The "One-Two Punch" Whole Tank Algae Treatment

[farrenator]

No worries about the shrimp, there are plenty more. As for the Val's, I have dosed Excel before. I followed the protocol as described with the following caveat:
I have a 75 gallon tank with a bunch of wood so I 'guessed' I had 60 gallons of water. I have never actually measured it.

All in all, this looks to be an effective treatment as long as you don't mind some casualties along the way. All my fish look great, no deaths there. To me shrimp are a little more expendable but YMMV.

Originally Posted by DarkCobra

Sorry to hear about the cherry. Hopefully there will be no more deaths. Though I'd consider even one death to be an indication they may need to be treated as a special case, with reduced dosage.

The vals aren't a big surprise, as they're notably sensitive to Excel. Were your vals already pre-acclimated to Excel, or is this their first recent exposure? Which Excel dosage did you use?

Looking forward to further updates.

[creekbottom]

Ok, this was quite effective on my algae, it's all dead and turning color. Now what? lol How do I get all that gunk out of my moss?

[DarkCobra]

Originally Posted by creekbottom

Ok, this was quite effective on my algae, it's all dead and turning color. Now what? lol How do I get all that gunk out of my moss?

If there's only a little of it and your tank is otherwise healthy and well-planted, you can leave it to disintegrate on its own over a few days.

If there's a LOT of it, some attempts at mechanical removal and an extra water change or two might help the die-off from releasing too much waste into your tank.

[john_i_williams]

you really mean 4 tablespoons not teaspoons right

[Liliputman]

Okay so this is what i planned;

So for my steps with my 100 gal;
H2O2
1) Remove filter media from canister filters and power back on.
2) Now add 3% H2O2, (4tbps or 59ml per 10 gals, therefore 5.9ml/gal) about 590 ml worth.
3) Let this circulate for 15 mins.
4) Terminate Treatment
5) Do a 50% water change.
6) Add Filter media again and start back filters.
Liquid CO2
7) Add liquid CO2 according to Azoo Carbon Plus (for Excel it is 5ml per 10G)
8) Done and Pray! hahaha

And this is what happened;

So for my steps with my 100 gal;
H2O2
1) Remove filter media from canister filters and power back on. Added an additional powerhead (1300L/Hr)
2) Now add 3% H2O2, (4tbps or 59ml per 10 gals, therefore 5.9ml/gal) about 590 ml worth. Actually placed 625ml.
3) Let this circulate for 15 mins.
4) Terminate Treatment
5) Do a 50% water change. Removing 50% of a 100 gal added 30 more mins.
6) Add Filter media again and start back filters.
Liquid CO2
7) Add liquid CO2 according to Azoo Carbon Plus (for Excel it is 5ml per 10G) Added 40ml of Azoo Carbon Plus, which was twice the printed value.
8) Done and Pray! hahaha

Result was the algae did not change color but it started to float off the plants. And I lost mt two ottos.

[DarkCobra]

Hi Liliputman, welcome to the forum and thanks for the report! Some comments:

2) Remember actual tank water volume is always less than full tank capacity. In a well planted 100G, I'd take off 10G for substrate, another 5G for plants, and maybe more if there is significant amounts of hardscape. This applies to all chemicals, medications, etc. At 85G, the recommended H2O2 dosage would have been 501ml. Your actual dose was about 25% higher, or 7.4ml/gal.

5) Now this was a surprise. I hadn't considered the time needed to accomplish a water change in a larger tank, and this really slowed full termination of the treatment. Will be giving this some serious thought, I may need to reduce my dosage recommendation to account for variations like this.

What kind of algae was this? Sorry to hear about the two otos, but I'm glad you reported this, and everything else, in such detail.

[DarkCobra]

Originally Posted by john_i_williams

you really mean 4 tablespoons not teaspoons right

Was this to me? Or wkndracer, who earlier accidentally typed teaspoons?

