Stands of algae at the top of our tank

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Nick & Anne

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Dec 3, 2005
Messages
19
Location
Alberta, Canada
Hi,

New to forum, will no doubt have lots of questions for you all as we are beginners to fish keeping, here is our first:


We have a 48 gal tank with a fluval 304 pump with a capacity for 70gallons.

12 tetra's (6 neon's, 6 Black skirt)
2 pepper Cory's & 1 Panda Cory.

Our aim is to have a peaceful community tank :D

We have noticed within a week of doing a pwc's we have long strands of green algae at the top on the back side of the tank. We would like some advice on why this is happening so quickly and then also what type of fish/shrimp/snail is best available in regular pet store that would help to control/eat this algae? Is this normal after a week or are we worrying unduly?

Thanks in advance!

Nick & Anne
 
Do you have any idea what your test levels are? Ammonia etc. Does the tank get any sunlight? Did you cycle the tank?
 
Hello All,

We are using 2 30w 3 foot strip lights, they came with the aquarium kit.

We turn the light on at around 7.15am and it goes off around 10.30pm

It is not in direct sunlight, ie in front of the window but the room gets some light during part of the day.

We do not have a kit for testing the water. We ran the tank for 48hrs prior to putting fish in and the water was tested at the store. They said the water was OK apart from a small Ammonia spike. She said the black skirt tetras would be ok in that. They were in the tank alone for 5 days before we bought the three cory's. It was a further two weeks before we added the small neon's. All are looking well and so far we have not lost any.

We have one real plant in there along with natural wood which by the way made the tank a slight tea color which we were at first alarmed about but since reading this forum it seems a natural occurrence. It has got better in time, the water is also a lot clearer than it was in the beginning.

If we were to get a test kit, which would you recommend? When you look at them in the store there seems to be so many, is there a kit that has one of each in the box or do you have to buy each individual test?

Thanks for your help.
Nick & Anne.
 
PWC are almost never needed in a planted tank if it is fully planted. What the bacteria cant handle the plants most certainly will. It sounds like you have thread algae. Probably the fastest growing algae in freshwater tanks next to green water. A toothbrush can remove it. If it is coming back faster than you can remove it, there are a cpl of options.
Increase your co2. This is 95% of all algae problems.
2ml of H202 per gallon of water (not tank size). Large wc after 20 min.
Reducing your lighting is the first step though. That photoperiod is too long.
 
I would recomend this test kit http://animal-world.com/pups/shop.php/P-2507/Freshwater_Master_Test_Kit.html
it can be found cheaper just wanted to show you a picture of the box it will test all your basic stuff also although you may have a plant in your tank you should still do pwc as needed plants will not use all the no3 if its a very high levels but plants will help cut back on this also here is the cycling link http://www.aquariumadvice.com/showquestion.php?faq=2&fldAuto=21
good luck with your tank
 
Welcome to AA, Nick & Anne! :multi: :onfire::multi: :onfire::multi: :onfire:

Here's a nice link about the nitrogen cycle.
http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-cycling.html

Your tank is probably still cycling. You haven't lost any fish yet because you have a light bioload and you must be doing water changes before ammonia and nitrites reach toxic levels. Except for the blackskirts (perhaps), all of your fish are very sensitive to deteriorating water parameters, so keep on top of the water changes It would be a good idea to test the water every day and do small (20%) water changes every few days until you start to see measurable nitrate. Of course, if you notice a big spike, you should do a water change ASAP.

I like the Aquarium Pharmaceutical test kits, as do most people here. There are other brands that are probably just as good, but be sure to get the liquid kits - the paper strips are notoriously innaccurate. At the very least, you should have tests for pH, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

About your algae...it's almost definitely because your light is on too long. A 6 - 10 hour photoperiod is recommended if you have plants. I have all my tank lights plugged into timers that I picked up at the hardware store for a few dollars.

It sounds like you're doing your research and taking things slowly. If you have any other questions, post away! :D
 
Hi,

Thanks for all the replies, we appear to have been very lucky so far as although we had researched the type of fish to start off with no-one had said and neither did we read about cycling the tank we just thought it had to run for 48hrs prior to fish and then have the water checked, which we did. Possibly the small amount of fish we have in our tank has saved us.

We are now off to town to buy the suggested test kit and find out later just where we are in the cycle of our tank. We are also thinking of getting a couple more real plants to go along with the silk ones.

Thanks for now, probably a lot more questions to come!

Anne & Nick.
 
Hello Again,

Ok, back from the shops, test done here are our results.

Ph 7.5
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 10ppm

The ph level is high we believe for our tetra's so we will fix that but the rest seem good. We will re-test next weekend.

We have altered our light up length and will now leave them in the natural daylight whilst we are out at work and put the light on from around 5.00pm to 11.00pm.

Oh and whilst we were buying the test kit we also bought two new real plants, several rocks and best of all two beautiful scissor-tail rasboras :!:

Thanks
Nick & Anne
 
Your ph is fine. Leave it alone no reason to play with ph altering chemicals. If you now real plants then you need to leave your lights on ten - twelve hours a day. What kind of plants did you buy?

How old is the tank? Looks like you are cycled.
 
Hello again Nick and Anne it seems your tank has cycled how long have you had fish in it. I am just curiuos because I have a 20 gal I cant get to finish cycling for the life of me its been 2 months and I have made not very much progress. also you should leave the light on during the day while you are at work ie: I leave for work around 730 and turn the light on and feed the fish before I leave, I get home from work around 5 ish eat dinner and turn the light off somewhere between 5 and 7 after the fish eat. I have also cut their second feeding until the tank has finished cycling.
 
Don't mess with the ph, it's just fine. Better to have a stable ph than one that moves up and down with chemicals. If you really want to lower it a little, a more natural way to do it is add some driftwood. Within a couple days it will be down to about 7.0-7.2, and will be stable. I use driftwood on both my tanks and that's where the ph stays.
 
We have had the tank just over three weeks, we put Nutrafin Cycle in the tank (48gal) along with Aqua Plus Tap water conditioner and left it for 48hrs. We then had 6 Blackskirt tetra's in it on their own for 5 days. 3 Cory's followed and then the Neon's were put in a week after that. During this time we did two pwc's mostly to get rid of the algae as we were not bright enough to know about cycling :oops:

We will take the advice offered and leave the ph alone if you think that's ok for tetra's. We already have three pieces of natural wood in the tank and had one plant (name not known, it looks like a sword plant) The two new plants bought today are Hydrocotyle & Rotala Nanjenshan.

Ok, so how long should we leave the light on now? We like to look at them during the evening, the novelty has not yet worn off! We are thinking of getting a timer so they can come on later in the day and still be on during the evening. What do you all think? considering our initial problem of the algae was caused by light problems?

Oh and by the way a funny thing happened at the store when we bought three small stones to go in the tank, the young guy who served us (spotty teenager) put air in the first bag, "so he could write the price on the bag" he'd said when questioned. "why don't you just write the price on the empty bag first" we said. "Ok yes" and he did, but then blew up the bag with air again! "you really don't want those rocks to die, do you?" we said. "No" was his reply :lol:

Thanks
Nick & Anne.
 
I was at the lfs today and they had Santa there, taking pictures of animals with Santa. Took 45 minutes for me to get some help to get the fish I wanted.
 
A timer was one of the first and best invenstment i made for a planted tank. Defintely go for it, sounds like around 10am-10pm would work well for you guys.

By the way, if the algae persists, I've found Rosy barbs to be very helpful in keeping it under control, and they are readily available in most areas. BUT, they might go against your goal of a peaceful community tank . . . they're a bit frisky!
 
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