Name this algae, and what can I do... LOL

[Lonewolfblue]

Well, here it goes. I've been having so many problems with my 29G I'm ready to throw it out, lol. Then when I cut the lighting down to 65W, and dosing Excel, all was getting a little better. Then I got my final stuff for my CO2 system, and have it hooked up. Ran it at 65W for 2 days before today, when I upped it back to 130W. Now this is what my tank looks like, after just 1 day at 130W. What is this, and what can I do? Ready to take a hammer to it, lol.

Edit:
CO2 levels are at a minimum of 47ppm.

 

[src]

Wish I could identify that for you, but I can certainly comisserate - I'm fighting my own algae battle in the 125. I just pulled and chlorox treated all my plants today just to try to get some kind of control.

Good luck!

 

[joannde]

um ... ewwwwwwwwwwwwww .... but don't take a hammer to it ! LOL You'll figure it out. I have no clue what it is - so far I'm only good at recognizing diatoms, cyano (yuck !! my 10G is just getting overtaken with it), and hair algae.

 

[Glenc]

Lonewolf, 130 wts is alot of light, especialy if it's CF lighting. Thats close to 6 wts per gallon. I would cut the lights back to 65 wts and take it down to 10 hrs a day. The algea will hopefully die off. I have a nice coralife 65wt 6700k CF light. It looks great, to bad I can't use it. Probably going to sell it. Every time I try to use it, I run into green water or brown algea. It's just to much light, and I am a bit finatical about my C02, ferts, etc. I'm at 3.5 wts now in my 20 and the tank is clean, never looked better from an algea point of view. Lower the light and I think it will definatly help. You get used to the lower lighting, tank sure looks pretty with smokin high light, sometimes it's just not worth the hassle, at least not for me.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Well, got some more parameters for ya, lol. Since I've been doing the EI, maybe I shouldn't, lol. I tested for Phosphates, came up with between 0 and .2ppm. My nitrates on the otherhand are above 44ppm. It's darker than the 10 on the LaMotte Kit, and then you multiply it by 4.4. Probably over 50ppm. So I guess I'm going to have to do this tank the hard way, lol. Manually dosing as needed, and constant testing, lol. But I do know the plants are pearling like mad now, it's so saturated the XP2 is constantly spitting out O2. Wish my 75G would pearl again. Might need new bulbs before that happens, lol. Gonna test my phosphates with another kit just to see if there's any difference.

Edit:
I hate test kits, lol. I used my Hagen kit, and for Phosphates it puts me well over 5ppm. The strange thing is that when I was looking with the LaMottes kit, the solution being tested was dark purple, but in the indicator window, it was almost white. Didn't make any sense. I'm beginning to hate test kits, lol.I'm just not going to dose anymore except for Potassium, to see if I really need to not be dosing, lol.

 

[fish_4_all]

To be honest, the top pictures looks like what a water bug around here builds for it's nest. Doubt that though unless you have been collecting in the local lake. . I would think that smaller doses instead of the full EI or that other you use would work better until things get back to normal. Best of luck and if you hate it that much I'm not that far away. lol

Or try 4 hours 65, 2 hours 130 and then 4 hours 65 and see how that helps then maybe you can go full out in a coule weeks.

 

[Spy_90]

To be honest, the top pictures looks like what a water bug around here builds for it's nest. Doubt that though unless you have been collecting in the local lake. . I would think that smaller doses instead of the full EI or that other you use would work better until things get back to normal. Best of luck and if you hate it that much I'm not that far away. lol

Or try 4 hours 65, 2 hours 130 and then 4 hours 65 and see how that helps then maybe you can go full out in a coule weeks.

ya you can even do like 4 hours 130 then 2 hours dark and 4hours 130 again. Just try and break up the photo cycle in the middle to try and kill the algea

 

[Kilgore]

That is exactly the kind of algae problem I am having in my tank! It's like you took a picture of my tank. I even have the algae-covered ozelot swords! Just replace the cabomba with bacopa and that's my tank.

Wish I knew what it was. I had kind of assumed, since it's brownish, mushy, and pulls off fairly easily, that it was some sort of diatom algae. I can tell you that my tank only has 2.7 wpg CF, so the intensity of the lighting does not seem to be a factor. BTW, that level of CO2 is too high, isn't it?

Anyway, my phosphates are steady at 1 ppm and nitrates are at 5 ppm, so I do not think an excess of those is the problem. My nitrates have bottomed out a couple of times and I was wondering if that was the cause, but if you are having the same problem with such high nitrate levels, that seems unlikely.

My next suspected culprit, then, is too much iron. But I have very soft tap water and have been very conservative in my Plantex dosing, so I am doubtful. What about a deficiency in potassium? I was following the recommendation of a 1/4 tsp potassium nitrate 3 times a week and 1/8 tsp potassium sulfate 3 times a week, but that adds too much nitrate and not enough potassium, IMHO. So I switched to an 1/8 tsp KNO3 and 1/4 tsp potassium sulfate. We'll see if that makes a difference.

The stuff that grows on the leaves is brighter green and harder to remove. I have removed the worst affected older leaves but it is now spreading to the newer leaves, which apparently means they are not growing. That indicates a deficiency in something. I just don't know what!

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Actually, the CO2 is fine. In my 75G, I keep it between 37-54ppm. And it's virtually algae free now, under 520W CF lighting.

