my reply with a grain of salt. Maybe someone who knows what they are doing can confirm the direction discussed here.
I am being told that one of the big issues is the phosphates that are very commonly found in most of our water and probably half of the additives we all use (get your fish box out and look at the labels on all the stuff). Phosphates are one of the issues the ecologists are always talking about (using soap with no phosphates... sound familiar?).
To remove these phosphates you can use water physically stripped of all minerals such as using only reverse osmosis water. Another alternative is to filter your water by using Phosgard or another such medium in your filter.
My experience so far...
When initially tested, my water was well over 2.0 ppm. After adding phosguard to one of the baskets in my fluval the phosphate level started to drop. I read out here on the internet that most algae cannot live with phosphates that are under 0.2 ppm so that has been my target.
When I have the phosphates below 0.2, it all dies and does not rebloom.. for a while. It has been tough for me to keep the phosphates that low.
This may be a direction for you to consider.
You asked about experience with reducing light, I do not know. I have not tried it and would not suggest to anyone that they try something that has not been suggested by another that has tried it and is not just passing on third party information or guessing. Do not listen to me about these light issues...but I can positively tell you that this is not a necessarily an excessive light issue. Water quality needs to be checked.
I had NO algae. I took someone's advice (exactly what I am telling you to avoid in the last paragraph). They said that using C02 and a coral-life light with 120 watts on my 29 gallon tank was most likely making the plants use nutrients in the water column faster than I thought. So I added Excel everyday and had algae on the sides and then string algae on the plants within a week. BTW, this is when my current nightmare began.
I am off of my soapbox. Take it for what it's worth.
tnx
-a
Not really sure of a good way to get rid of it, but doing the black out won't work. The algae will go dormant and when you take the cover off it will appear to be dead but then it will just come right back. You can take an algae covered rock let it sit in a dry place for months and then put it back in to the water and it will come right back. If you do find a solution to the algae problem let me know so if I ever have one I can handle it with a swiftness. good luck
hmm...
I had something kinda like this on my Red Ludwigas...I had to cut them back down all the way to the root and left a little bit of stem. I also did a week long black-out that really didnt seem to do to much, but when I went to 1wpg my BBA left very quickly. Hope this helps!
I had something kinda like this on my Red Ludwigas...I had to cut them back down all the way to the root and left a little bit of stem. I also did a week long black-out that really didnt seem to do to much, but when I went to 1wpg my BBA left very quickly. Hope this helps!
Its currently in a blackout til thursday.. its worth a shot. I will then cut back to 1wpg and start dosing flourish excel. And maybe regular flourish. I dunno whether it will hurt or help. I also have flourish Iron. Not sure which to use though. I will probably just stick with the excel unless someone thinks i should use the other ferts.
I had the same exact algae and I was able to get rid of it. I'm pretty sure it's either brush or staghorn. It's definitely not beard algae
Mine started off light in color and eventually turned brown, then onto a red as it died off.
I did a number of things, it dying off was probably a combination of everything. What the heck, here's the rundown.
1. Flourish Excel (wonderful stuff if you dont' have pressurized CO2)
2. Flourish Potassium and eventually dry ferts
3. Cut my light cycle to 8 hours.
4. Plenty of CO2
5. Stopped dosing with micronutrients, I guess I dont' need them with the Flourite substrate. I am positive the excessive iron in my tank was the main cause of the algae explosion.
6. Did water changes every couple of days, kept nitrates within 10% of 20ppm at all times regardless of how inconvienant it was.
7. Just a note, I didn't dose with phosphates and I use RO water, so my phosphates probably hit 0 before the algae died off.
that's pretty much it. The stuff comes back when I don't use Flourish Excel or Potassium so it's probably just an imbalance. I'd imagine if any one of these fell out of whack the stuff would come back.
and i have like 5WPG on my tank.. Everyone said I was nuts but I didn't cut back on the amount of light, just the length of the light cycle.. my lighting setup is sort of inefficient anyways
Like I was told and found to be true. You need your plants outcompeting the algae. They won't do it if they don't have any CO2 or light. Cutting down on the lighting too much will help the algae grow in my opinion, I'd imagine they need less light than most plants do.
I can almost guarantee the leaf zone is hurting more than it is helping. Plants need iron but they need light and CO2 more. In my humble opinion you're just feeding the algae with that stuff. There's more iron in your tank than your plants can use because you're not injecting CO2.
try not to expect results overnight. It took a couple of weeks before I noticed any difference in my tank.. but it happened. My tank went from being completely covered in the stuff (I was soo close to giving up) to being algae free just doing what i mentioned above.
edit: I want to mention that for about a week it didn't seem like anything was happening. The algae continued to grow.. but one day I woke up and it was red'sh in color, within 48hrs 60% of the stuff was gone and in less than a week my tank was completely algae free.
I think it was the water changes removing the excessive iron. However, I want to point out again that if I miss even 3 days of dosing potassium and excel, the algae starts growing back, so it's not just the iron.. but I'm sure even dosing excel and potassium if I added iron the algae would come back.
Mine started off light in color and eventually turned brown, then onto a red as it died off.
I did a number of things, it dying off was probably a combination of everything. What the heck, here's the rundown.
1. Flourish Excel (wonderful stuff if you dont' have pressurized CO2)
2. Flourish Potassium and eventually dry ferts
3. Cut my light cycle to 8 hours.
4. Plenty of CO2
5. Stopped dosing with micronutrients, I guess I dont' need them with the Flourite substrate. I am positive the excessive iron in my tank was the main cause of the algae explosion.
6. Did water changes every couple of days, kept nitrates within 10% of 20ppm at all times regardless of how inconvienant it was.
7. Just a note, I didn't dose with phosphates and I use RO water, so my phosphates probably hit 0 before the algae died off.
that's pretty much it. The stuff comes back when I don't use Flourish Excel or Potassium so it's probably just an imbalance. I'd imagine if any one of these fell out of whack the stuff would come back.
and i have like 5WPG on my tank.. Everyone said I was nuts but I didn't cut back on the amount of light, just the length of the light cycle.. my lighting setup is sort of inefficient anyways
Like I was told and found to be true. You need your plants outcompeting the algae. They won't do it if they don't have any CO2 or light. Cutting down on the lighting too much will help the algae grow in my opinion, I'd imagine they need less light than most plants do.
I can almost guarantee the leaf zone is hurting more than it is helping. Plants need iron but they need light and CO2 more. In my humble opinion you're just feeding the algae with that stuff. There's more iron in your tank than your plants can use because you're not injecting CO2.
try not to expect results overnight. It took a couple of weeks before I noticed any difference in my tank.. but it happened. My tank went from being completely covered in the stuff (I was soo close to giving up) to being algae free just doing what i mentioned above.
edit: I want to mention that for about a week it didn't seem like anything was happening. The algae continued to grow.. but one day I woke up and it was red'sh in color, within 48hrs 60% of the stuff was gone and in less than a week my tank was completely algae free.
I think it was the water changes removing the excessive iron. However, I want to point out again that if I miss even 3 days of dosing potassium and excel, the algae starts growing back, so it's not just the iron.. but I'm sure even dosing excel and potassium if I added iron the algae would come back.
I did a max cleaning on it, cut off sadly most of the anubias, and was left with fresh stuff. Did another water change, and most of this stuff looked red before I blacked the tank out. We'll see on Thursday what kind of progress we get. My 2 liter of excell should be by then... there is some great info here... thanks guys..
