[bobulot]

I apologize if this has been answered already but I went over a dozen or so threads and didn't see an answer, so..

I have a 5g planted tank (14w light, 6 small wisteria) that houses an ancient betta.
I had been struggling to cycle this thing for months, and not a speck of algae in the whole process, and it cycled within about two weeks when I got everything perfect, and now that all the levels are 0ppm and everything has settled and the fish is in, algae is EVERYWHERE. there is the wispy kind that sticks to the walls and floats to the center and the betta gets caught in it. I wipe down the walls but it's back in a matter of days.

Any recipe for this? I would argue that it's not the high light because like I said the tank was running exactly as it is for at least 2 months before it was cycled and not a green speck to be seen.

I keep the light on for about 8hrs a day. Should I shorten that?

 

[isu712]

Do you dose anything? Any CO2?

 

[bobulot]

nope, they are just planted into the gravel. I don't add anything into the water except some salt and conditioner, obviously.

I have a whisper i10 filter in it now, but I am thinking of switching to a small sponge filter soon. I also have a hydor mini heater in there and the temp is about 72 degrees

 

[isu712]

Hmm...I'm pretty sure that you shouldn't be adding salt to a planted tank. I doubt this is the root cause of your algae problem, but it will be a detriment to your tank in the long run. You might want to try using some root tabs and flourish excel to give your wisteria an opportunity to out-compete the algae and hopefully get rid of it.

 

[bobulot]

it's the aquarium salt used for fish health, just to clarify. Is that harmful to plants?

edit: poked around some more on other threads and picked up that rotting plants can cause algae to bloom? I moved the tanks to a new house a few weeks ago and they were without a light or a full tank of water for 4 days, which obviously didn't go very well. Most of them recovered but are still not looking good. I am probably going to trash them because it's been about two weeks and they have taken a turn for the worse. The tank is still 0 ammonia and nitrites and the fish seems to be healthy and happy, but it can't be healthy for the ecosystem.

If it's the plants and I trash them, is there a formula of WCs that I should do or something to get things back to where they should be?

 

[isu712]

If your ammonia and nitrite levels are where they should be then you shouldn't need to worry about WCs, just replace the plants and continue your WCs as you normally would.

 

[bobulot]

now that the plants are gone, I removed manually the algae and did a 75% water change to get the debris out of the water. Do you think the explosion of algae was due to the rotting plants, or am I doing something else wrong?