Oh so beautiful field of... ALGAE????

[DrunkG0D]

Hello all,

I have a beautiful field of algae on my newly planted Iwagumi tank. Can anyone tell if me it is BGA or Rhizoclonium?

Look at it pearl!

[steven p]

Not bga but it is kinda neat looking.

[puopg]

Looks like cyano.

[fishcrazee]

It almost looks like you did the sand river effect, it's pretty cool actually haha

[stevenjohn21]

That takes some skill ! I agree with the others, it looks kind of cool although i bet its annoying you !

[DrunkG0D]

Yeah I wonder if I can send this in to IALPC this year and win something .

Its quite annoying because it spreads fairly rapidly, the day before yesterday I cleared it off my rocks, the next day it came back with a vengence.

Last night I did an 80% water change and started using a tooth brush to scrape the stuff off my soil and rocks but only managed to go through about half the valley.

Heck it pearls more than my HC. I should have saved my money on the plants and grown this stuff instead.

[stevenjohn21]

Originally Posted by DrunkG0D

Heck it pearls more than my HC. I should have saved my money on the plants and grown this stuff instead.

Ha ha , you are taking it better than i would !
Have you tried blasting it with excel and pumping up the C02 higher ?

I just noticed you have no fish, new setup im guessing ? Empty it and dry start it, maybe once the HC spreads in it will compete better against the algae and you will end up seeing less or none at all.

[DrunkG0D]

I have pumped up the C02 to where my indicator started reading yellow/green. I have not OD'd excel yet because I want to be sure of what this gunk is before I decide my next step.

If it is actually cyano/blue-green algae then I might decide to blackout or what not.

Have reduced my photo-period to 4 hours so let's see what happens today.

[RedseaReefer]

Blackout works great on the cyano in my salt tank. I don't know about the entire substrate ecosystem in most planted but I also got a TON of snails to stir up the sand might work for you BUT.. I doubt you want a million snails on the glass lol!

Oh yeah another thing is cyano almost always has bubbles under a green, blue, or red film Iv never seen freshwater cyano before though.. Best of luck!! I would be so angry haha like I am with my bba problem >.<

[greenman857]

Yeah it is an impressive mix of algae! Too bad there wasn't an algae aquascaping club!
What i've done in some situations is just drop sand/fine gravel down on algae as a kind of mulch. you might try that, I've even found that moss and other plants will grow up out of the sand and the algae wont.

[Aulonocara_Freak]

DAMN, that's cool. I would personally keep it as long as it's not killing your plant's.

[aokashi]

it looks awesome! i would keep it...

[msawdey]

LOL... that. is. awesome.

[wicca27]

if its blue green algae then its really a bacteria not a true algae. blue green is cause of dead spots in the tank. i fixed the little prob i had with it a few years ago by using a spray bottle on mist and sprayed under the water with H2O2 and upped circulation. circulation is the main think that will help and H2O2 is an oxidizer so it also helps with moving air to the spot to kill the bacteria. since no fish its worth a shot but yeah i would turn off lights and if its a must just use the lights in the room to see into the tank

[happi]

no this is not BGA, you have two algae's going on here, GDA and hair algae, both are caused by very high light and less co2/or not proper circulation. i would reduce the light in your case.