Green water...Make it go away!!

[JHawk]

Ok, I've searched through previous threads and done my best to fix this but I'm at the end of my rope. I had a bad case of green water (algae bloom) a few months ago. It was sucessfully gotten rid of by a three day blanket black out. The water was crystal clear & things were going good until recently....

I have had this green cloudy water for the past several weeks. I did 2 blackout treatments (one was almost 4 days long) with some improvement. The water looked pretty good after but gradually the green stuff came back atter a few days. Here are my current H2O parameters:
Ammonia-0
NO2-0
PH-8
PO4-2.5
KH-19
NO3- less than 12.5, not much over 0...This one I think is kind of odd.
CO2-5.2 (If my numbers add up)

Its a 38 Gallon, lots of plants, 2.5 WPG, DIY CO2-1 bottle & sugar water plus wine yeast) moderate amount of fish, feed every other day, add some Seachem (sp?) nutrients once a week. Let me know if anyone has other questions!

 

[greenmaji]

Your PO4 is 150% higher then target levels, target level being 1ppm
You need about 5-15ppm of nitrate for your plants all of the time.. if it stays at 0 for long periods of time you will have algae problems as well..
When you are dosing your ferts. what target levels are you trying to produce? Or are you just trying to give the plants some trace?

Have you checked out our new sticky.. many thanks malkore!!!
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=55457

Steve wrote a page on how to deal with different algae types...
http://www.aquariaplants.com/alqaeproblems.htm

Green water treatments are on a different page...sorry about that..
http://www.aquariaplants.com/cloudygreenwater.htm

By the way.. I am curious about the fish in your avitar.. unrelated question...

 

[JHawk]

Thanks for the reply. I will read the links you provided. The green water treatments gave the black out method which didn't work. There were a couple of others options but I know I need to get to the root cause with my water which is out of balance.

Your PO4 is 150% higher then target levels, target level being 1ppm

How do I get it down?

You need about 5-15ppm of nitrate for your plants all of the time.. if it stays at 0 for long periods of time you will have algae problems as well

How do I get this up? The tank is established since last fall & up until this reading I was getting 12.5ppm reading on nitrate. I wonder why this fell off?

When you are dosing your ferts. what target levels are you trying to produce? Or are you just trying to give the plants some trace?

I have to admit here that I don't know what I am doing! I just add a capful 1 time a week of Seachem Flourish. Maybe Malkore's sticky will help me figure it out.

 

[Steve Hampton]

The green water treatments gave the black out method which didn't work. There were a couple of others options but I know I need to get to the root cause with my water which is out of balance.

Green water is usually self correcting, that why the blackout is so effective. However, sometimes the root cause is persistent. I was very pleased to see you mention you feed every other day and have a modest fish load. But, frankly we all tend to underestimate our bio-loads and overfeed...this is very likely to occur with flake food and every other day feedings. Meaning feeding three times a day tiny amounts is less problematic than a single large amount of food every other day...some of the food ends up fouling in our filters if we leave them running.

Taking a step by step approach. What type of filtration are you using? Do you shutoff the filter during feedings? When was the last filter cleaning?

The reasons why I suspect your problem is related to fish food is due to the excess of phosphates. They are being introduce some way, unless your tap water has a high amount of phosphate...have you tested your tap water for phosphates?

There are two other methods that are quick and easy and effective in eliminating GW. Diatom filtering and UV Sterilizing, both require borrowing or buying new equipment. If you can't or don't want to buy or borrow the equipment then you'll need to find the root cause, then do another properly performed blackout. I also want to stress that the blackout techniques must be followed precisely to be effective. No peeking, no feeding, doing the before and after water changes, and dosing as directed on my webpage.

 

[JHawk]

What type of filtration are you using?

I have a XP2 Cannister with a tray of ceramic rings & Cellpore in addition to the sponge tray and micro-floss on top. I cleaned it out about 1 month ago when I added the Cellpore media to the top tray.

The tank is a 38 Gallon. The fish are:
2 Bosemani Rainbows
8 Haliquin Rasboras-small
4 Neon Tetras
3 Brilliant Rasboras
1 Cory
1 CAE Medium
2 Small Otos

I do turn off the filter during feedings. I feed them about enough flake to the point of what they can eat in a few minutes. Once a week or so I have been feed them a half a cube of brine shrimp, defrosted in a cup of the water & feed slowly so they can eat it without it sinking too much. About 1 time a week I put a half or so of a bottom feeder pellet for the bottom dwellers of the tank.

have you tested your tap water for phosphates?

No. Maybe I should.

Diatom filtering and UV Sterilizing, both require borrowing or buying new equipment.

Well, I think I'm going to hold off on this option for now.

No peeking, no feeding, doing the before and after water changes, and dosing as directed on my webpage.

Is your webpage the one linked earlier? I did peek for a slight moment during my 2 attempts. I did the 50% H2O before & after. Did not feed all all.

Thanks for the help!

 

[JHawk]

Greenmagi-

Sorry I forgot to answer your question about the fish in the avatar. I have no idea! I found it somewhere out there on the web doing a google images search under fish & avatar and this one came up. There was no info on it.

