Help! Planted tank implosion!

[zombie2k]

Hi all again. I just got home from a week long trip to new york (I'm from California) and found that my tank was......inadequately...taken care of while I was away. Long story short, the person who I was supposed to take care of it wasn't paying attention while I was explaining how and the official story is she didn't know how to turn the lights off and forgot to dose excel.

In any case I got back and the lights had been on for a week straight without excel. The plants seem fine for the most part, but the reason I mention excel is because algae has completely taken over my tank and I have no idea what to do from here!

Its...everywhere! My Java Moss is completely infested and looks alien at this point. What should I do? Blackout for how long? Dose excel will help kill it or...?

The rocks, the plants, the substrate, and the aquarium are covered with it! I'm surprised the fish aren't too (they were fed and all are alive, thankfully)!

What to do?

 

[neilanh]

Well, it'll depend largely on what type(s) of algae you've got. Check this link out to attempt to ID it, or if you can, post a picture here.

GWAPA:

 

[zombie2k]

Heres a picture of the java moss sorry it's kind of blurry my camera isn't so hot.


EDIT: Just as an addition, if I didn't know better I'd say a lot of it looks a lot like mold on bread. It's really dense black and cobweb like with small bits looking really dark green/moldy

EDIT2: Now that I'm reading a bit more on it, I'm inclined to say the stuff on the plants/rocks is BBA, and no doubt different than the stuff on the glass (which is a blanket of bright green with long strangs--hair algae?).

 

[neilanh]

Tough from the pic, but best I can see it's either BBA or cyano.

 

[pitt420dude]

Ugh, Sorry to hear about your tank troubles. I have BBA as well, though not to that extent. You can scrape the sides, and remove everthing from the tank and do a bleach dip at 1 part bleach to 20 parts water, or try a hydrogen peroxide dip. It kills algae too.

Either way if you use this stuff be careful how much you use. There are tons of threads on algae and a couple w/ good info on BBA algae if you use the search function.

BBA seems to be the worst unfortunately, and perhaps the most difficult to get rid of. I've also heard 3 or 4 day blackout suggestions, or something that I personally would try if i had it that bad, double or triple the dose of Excel. I've heard this kills algae too. I also have seen a thread where very high temps killed algae when the aquarist was treating ich. Maybe other members can chime in with suggestions.

 

[neilanh]

We really need to get a positive ID. If it is BBA, then I think cutting back to 8 hours/day lighthing and heavy excel dosing could clear it up. If it's cyano, then I think the blackout is going to be necessary.

 

[Purrbox]

If we can't get a clear ID, then I'd recommend starting by removing as much as possible manually and cutting back on the lighting to 8hrs per day along with extra Excel dosing. Give this a week to see if the Algae either ceases to spread or starts to go away. If so, then continue the treatment until things are back to normal. If not, then a blackout would be advisable.

 

[zombie2k]

I hope this is a better picture--I didn't have image shack resize it--hope that's ok!

 

[Purrbox]

Looks more like BBA than anything else from that last picture.