[carriej]

Hi Folks,

Struggling with algae the past few days -- Everything was fine until I did a trim last week.

I've been running pressurized Co2 for about a month now on a 55 gallon tank with a single t5ho hagen GLO light. Dose N,K,P and micros. 50% or more weekly water change.

I noticed a bit of the algae and didn't think much of it at first.. Not quite hair algae, but it's a short filament algae, very green in color. it's on almost everything at this point, even the glass. There is also some type of algae growing on my substrate (eco complete) it's turning my rocks into little green balls. This is a different algae, and is not a filament algae, it looks super smooth.

I think my CO2 is the problem.. My diffuser is garbage, is there a temporary way to get the CO2 at a higher concentration? I'm using a glass diffuser but the bubbles coming out of the ceramic disk seem way too large and I'm sure I'm losing most of them to surface agitation.

Any help at all would be appreciated...

 

[Abrium]

Can I get a picture of this? This sounds like it could possibly green beard algae.

 

[carriej]

These are not my pictures, my camera is not good enough to pick up on the algae. Here are a few pictures of what it looks like.

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8941/dscn0857w.jpg
http://guitarfish.org/images/posts/algae/fuzz.jpg

Some plants are more affected than others, and some plants have so much that it looks solid.

I have green beard algae in my open top tank (on purpose) and it's nothing like that. GBA is fluffy and dense. This stuff is all individual little uniform strands.

It's driving me bonkers.

 

[Abrium]

yeah fuzz algae, I was always told that a small degree of this algae was acceptable but as I gained experience and realized that this is a "gateway algae". If you are seeing fuzz algae lower your light source first off because if you are seeing it there are different types of algae trying to establish themselves in your aquarium.

With a lower light source I do not see this algae.

 

[carriej]

Thanks for the ID.

I just have the one t5HO light running on this tank, I have cut off an extra two hours of light to try and solve this problem. I did a big cut back, so hopefully once more plants reach the surface of the water and choke out some light it will reduce.

Until then I guess I'll just have to deal with it