Algae problem

[DallasFish]

Hi all I've got some algae problems I'd like to ask your advice on.

My tank is 55G with 110W CF lighting, lights on 10 hours/day. I don't do anything special for the plants (e.g., ferts or CO2) though they are planted in pots with eco-complete.

I've seen recommendations to use flourish but I understand its bad for my dojo loaches. My BN pleco pair seen totally uninterested in the algae.

Here's what I'm dealing with:

Any idea what this is and how I should deal with it?

Thank you!

 

[Alaris]

That looks like BBA or hair algae. Only SAE's would be interested in it, but I don't recommend you get one.

How much of it do you have in your tank? Some plants are sensitive to Excel in large doses. What plants do you have? Which ones are affected? How long have you had the algae?

You could try spot treatment with Excel: Flourish Excel got rid of all my algae - Algae - Aquatic Plant Central I'm not sure how Excel affects dojo loaches.

Another way to go is hydrogen peroxide: Fighting Algae with Hydrogen Peroxide - I

You'll see the algae turn pink and then die if treated effectively.

This will only kill the algae you have now, not solve the problem that's causing algae. What are your nitrAtes? You're lacking in some nutrients.

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

your likely low on nitrates among other ferts the plants need, I would turn the lights back to 8hrs or less and maybe raise the fixture off the tank 2" or so to reduce intensity. Till you figure something out.

It looks like BBA to me also, some of those leaves look bad to me, just remove those.

 

[rkilling1]

More pictures would help, but it looks like staghorn to me. BBA doesn't branch like that or get as long.

110 watts of CF over a 55 gallon tank is a lot of light. Not dosing or adding CO2 is not helping at all. While you may get away without adding CO2, but it would need to be pretty full of plants and adding ferts on a routine basis.

 

[DallasFish]

More pictures would help, but it looks like staghorn to me. BBA doesn't branch like that or get as long.

110 watts of CF over a 55 gallon tank is a lot of light. Not dosing or adding CO2 is not helping at all. While you may get away without adding CO2, but it would need to be pretty full of plants and adding ferts on a routine basis.

What kind of ferts would one normally add?

I was concerned about this when I set the tank up and even talked about it here. Am I to the point I need to consider adding CO2?

Thanks to all for the input so far...

 

[Purrbox]

You'd definately need a good Trace fert and Potassium. Test you Nitrate and Phosphate levels, if either is bottoming out then you'll need to dose those as well.

 

[DallasFish]

Joy thank you, any brands you'd recommend?

 

[Purrbox]

The most cost effective would be to order dry ferts. You can get them from Rex Grigg or Planted Aquarium Fertilizer. Rex's Combo Pack has everything you would probably need. Some good alternatives for CSM+B (trace) would be either Flourish "Comprehensive" or Tropica Plant Nutrition.

 

[DallasFish]

Thanks Joy, I'll look him up.

One thing I need to be careful of is that I have several bottom-dwellers in the tank, including dojo loaches and cory cats. I've heard they can be sensitive to some of the plant fert stuff, so I have more homework to do.

 

[DallasFish]

What about adding in an SAE (a real one, not a flying fox). Would it get along with the existing fish:

6 silver hatchets, 3 angels, 6 green corys, 3 dojo loaches, 2 BN plecos

 

[Koopa_34]

I had the same type of algae problem in my tank. i used algae fix from API, follow the directions and in a couple weeks the hair algae will start to die off.

 

[rkilling1]

In reguards to your fish, I have Dojo loachs and cory's in different tanks that get fully fertilized with ferts that Joy has pointed out. I have never seen them act strange and I have had the same fish for years now. Many planted folks have cory's in thier tanks.

Do you have any links to info of this subject?

SAE's like to be in groups and are never the answer to algae problems. They work great at maintaining the slight amount of algae one would expect with a heathly planted tank, but they cannot cure a tank of an algae problem.

 

[DallasFish]

Koopa - thank you!

Rkilling - Thank you for the wisdom! I have read numerous links about plants, algae, and ferts. My intent for the tank was to have relatively low-light plants so that I wouldn't have to go into the whole fertilizer/CO2/etc routine, as my main focus is the fish. I _think_ the root of my problem is that there was a period of 4 days where the filtration wasn't running . I saw an increase in algae on the glass and at some point the hair algae started as well.

I think I'm looking for a relatively straightforward way to get rid of most of the algae, without adding too much ongoing complexity to the maintenance process.

 

[DallasFish]

An update on this. I have ordered some Flourish Excel to try. I cut back the badly covered plant leaves and washed plumbing with the algae on it. Still doing weekly 25% pwcs. I am also going to switch to feeding only every other day.

I'll post an update once I start the Flourish treatments.

Thanks all as always for your help!