green slime

[lziarek]

My tank has been up for over a year now and every week I get green slime over the front of my glass. I wipe, it comes back, and so on the cycles goes. The tank gets 10% water changes every week, it has a euroreef 5-2 skimmer, over 160 lbs of live rock between the tank and sump, and some macro algea growing in the sump. I use walmart distilled water for water changes. *sigh* I just dont know what to do, its a real big pain in the butt. Oh yeah, lights are on 8 hours a day (6 x 55wt t-5 tek lights, and my acros are growing quite steadily), and fish get fed 3 times a week, and once a week they get some seaweed clipped on to the tank. help pls?

 

[seafan]

Distilled water is not necessarily the cleanest water, you might want to think of getting an RO/DI unit available at many fish stores, and online. I bought mine at Marine Depot, Premium Aquatics also sells good units, or you could look for one on ebay.

P.S. I clean the glass every day just to make sure it is absolutely as clean as possible.

 

[melosu58]

On your lights how old are the bulbs.

 

[Fluff]

Actually, green film algae is normal. A mag float works well for cleaning it without much fuss.

 

[seaham358]

like fluff says its normal... If it is slime algae/cyno then that would be different. If its the green algae that floats like dust in the water after you clean it then your fine. It is a pain to clean every day but that is part of the hobby.

 

[lziarek]

thanks for putting me at ease, it is indeed the kind of algea that when you whipe it off it looks like dust, the bulbs are only a few months old (I try to replace when necessary). I think I will invest in one of the magfloats to ease the maintenance cycle a bit.