Green on my walls! Could use some help

[beantownbrad]

What can I do to stop the green algae (?) from growing on the side of the glass?? I didn't have it too bad for the first year or so of having the tank. But lately it's been growing fast. I scrape it weekly with the magnetic scrubber, and sometimes with a razor blade. I even siphon the water as I scrape to get the majority of it picked up.

It's a fairly heavily planted tank dosed with iron, excel, trace, potassium (2x per advise for holes in leaves), and flourish. T5 lighting 48w 650nm and 6000k over 20 Gal. 7 hours light / day in a room with some indirect sun.

Checked my parameters today. 6.8ph. 0 Ammonia. 0 Nitrite. 30ppm Nitrate.

7 - 10 days 25-35% water change
It's a losing battle! Any ideas??



Nitrite snails don't help. Nor does the Siamese algae eater.
I also have black algae on my Anubias Nana. Id love to lose that too. But priority 1 is the green fuzz on my glass.

 

[Greta1981]

May I ask what kinds of fish and how many you have in the tank? I'm just wondering if a heavy bioload could be causing the heavy algae growth.

 

[beantownbrad]

Yea, it's fully loaded.

3 spotted Cory cats
3 harlequin rasboras
3 small pencil fish
1 (f?) gold ram
1 (m) steel blue apisto
1 (f) apisto agassizii (I think)
1 Siamese algae eater
1 dwarf frog
3 nerite snails
5-10 small pond snails

 

[beantownbrad]

Just cleaned it. 40% water change and razor blade to the walls. Looks pretty nice now! How do I keep it this way?

 

[Greta1981]

Sorry, I may be missing this in one of your answers above--how big is the tank? Though I am far from an expert on algae blooms, the only thing that I can think of that would be causing that much algae might be an issue of overstocking.

 

[beantownbrad]

20 Gallon

 

[Greta1981]

Okay, I just put your stock into aqadvisor.com. You're at 121% overstocked. It's very likely that the extremely heavy bioload is at least feeding into the algae problem. Is there a possibility of moving any of your fish to another tank to lessen the load in this one? I strongly suspect that would help matters.

 

[Sk3lly]

Algae are autotrophs. Which mean they produce their own food. They are green because they contain chlorophyll (like plants). Just like plants this chlorophyll allows them to use a process called photosynthesis to produce food (again just like plants). Light is the limiting factor for photosynthesis. Try cutting the lights back a bit

 

[beantownbrad]

I can't move any of the fish, other than bring some back to a LFS. I covered the tank with a blanket a few days while I went to work to keep out external light. So far, so good, the plants look healthy. I don't want to cut the light down too much more than about 7 hours. I have lots of plants, and I want to enjoy my aquarium. But will covering it some days but not all mess with the fish's body clock?

 

[Greta1981]

I would return the ram, apistos, and algae eater. Algae eaters don't do much to clean a tank anyway and only add to its bioload. With a lessened stress on the bioload, I suspect you will have a much easier time dealing with the algae. I can't say anything about the blanket method, as I've never used it. Cutting back on the light just a few hours a day, with fewer fish in the tank, should be plenty, I would think, but I don't have personal experience with this.

 

[Mebbid]

With that much light you will need to increase the amount of excel you are using. I would increase the dose to at least 5ml daily although 10 would be better. You should also take a look at dry ferts. The liquid ferts are good for low light tanks but just aren't strong enough for a high light tank.

 

[candymancan]

121% is hardly overloaded... my 27g hex has 3-4x more fish then his tank does lol im at something like 190% on that aqua advisor and I have ZERO algae problems.

His problem is he is dosing too many nutrients in the tank and he has too much light because he has really slow growing plants that require almost no lighting to grow... in there besides that awesome tiger lotus.. My suggestion is to cut back on dosing your ferts by a lot and get some watersprite to help take nutrients out of the water... and float it so it will block some of the lighting... Watersprite grows like a weed if you float it

Green algae like that is almost always because of too much lighting and too many nutrients...

Also get more nerite snails.. 3 isn't enough... they are dirt cheap... Petsmart sells them now.. at least all the petsmarts in my area do.. Get like 8 more of them.. They will tear that algae up in no time. But im like 100% sure your algae problem isn't because of your fish... its the lighting and your dosing too many ferts

 

[Coursair]

Try cutting your lights back to 6 hours a day for now. Timers are cheap. Keep an eye on Nitrates as well. Feed a bit less.
Keep up on PWCs

Less light, clean water and good params will help with algae.

 

[Mebbid]

121% is hardly overloaded... my 27g hex has 3-4x more fish then his tank does lol im at something like 190% on that aqua advisor and I have ZERO algae problems.

His problem is he is dosing too many nutrients in the tank and he has too much light because he has really slow growing plants that require almost no lighting to grow... in there besides that awesome tiger lotus.. My suggestion is to cut back on dosing your ferts by a lot and get some watersprite to help take nutrients out of the water... and float it so it will block some of the lighting... Watersprite grows like a weed if you float it

Green algae like that is almost always because of too much lighting and too many nutrients...

Also get more nerite snails.. 3 isn't enough... they are dirt cheap... Petsmart sells them now.. at least all the petsmarts in my area do.. Get like 8 more of them.. They will tear that algae up in no time. But im like 100% sure your algae problem isn't because of your fish... its the lighting and your dosing too many ferts

Algae doesn't need anywhere near as many nutrients to grow as plants do. Cutting back the amount of nutrients in the tank is only going to cut out plant growth rather than algae growth and in fact will likely make the issue worse.

You are correct about too much lighting and not enough plants though.

 

[Aqualady40]

I am going to just say, add as many stem plants as you can