As for my water here, it's also fairly soft. Just recently tested at kh 60 and gh 60. gh used to test at 70, but the last couple weeks has been 60. For my potassium, I dose just a little more than the EI, plus with the potassium nitrate dosing, since my plants don't seem to be growing alot, the nitrates just keep increasing with my dosing. And for my swords, they all have root tabs under them as well.

As for the algae being diatoms, well, mine only gets like this under 130W lighting. When I had it cleaned up and under 65W, things looked pretty good other than the corkscrew vals still looking shabby after the last blackout. But I still have yet to conquer this, like I did on my 75G when it looked like this. Switching to Travis' schedule worked wonders for that tank. But I tried with this for over a month, and then switching to EI with the same results, just not working for this tank. So I'm guessing his dosing is for very high light, large tanks, and heavily planted. So maybe we just need more plant mass. I definitely need more stem plants as well.

My goal is to succeed. So no, I'm not going to use a hammer, LOL. If I can get it to work, then it's just that much more I've learned in planted tanks. And as you can see, I still have a long ways to go, LOL.

 

[TwoHobbies]

I agree with Glenc, to much light, I'd lower it down, get control and then up it again.

A friend of mine tried running 4wpg without co2, That is exactly what his tank looked like!

 

[Purrbox]

I'm with Glenc that it's probably too much light that's the issue. I would probably either go with the high noon lighting and only one bulb for the rest of the lighting or swap one of the bulbs for a 50/50. This would still allow you to have very high light without having to fight it quite so much.

 

[malkore]

I had this same, nasty, snotty stuff in one of my 20g that only has a 65w coralife on it.

due to low nitrates I developed BGA too. Then the BGA wouldn't go away...so I hit it with maricyn at a half dose for 5 days, plus blackout. (Do as I say, not as I do...this 20g was a nightmare for a long time, and I made the decision to 'nuke it from orbit' as a last ditch effort before a tear down, and thankfully it worked)

Wiped out the BGA and whatever this crud is too.

I'm not saying "go dose maricyn" though. I'd test phos and nitrate, then do a 50% water change, and retest 4 hours later. It sounds like nutrients are outta whack, but I don't see a ton of light causing the brown snot stuff, cuz that wasn't what caused mine.

 

[evercl92]

I've had similar algae in my tank previously. I completely covered the tank (with bed sheets / blankets) so it had total darkness for 5 days. I would feed the fish at night, when the lights were off. The plants took a llittle damage from it (though not much more than the algae was causing by covering the plants anyway), and the algae was 95% gone / dead. Can't say that this works that well on hair algae (a freind of mine tried, and it partially worked), but it took care of this 'slime' algae, and green water issues that I've had previously.

 

[Guest]

looks like the dreaded SNOT ALGAE MONSTER!

 

[Zezmo]

I am fighting this stuff in my nano. Mostly I manually pull it out. It seems to get worse when I am sloppy about my EI fert routine. I really think that it is some nutrient crashing (bottoming out), because it only gets worse when I miss dosing. Even using EI, you may have to "adjust" your doses to match uptake. If your nitrates are high, and your phosphorus is low...adjust the ratio of the macros you add.
In my high light tanks, the only time I get algae anymore is when I skip fertilizors or water changes. Staying on top of water chages and ferts and in a week or two the tank will be algae free. If I am lazy for a week or two they turn into an algae mess as 3 or 4 kinds of algae go crazy.
I am not so cool as to know what exact nutrient (s) are being limited to allow that algae to take off. But that brown cottony stuff is pretty nasty looking. On the bright side, it does pearl up easily. You know things are out of whack when you look in the tank and the plants are melting and the algae is pearling.

 

[travis simonson]

That looks suspiciously like cladophora. Is it long and stringy and can you pull it off with a toothbrush or your fingers?

A note on PO4 test kits: try the Seachem PO4 test kit. I like it more than the LaMotte PO4 kit. Easier to read and pretty dang reliable. Cheaper too

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Cool, will give it a try. Gonna be ordering more supplies anyways to complete my breeder tanks, will add that in.

Yes, it's long and stringy and easy to remove. Wraps around a toothbrush just fine.

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/GLWI/cladophora/
Cladophora is a branching, green filamentous alga found naturally along the coastline of most of the Great Lakes. Research in the 1960’s and 70’s linked Cladophora blooms to high phosphorus levels in the water, mainly as a result of human activities such as fertilizing lawns, poorly maintained septic systems, inadequate sewage treatment, agricultural runoff and detergents containing phosphorus. Due to tighter restrictions, phosphorus levels declined during the 1970’s and Cladophora blooms were largely absent in the 1980’s and 90’s.

 

[travis simonson]

It sounds exactly like cladophora then. Debulk it by pulling as much off as you can and lower your NO3 levels if possible. Shrimp seem to love the stuff (from what I've heard, my fish won't let me keep any shrimp). I've had it before and have had success by manually removing all of it that I can, dipping the plants that are too heavily infested to completely clean, and lowering my nitrates. It tends to thrive in high light, high NO3 environments but is not the worst algae you can have. Just takes some work to get rid of

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Cool......

I do need to get my levels down, they are pretty high. Will probably start doing some PWC's starting tomorrow and for the next few days to get everything reset, and then maybe clean some up and run my diatom filter and start over from scratch. It won't be too bad.

 

[Zezmo]

I think I will try the same advice for my Nano.

I will let you know how it goes.