I have a simple method that will work for you and most anyone experiencing a nasty algae bloom.
It's much more about "
many little hammers" hitting, beating the algae back. Intergrated management approaches.
One is to look at what species is in the tank.
BBA=> CO2 issue
Staghorn=> probably NH4 related, you uprooted and moved lots of plant, did not do a water change soon after
BGA=> likely bottomed out the NO3, or have not cleaned the filter etc in a awhile
GW=> NH4 related, much like staghorn, but higher light required to induce.
Green hair algae, branched=>> lack of dosing, low CO2
Softer greens=> too much light/not enough CO2 and a little NH4
Diatoms> new tank, otto's
These are the worst offenders and you'll note all have environmenal causes.
Hammer no#1
Hammer no2#
Herbivores
Generally icing on the cake
But SAE's, rosey barbs, Amano shrimop are very effective abd each herbivore has a trade off, there are few herbivores that do everything
Hammer no#3
Blackouts: fairly effective and highly on BGA and GW
Hammer no#4
Excel, it's the only thing that kills algae
and grows plants, if it does not grow a plant, do not add it. That is a good rule to follow.
Generally, folks have algae due to CO2 issues, this corrects that and kills the algae, later you can fix and tweak the CO2 gas.
Hammer no#5:
Elbow grease, manually picking, preening, fluffing, trimming, pruning off infected leaves. Cleanign everything, bleaching all equipment, tubing, rocks wood etc, anything non living you can get at and remove, rinse, add dechloro, return to the tank. Clean filter, lightly vac substrate, do large water changes(50-80%).
So a combination method:
1. Add herbivores
2. Blackout the tank for 3 days while treating
3. Do daily large water changes
4. Double dose Excel for 3 days, single dose thereafter
5. Correct environmental issue, generally CO2.
6. Dose after each water change, KNO3, KH2PO4, TMG(traces), GH
7. Manually stay on top of things and clean the tank, wipe glass etc, keep it clean.
8. Crank CO2 since you have added all the other nutrients of interest(Macros and micros are dosed to excess levels
except for NH4)
CO2 will be the only variable that will induce algae at this point.
9. Reduce lighting the light if possible (1.5-2.5 w/gal range), this drives uptake of nutrients and CO2, if there is not enough, algae will grow, everytime. This will slow things down, later, after the issues have been corrected, you may add more light. You may also reduce the duration from say 10 hours to 6 for a few days also.
The main idea is to stop
new algae growth, once you do that, you have the algae licked. You can then prune and trim your way out of things easily and reduce the work load.
Now........now you can use things like spot treatments such peroxide with extremely high efficacy. Tank looks better, took some work and all, but the tank will be on the mend as long as you keep up on the dosing, CO2.
Plants look better, you can stop trying to chase each new tuft of BBA growing or Staghorn and life is good.
Now the peroxide is another one of the many little hammers and is used in conjunction with, not as sole solution to algae issues.
Very few things by themselves will solve an algae issues.
If you are interested in killing algae, that is another thread really, you need to have the control to induce ertain species fo algae and grow them in all their glory. Then you squirt chemicals on them and note the responses and environment and so forth.
Few planted hobbyists are interested in this, they just want to solve their problem and have a nice planted tank.
I kill aquatic weeds for my day job and we are just starting to do pilot studies with excel on Egeria and Hydrilla, the two worst aquatic weeds in CA. No doubt, it kills them and certain species of algae.
Peroxide is also been considered but generally is poor for weeds, but not bad for algae.
Sodium percarbonate is effective for algae and dissolves into peroxide moderately slowly, it's not enough to burn plants, but kills most of the algae on surfaces, it comes in granular form, so it sinks, hits the surface and acts like the spot treatment.
It's better for ponds and where you need to scrub the slime off the rocks and sides there.
Here are a number of discussions going back years:
http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/hydrogen-peroxide.html
http://www.gpodio.com/h2o2.asp
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/algae/4242-black-algae-removal-works.html
http://www.myfishtank.net/forum/fre...21262-horray-beat-dreaded-bba.html#post189843
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/algae/22860-peroxide-remove-algae-what-conc-2.html
http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aquainfo/algae_peroxide.html
The algae in the above link is Staghorn.
That should keep you busy.
Do not get frustrated, work on all of these methods/hammers, your tank will look much better.
I have a client with a 1600 gal tank that had it entirely covered, in 3-5 days, the algae is all gone and the tank is looking super.
Regards,
Tom Barr