[danielt]

Thanks for the tutorial. Will try this on my BBA 300L planted tank and report back. Aside from the typical GSA on the glass and a persistent BBA infestation I don't have other algae.

Taking into account the substrate and plants I will go for 1ml/L if I calculated correctly.

This will put me at 4ml/gallon. I need to make these conversions as I'm East European

[john_i_williams]

Originally Posted by DarkCobra

Was this to me? Or wkndracer, who earlier accidentally typed teaspoons?

Sorry, I was asking DarkCobra.
Thanks actually you just answered my Q. So you did in fact mean 4 Tablespoons Not
4 Teaspoon

[Liliputman]

Originally Posted by DarkCobra

Hi Liliputman, welcome to the forum and thanks for the report! Some comments:

2) Remember actual tank water volume is always less than full tank capacity. In a well planted 100G, I'd take off 10G for substrate, another 5G for plants, and maybe more if there is significant amounts of hardscape. This applies to all chemicals, medications, etc. At 85G, the recommended H2O2 dosage would have been 501ml. Your actual dose was about 25% higher, or 7.4ml/gal.

5) Now this was a surprise. I hadn't considered the time needed to accomplish a water change in a larger tank, and this really slowed full termination of the treatment. Will be giving this some serious thought, I may need to reduce my dosage recommendation to account for variations like this.

What kind of algae was this? Sorry to hear about the two otos, but I'm glad you reported this, and everything else, in such detail.

2) Yes thats absolutely correct!
5) I was using a standard size hose also.

The algae was a combination of hair and beard which was over running my tank (shown below). Thank you your treatment worked and this time I did some preventive items;
- lowered my temp suing fans to 24C from 27C+
- shortened my lights from 10 hours + to 8 hours
- will add more algae fauna once my HC and HG grows a bit more.

[Liliputman]

this is my tank btw

[nvladik]

So after following this thread for a few weeks I thought I give it a go as Algae was getting worse and worse. I didn't have enough plants initially, wanted to "clean up the tank" before planting a large load. My tank is a 75g rimless, not filled all the way to the top and decent amount of substrate, so I figured dosing is on 50g-55g estimate of water.

1. turned off the filter and removed the media, just in case.
2. got two koralia 750gph powerheads setup diagonally in the tank.
3. I dosed 300ml of H202 with syringe right into the stream from one of the powerheads.
4. moved one of the powerheads for 15 minutes all over the tank to get as much flow as possible everywhere.
5. Stopped the treatment, 50% water change, Prime+
6. Recommended excel dose at 5ml per 10g, so around 27ml.

And here's the report. Right away something was wrong, one of the nerites looked like he wasn't dealing with it all ok. Fell to the ground, almost completely came out of it's shell. Everyone else was fine.

Next morning, here's the count
all nerites dead
one otto dead
90% of shrimp dead or dying (almost all babies, and most of adults, total about 50).

So what could have gone wrong? 1500GPH isn't enough flow?

[vvDO]

I tried this on my 2.5 g along with algaefix after excel treatment. 1 day later no change however will report again when I get home (away for 10 days). All I have are ramshorn and mts. Since the tank is so small and no fauna I kept my Redsea nano filter running and added a fluval mini internal filter on full blast. Scared to try this on my 6g edge since its such a closed system and since the algae is at a minimum. Both tanks got out of control after multiple 2week periods of being away. Anyway thanks for sharing this write up, will report again once I get back.

[karatekid14]

I wanted to report as well. I have an ADA 60P so I calculated the actual tank volume to be 12.5 gal. I dosed 70 mL of H2O2, with 320 gph of flow that I redirected multiple times for 15 minutes, 60% water change, then dosed 5 mL of excel. Death count? 3 otos and 5 ember tetras. I don't know what I did wrong, I really don't like killing fish

[aokashi]

did anyone test their ammonia and nitrites?I think killing off so much dead/dying algae is bound to have an impact on the parameters.