need help with alage problems.

D

drew22to375

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Jul 15, 2003
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Hello all,

I need some help on alage control. My setup.

29gal. 3" of Sandblasting sand for substrate. asorted rocks from nursury 80 watts of NO flourecents. 1 naubis nana. Inhabitants: firemouth, mini crab. This has been setup for over 2 years. about a year ago I went from a planted tank to a rockscape decor do to the ffiremouth destroying most plant life. ever since then I have had alage bloom after alage bloom. I have cut back the lighting to only 40 watts and only running 10 hours a day. I have been using ro/di water and adding trace elements back in. I have even tried using nitrate and phosphate removers to see if that was the problem. I only feed what my firemouth will consume in 2 minutes every 2-3 days. Filtration is eheim classic 2213 and I have the return below water surface aiming to to water surface. I clean out my filter every month. I do still have the original pads that I rinse out every month could this be the culprit.? tests results are.

ph= 7.8
amonia = 0
nitrite = 0
nitrate <5

I have to bleach my rocks every week to to green carpet alage growth. I have noticed more growth lately like double the amount. the bulbs are 2 years old could a spectrum shift be causing this. even a week blackout doesn't seem to phase it. Is there some kind of snails that will eat the alage on the rocks sand bed without over populating the tank. I'm all out of ideas.

thankx.




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Either add floating plants - water sprite, anacharis, whatever - or reduce the lighting still more. 40W on 29 gallons without plants is too much.

You substrate may also be serving as nutrient reservoir. Three inches is an awful lot for an unplanted tank IME.

MTS snails may help, but without using water with decent GH and KH I don't know how well they will do.

I'd do light/floating plants first, substrate reduction next, snails last.
 
I agree with RTR's recommendation. Without plants to use the available light and nutrients, the algae are in heaven. If you reduce the available light, it will help a lot. Not much point in keeping the deep substrate either.

However, I should point out that I have an almost identical setup, and the snails do the trick nicely. I am running 40W on a 29 cichlid tank, with decent growths of anubias and java fern. Deep substrate becaue the guys like to dig. With that much light, and the relatively liberal feedings for the cylindricus, it would probably have an algae problem were it not for a hefty population of malaysian livebearing snails. Instead, it has been a low-maintenance, great-looking tank. There are a lot of snails, but you would never know it unless you were in the room in the dark. The added advantage it that they will also work the substrate.

The particular circumstances work well for me, but your mileage may be different. If you go the snail route, I would recommend using tap, rather than RO water.
 
thankx everyone. Well I guess its back to live plants again. Here are my choices locally Swords. java fern, hornwart. Which ones will do the best in nutrient export. Trying to keep as few as possible in the tank.

Also if I do get some Malasian trumpet snails how many per gallon do I need and where can I buy them? I can't get them locally.
 
drew22to375,

PM me with a mailing address and I will send you both MTS and water sprite.

PP
 
Originally posted by NJ Devils Fan
Hey pink Pat, got any extra water sprite? I wanted to try that.

Drew, do not get an amazon sword because it will outgrow your tank. They get huge.
Click to expand...

yeah I'm going to leave those for my 110gal tall when I get it set up. I was thinking of getting the amazon sword compacto that is only supose to get 8" tall.
 
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