[sean*]

hey all,

i have just about reached my wits end with this specific problem, and it's the only problem of all of them that i have not been able to conquer: green water.

seachem clarity, which i tried as a last ditch effort, curtails the problem completely, but within a day it is back again. i tried a 3 day blackout, but all that really managed to achieve was practically killing off my ludwigia super red and making my s. repens really leggy.

my tank is an ADA 60-H (21g?) ADA aquasky moon light, and an oase biomaster 250
i run purigen and matrix, one coarse foam pads, and swapped out another coarse foam pad for fine filter floss.

stocked with 7 neons, 6 crystal shrimp, 3 otos and a handful of ramshorn snails.
i'm running CO2, and have had photoperiod ranging from 4-8 hours.

ammonia/nitrite 0, nitrates <5-10, phosphate 0, ph 6.4, temp around 22c

i am a habitual cleaner, i probably do 2x 40-50% wc's every week, sometimes more if i want to get in and trim plants, and simply because i enjoy it.
the filter, the pipes, outlets and inlets are all spotless, sand is white, and there's no evidence of any other algae anywhere else.

the plants are all (surprisingly) very healthy, they grow rapidly and show no signs of deficiencies despite me not dosing my tank at all since this problem showed up.

 

[Asteroid]

GW is sometimes very tough to get rid of (as you are realizing). Many times it's caused by ammonia being stirred up from the substrate. If your using ADA AS you would've had plenty of that.

Don't knock yourself out, just get a UV and it will be gone forever within a few days.

 

[Quint]

Any sunlight reach your tank? Noticed my tank in summer when it got to much sunlight would get the green water bloom. Blocked the sunlight and it stopped.
Could be your lighting time and intensity as well.

 

[sean*]

Any sunlight reach your tank? Noticed my tank in summer when it got to much sunlight would get the green water bloom. Blocked the sunlight and it stopped.
Could be your lighting time and intensity as well.

my tank is next to a window, but the blind is always closed, and if i have the door shut to the room, it is virtually pitch black. so i'd like to think that isn't the issue, it certainly didn't affect my other tank, which was probably in direct sunlight for a quarter of the day! so i'm quite confused.

my lighting is the aquasky moon, the 50w version. i run it 6 hours, from 9am until 3pm, but when the tank was not suffering from green water, i had it running probably about 10 hours a day.