A Blackout with Anacharis (Green Water issue) w/ questions

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Leto

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
12
Location
Maryland
Hi, I am new to these forums (new to aquariums period) but I need some advice.

I am 5 weeks into cycling my first Aquarium. The water tests I have are PH, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. My Aquarium is a 20 Gallon High with 3 - 15 watt florescent tubes (2.25wpg). I have 4 bunches of Anacharis and 1 sickly looking Java Fern.

Temp: 78
PH: 7.1
Ammonia: 0 (I dose it with 1ppm nightly and it always reduces to 0 by the following day)
Nitrite: ~1.0 (been hovering between 1.0 and 0.6 for a week now, fluctuating up and down a little, tested at a full 1.0 tonight)
Nitrate: ~5.0

My first question is with a planted tank what other tests do I need to have? especially with regards to keeping an eye on Algae outbursts.

Currently my tank has at least 4 different kinds of Algae, but none were out of control until the last week when I ran into a Green Water problem so hazy I literally can't see from the front of the tank to the back.

I looked at all my options and from what I read my best option right now was a blackout period. What I am worried about is my Anacharis - I don't want to black out the tank and uncover it only to find dead or dying Anacharis. Some places suggested 5-7 days, some suggested 4 days, some as low as 3.... What would be the proper blackout period to knock out Green Water when Anacharis is in the dark?


My other question is this:

I probably screwed up royally tonight, but the situation is as it stands and now has to be dealt with.....I realize that adding Ammonia during a fishless cycle is probably one of the contributing factors to the algae bloom, but I have a cycle to consider too that absolutely must be seen through to its completion so I gave the tank a double-dose tonight to give the bacteria something to feed on while during the blackout....so even though most advice I have read says "do not feed your fish just before a blackout" I essentially did about the same thing giving a 2.0ppm spike of ammonia to the water collum just before covering the tank.


I'm probably forgetting a lot, but that is basically the situation as it is tonight. I had covered the tank on Monday night and was planning on uncovering it Saturday morning giving it all day Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for 4 full days of blackout.

I realize that I still need to find out what imbalance caused the algae bloom in the first place so I can take steps to correct it, but I just don't know exactly which things I need to test for or what I can add to the water to correct it.

(It is of note that my tap water has ~20ppm Nitrates.)



Any advice would be very, very much appreciated.

I am doing the best I can with this aquarium, but I am rather terrified that I am going to destroy my Anacharis and my water conditions by doing this.
 
Welcome to AA Leto. I'm sure you will find the help you need here. :wink:

I've used 3 day blackout periods to control BGA and even though the plants suffer a bit, they will bounce back. Another option is to use a diatom filter for green water control. Green water is single cell algae and reproduces very quickly.

You won't be able to control algae with that much light, and no CO2. I suggest cutting the lighting back to 1wpg (that's fine for the plants you mentioned), or adding CO2.
 
BrianNY said:
You won't be able to control algae with that much light, and no CO2. I suggest cutting the lighting back to 1wpg (that's fine for the plants you mentioned), or adding CO2.

Interesting - I really didn't think I had a light level that would be benefited by CO2. I can easily drop down to 1.5wpg.

I'll think about going with DIY CO2 as well.
 
For a cheap green water clean up method I've used an Aqua Clear powerhead with the Quick Filter attachment. It uses a very fine low-micron mesh sleeve that works well for filtering out particulate matter. You might need more than one sleeve for large tanks or if the GW problem is exceptionally bad, as the sleeves tend to clog up after a while. It's cheaper than a diatom filter and does a pretty good job on green water.
 
Took the cover off this morning and did a 50% water change. The water was drastically clearer, and the Anacharis mostly seems to be OK (some of the stems that were not so healthy before the blackout may be far enough gone that they need to be removed but otherwise they seem to have done fine.)

I tested my water both before and after the water change: A new trend is a little bit troubling: my pH is trending downward pretty steadily. The tap measures at a pretty nice 7.1 but the tank water is now at 6.6 and trending downward.

I'm not panicing yet or anything but I definatly want to track down the cause of it so I can stabilize it at a level closer to my tap water.

It is also of note that the NitrItes was 4x higher when I took the cover off than when I put it on. Nitrite measurement of a little higher than 2.0 *after* the water change (was up over 3-something before the water change).

Still no fish in it, but I am seriously questioning the state of the cycle in my tank, espically considering this is its 6th week
 
I would say.. a phospate and carbonate hardness testkits would be highly benificial with a planted tank.. If you could test for KH it might give a clue as to why your PH is trending downward.. (more frequent and or larger water changes or dosing KH buffer of some sort might be needed if your KH is very low, like less then ~55ppm or 3dKH)

Phosphate has a tendency to cause green water problems as well.. being out of ballance with your NO3 levels.. NO3:PO4/10:1 being the recomended ratio.. so with ~5ppm NO3 you would want ~.5ppm PO4 (10-15ppm NO3 and 1-1.5ppm PO4 recomended for planted tanks in general once established)

Lowering the amont of light or adding CO2 alone could very well take care of the problem at the source.. Im just trying to put out another varible to try if that doesnt happen to be the case after testing.. HTH
 
Correct! You need to test KH. You need the carbonate hardness in your water column to buffer against pH drops.