Jhawk

 

[greenmaji]

JHawK..
That is Steve Hampton's guide..LOL


I was just hopeing you might know something about the fish.. thats cool though!..

 

[Steve Hampton]

JHawk, yes you definitely need to test your tap water for PO4. The phosphates are either coming from your tap water or your fish food. By your descriptions it sounds unlikely it's due to overfeeding, it the tap show zero PO4 then the only possible source is your food...because it is something being added to the tank.

Greenmagi, that fish in the avatar is GloFish or Transgenic zebrafish (Danio). Here's a bit of information.

http://www.isb.vt.edu/articles/jun0405.htm

There were actual good reasons and uses for this gene manipulation, here's one example:

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/GLWI/mjc/projects.html

And, even plants:

http://fig.cox.miami.edu/~cmallery/150/handouts/D.zebra.htm

 

[JHawk]

PO4 in the tap looks like 1 or slightly over 1.

 

[greenmaji]

Is there PO4 in the Seachem ferts that your adding? Since you have PO4 in your tapwater already you might want to go with the dry ferts. to avoid PO4 in your dosing.. Check out the sticky on fertilizing.. Good Luck!

BTW I read an article about the fish, or how its possiblely controversial, in FAMA not too long ago.. there just wasnt any pictures.. These things for sale yet?

 

[Steve Hampton]

PO4 in the tap looks like 1 or slightly over 1.

Okay, that's a good thing. The other PO4 is probably building up from your tap water and slight overdosing of Flourish. The recommended dosage of Flourish is 1 capful (5 ml) per 60 gallons of water. Between the tap, the slight overdosing of Flourish, and your flake food lies the reason for the elevated PO4.

The cure is still the same, get your CO2 working well so that you have 15-30 ppm throughout the photoperiod. If you don't solve the CO2 issue you are going to find keeping your tank in balance to be more difficult. Your plants will really begin to suck up NO3 and PO4 once they have a good stable amount of CO2. Once lighting exceeds 2 wpg you want to eliminate the possibility that CO2 becomes the limiting growth factor. Having too much NO3 or PO4 isn't an issue if CO2 levels are in the 15-30 ppm range.

BTW I read an article about the fish, or how its possibly controversial, in FAMA not too long ago.. there just wasnt any pictures.. These things for sale yet?

They have been available in my LFS for probably a year. In order for the fish to truly fluoresce they must be in dark conditions and a blacklight really helps. They aren't in any way spectacular under normal lighting.

 

[JHawk]

The cure is still the same, get your CO2 working well so that you have 15-30 ppm throughout the photoperiod.

Is my DIY method going to be able to achieve those levels? How can increase them? I'm guessing by adding another 2L bottle or going with pressurized.

Thank you all for the help!

In addition to getting CO2 levels up, should I do another blackout?

 

[greenmaji]

Its going to be difficut for you to get your CO2 levels up with DIY CO2 because of your high KH.. do you know why your KH is so high? is it that high out of the tap?

 

[JHawk]

Crud.

I'm ready to throw in the towel on this planted tank...Our water is pretty high KH, I have a water softener. Maybe I should crank that up. I can't see myself buying the pressurized system.

 

[greenmaji]

Water softeners use salt.. is there a way of bypassing it to see what your water is like before its softened? You could always get a RO unit on e-bay there very reasonable..
http://stores.ebay.com/The-Aqua-Safe-Pure-Water-Shop_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQdptZ0QQftidZ2QQtZkm
Parts for pressurized are not too bad either..

 

[czcz]

Isn't KH only relevant here as an indicator of CO2 levels? Why is it more difficult to add CO2, say with 1G jug mix replacing 2L? According to Chuck's calculator, J's target pH is 7.2-7.6 to meet Steve's suggested CO2 levels. Only curious.

 

[greenmaji]

Id say he would do well to drop the PH to 7.4..(~22.7ppm CO2) the generators would deffinately need to be alot bigger.. It would depend on how much drop in PH he's getting out of the 2L bottles as to weather or not 1 gal jugs will work.. its worth a shot though.. Maybe big garden sprayers would do the job?..

 

[JHawk]

I decided to give the black out one more try. After reading other things out there, I went with a very large water change (90%). I added a Magnum HOB from my other tank & put in the micron filter media. I'm going to do a 5 day blackout. From some of my reading, I think this came about because I did some major reshuffling of my plants a couple of months back in addition to the water issues we discussed.

I guess I should read up on the pressurized systems again & look into that option. The one gal jug could be the interim solution.

 

[Zezmo]

I use diatomacious earth with my Magnum HOB. Gets your water super polished.

 

[greenmaji]

I decided to give the black out one more try. After reading other things out there, I went with a very large water change (90%). I added a Magnum HOB from my other tank & put in the micron filter media. I'm going to do a 5 day blackout. From some of my reading, I think this came about because I did some major reshuffling of my plants a couple of months back in addition to the water issues we discussed.

I guess I should read up on the pressurized systems again & look into that option. The one gal jug could be the interim solution.

If you use DE in the filter the pool supply stuff works just as good and 1 cup is what they use in the 350, so I would think 3/4 of a cup would work with the HOT Magnum..
I would look into using two 1 gallon jugs for the DIY generation to help keep constant pressure.