Hi John,
Algae....our dreaded enemy. I have been battling it for about a month and a half now. Just when I thought I was winning, BAM! it snuck up on me and hit me full force. one of the main forms that I have been dealing with is this long thread algae. I have a 150 and this stuff can just about grow the entire length of my tank. The strands can be enormous. It was recommended to me to remove it with a toothbrush. Just swirl it like spaghetti. I did that a few days in a row but it became pointless. As quickly as I could remove it , it would grow back. My plants finally took off and started growing well, but that didn't stop the algae. I guess this kind of algae is caused by high levels of iron. I tested my water for it but didn't getting any noticable results, though the test kit seems kind of hokey. Realizing that algae is caused by improper water chemistry, I closely monitored my water for a few weeks. I made sure, to the best of my ability, that my water parameters were as prescribed at chuck's planted aquarium and by the folks here. Unfortunately, that wasn't working. I went to the LFS and bought some American Flag Fish (otherwise known as the Florida Flag Fish)and some rasmhorn snails. The fish immediately started eating the algae as if it were candy. The snails also went to town. But they weren't the answer to my problem. They couldn't possibly beat the algae back to my likings. I finally went drastic this weekend. I spent 11 hours strait tearing my tank apart. As suggested by Len, I think that a root tab or two were disturbed in the gravel and was causing the algae to go out of control. I decided to do a deep gravel vac. After my first attempt at aquascaping, I wanted to make a few re-arrangements anyway. I removed all of my plants and decorations. I was amazed to see how developed the root systems were. I sort of felt guilty uprooting them, but this was for their benefit. I figured that since they were out I'd try the bleaching treatment that everyone talks about. I didn't go haywire, I just pretty much cleaned the algae off of them in a 19/1 water/bleach solutions and then dipped them in a declorinator solution. I have lots and lots of plants, so this took a while. I even dipped my rocks and driftwood. Once that was done, I throughly cleaned my gravel...it was nasty. I have 100% Flourite as my substrate and it produces enough muck....but this was pretty dirty. I re-aquascaped and am very happy with the results. All of my plants are completely algae free and they look great. A day has passed and the only algae that I can see in the tank is some on the glass that I missed during the clean up. Now that it is completely gone, I think I'll have the upper hand as far as keeping it at bay. I pulled my tank apart about two weeks ago to do a pretty good cleaning after a bunch of algae had died but not nearly as extensive as this one. Though the tank was pretty clean, there was still quite a bit of algae still in it. I was going to stop the ferts at that point and cut out the CO2, but I didn't. Instead I added ferts again and kept the CO2 going full blast. Sure enough, the algae came back full force. The CO2 injection and ferts create a delicate, yet fast paced senario. Yes, if you can keep up with it, your plants can grow like weeds. Otherwise, if something gets out of control, your progress spins off into an oblivion, like me. I'm really "taking a step back" (an earlier post of mine) this time. I cut off my CO2 cylinder and don't plan on fertilizing for a while. I also cut back the duration that my lights are on. They were reduced from 13 hours a day to 10 or 11. I plan on taking it slow. If the plants are growing slowly, then hopefully the algae will grow slowly. And I have a hungry army waiting for it. I'll let you know how everything turns out.
I've been testing my PH and it is at 7 still. I just received master test kit in the mail and it was incomplete so I can't test for KH. Good part about it is they are sending me another whole kit.