Suggest you read in the article section about stabilizing pH. :wink:
 
Green water questions/answers hey?
Well...I've had my "green water" going for a solid two months now.
My black-out helped a little, but mostly just killed my plants (Vallis and jave fern).
The tank (20g) has cycled and the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are all good...it's just this dam green water. My few fish don't seem to mind though (3 danios, 3 neons, 2 cory, 1 pleco).
Hmmm...don't know why I'm posting.
Good luck with your tank. I'm sure you'll do heaps better than me! :D
...it'd be super hard to do worse!

I'm sure you'll get the answers you need from the guys on this forum.
Cheers.
Ry.
 
greenmaji said:
I would say.. a phospate and carbonate hardness testkits would be highly benificial with a planted tank.. If you could test for KH it might give a clue as to why your PH is trending downward.. (more frequent and or larger water changes or dosing KH buffer of some sort might be needed if your KH is very low, like less then ~55ppm or 3dKH)

Phosphate has a tendency to cause green water problems as well.. being out of ballance with your NO3 levels.. NO3:PO4/10:1 being the recomended ratio.. so with ~5ppm NO3 you would want ~.5ppm PO4 (10-15ppm NO3 and 1-1.5ppm PO4 recomended for planted tanks in general once established)

Lowering the amont of light or adding CO2 alone could very well take care of the problem at the source.. Im just trying to put out another varible to try if that doesnt happen to be the case after testing.. HTH

Thanks for the advice guys - I'm going to try to track down a phosphate and gh/kh test.

Is there anything else I'm going to need?

And where would I get crushed coral or something to help stabilize the PH ?
 
Some things to report:

Today I got the phosphorus test and the GH/KH test:

This evenings test results are thus:



Temp: 78
PH: 6.7
Ammonia: 0.0
Nitrite: 2.0
Nitrate: 80
Phosphate: 0.5
dKH: 2
dGH: 3 (the GH test was really hard to tell on, 3 is my closest estimate - there was never a sudden shift of color, it was always extremely light)


Notables are the KH being pretty low.

What shocked me the most however was NitrAtes at **80**. Nitrates have been testing at ~5ppm for literally over two weeks. Now a jump to 80ppm overnight (I did test yesterday and it was at 5ppm)

My Nitrites didn't visibly drop though. How could that have happened other than the nitrogen cycle, and how is it possible to jump that far that fast? no curve up or anything.

I am so confused :(


I also have to note that the water is sooo very GREEN :( I did the 5 night, 4 day total blackout and within 3 days it is greener than it was before the blackout :( :( :( I literally can't see through the tank all over again.


I am so very frustrated :(

In 2 days I will start the 7th week on this tank and never had a single fish :(

I don't know what to do.
 
Dose enough fleet enema to get your PO4 up to 4 ppm. Are you dosing any K or trace nutrients? Lack of these may be part of the problem as well. If you aren't going to inject CO2 then Flourish Excel may be necessary to feed your flora enough to get the green water to go away.
 
What I have here is just the regular Flourish, but I have been afraid to add any to the water (it is still factory sealed), because I don't want to make the algae bloom even worse hah :(

I'm sure any of you vets would have been able to knock this problem out in no time flat, and I'm sure the information I'm giving on the forum is a little incomplete to say the least. My problem is (and has been from the very start) that I just don't know what I'm doing no matter how much research I do.

First time dealing with any of this stuff and it seems like every time I try to fix one problem, I create 2 others.

I never had an algae problem before I got new lights for the aquarium, but my anacharis was dying on the 0.75 watts I had before for a 20 high tank. Now I have at least adequate light (mostly I think anyway), but now the balance is off again and I have several different kinds of Algae that just won't go away.

I still have the brown algae and some kind of horrible Beard/Hair algae (I still don't know exactly what it is - but that stuff is growing on everything and it won't go away no matter how much I scoop out with the net.) Before the blackout I had some kind of green fuzzy algae in the tank but that seems to have gone, now I just have some different kind of green algae on some of the rocks/decorations - real thin flat stuff. (I dont' think it is BGA though.)

I can deal with having all of those in the aquarium though, but the Green Water is the worst.

It is even possible that I simply don't have enough plants in the aquarium. Basically its 4 bunches of Anacharis with a few floaters and one little sickly Java Fern that never did look right (can only get them one place locally and the place that has them never sells them apparently because they are all more black than green.)

Anyway.


I bought some Crushed Coral, but I haven't added any to the tank yet....I have some filter floss from a smaller filter, considering dropping a handful of the stuff into that and dropping it into the power filter. I'm just hesitant to alter the water chemistry again, but with a fluctuating PH and a dKH of 2 I should probably just add a little bit like that and get it over with to try to stabilize things.
 
Add CO2 and get your nutrients in range and you'll be on the road to recovery. The CC won't hurt, but if you don't give your plants enough "building blocks" for photosynthesis all you'll grow is algae. Have you read the stickys at the top of the page?
 
I have, but to be totally honest anything to do with planted tanks is quite overwhelming.

I understand that the cause of the algae bloom is some sort of imbalance in the tank (not allowing the plants to outcompete the algae for nutrients) but right now I'm terrified of adding or doing the wrong thing and actually encouraging algae growth instead of plant heh.

CO2 is probably what I need the most. I'm probably going to try to do a DIY CO2 deal but I've never done one of those before either obviously.


Edit:

On a side note, would increasing the dKH by itself increase the CO2 of the tank, or simply the CO2 capacity?

I'm only guessing that with a dKH of 2 that my CO2 capacity probably is terrible to begin with. Getting it to 4-6 would probably be the most important first step there, no?
 
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