No algae anymore....confused...

[schigara]

My 15g has been running for about 6 months and I have always done 20% water changes every week and the green algae on the glass and sand has been a chore to clean every week and got real bad in just a matter of 5-7 days between maintenance but now the algae is gone.

The only difference I can think of is that a month ago I started doing water changes bi-monthly because nitrates were always at 0 so it seemed like weekly was overkill. Any thoughts on this?

Also, I have changed to the same maintenance regimen on the 55g and the green algae is getting less and less.

I am still feeding either one good feeding per day or 2 light feedings as I always have.

 

[ashdavid]

I cant say for sure but it sounds like your plants maybe out-competing the algae for nutrients. Sometimes after you have a tank up and running it takes some time for the the plants to take hold , maybe what happened was that the change from weekly to to bi-monthly has allowed some of the nutrients build up , and these nutrients are more effectively used by the plants therefore staving the algae of food. The algae is not completely gone, so dont get into a false sense of security, it will come back if imbalances occur again. Cheers