Algae

[Katenotkatie]

Lately I have been noticing a lot of algae growth in my tank. The algae has been growing on the sides of the tank as well as on various decorations throughout the tank. The tank perimeters are perfectly normal. I have 4 neon glofish tetras and one huge apple snail in a 10 gallon tank along with 2 fake plants, some rocks, a large coral-like rock formation for my fish to swim through and two live plants. I know that apple snails reproduce like crazy so I am definitely not willing to get any more snails. Also, because of the size of the tank and the creatures I have in it, any fish I could buy to clean the tank would be too big for my 10 gallon. Is this algae growth simply caused by a large bioload due to multiple fish of the same species in a reasonably small tank? I have an algae scrubber and it works fine, but is there any way to minimize algae growth or any natural way to get rid of it with less manual labor? Or is this just normal, and I just have to deal with it?
I thank you all in advance for any helpful advice you may offer me.

 

[fort384]

Hi Kate, a few questions for you:

Do you know what kind of algae it is?

How long has the tank been setup?

What kind of lighting do you have, and how many hours a day is it on?

Is the tank near any windows or does it get any natural sunlight?

What is your maintenance schedule like for your tank?

When you say your parameters are normal, what are they?

 

[Candi1990]

Minimize the lighting makes a big difference. I learned the hard way, and stopped using my light in the daytime, unless you need it for plants. And of course when i go to bed.

Cleaning weekly helps.

And they do have a small algae eater that does GREAT!!!! Its the size of a minnow... Or small gold fish. That little thing cleans a tank like crazy and you can get a few of them they are small.

 

[Fishfur]

Incidentally, your apple snail won't reproduce like crazy. They have sexes, so if you have only one, chances of eggs are small. Plus they lay them above water, where you can easily remove them if you don't want them to hatch.

How large is huge ? There is one species that gets to baseball size, and they are known to eat plants. Usually dull gold or brown, with stripes, they don't have the pretty colours mystery snails can have.

Ordinary apple or mystery snails usually don't get much bigger than a golf ball. Females, if it is female, may lay eggs that are not fertile, if there's no male to mate with. But as I said, above water, easily controlled.

You could get a Nerite snail, which will lay eggs, but they cannot hatch in fresh water. Small, quite attractive, voracious algae eaters that will eat quite a lot of the stuff on glass. Zebra or Horned [ Thorny] Nerites, are terrific algae managers.