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What kind of Algae and how to get rid of it?

1211 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  jaidexl, 
enchanted
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Alright, these pictures were taken yesterday before my 2 week water change. I try to keep the water changes to every 2 weeks, not every week. Honestly, I should have done this once a week instead of letting the Algae grow up like this.

I've attached the images of what the tank looked like "Prior" to the water change. During the water change I removed as much of the Algae as I could and planted a bunch of vals I just received in hopes of keeping this from returning.

Any ideas on identifying it, what the causes are, and how to avoid it in the future, let me know.

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C
Lighting and fertilization/water change info (how much/how often) would be helpful in diagnosing.
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enchanted
Carissa said:
Lighting and fertilization/water change info (how much/how often) would be helpful in diagnosing.
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Hmm, thought that was in my sig. 1x96W CF and 1 x 30W T6 for 8 hours.

Dosing = None right now.

Water changes - try to average 2 weeks. This started with in days after the last one.
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C
I haven't had experience with this type of algae but I know that most algae start taking over when the plants get limited by a deficiency of some nutrient or another. If you started dosing EI and did the weekly 50% water changes I would think that would be your best bet for getting algae free.
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jaidexl
I think you should keep doing what your doing, add plants and manually remove algae, and eventually start dosing as you add plants. The main problem I see is no plants, maybe under the algae, but not enough. Could have been a nutrient deficiency, or just too much nutrients with few plants so algae stepped in. Whether or not it thrives in nutritious or deficient water is irrelevant to the fact that you need more plants to out-compete it and other algae species, and they will need a steady balance of nutrients to maintain the upper hand. CO2 will help increase uptake with that much light and ward off algae, but I'm not going to be the one to say you can't make that tank perfect without CO2, just remember that when you increase one element you may need to increase them all to keep a balance, even if it's simply slowing down the surface movement and increasing live stock to trap more natural CO2 and increase other nutrients.

With a small plant load, less WCs are ok, plant uptake is less demanding so it's easier to steal nutrients from the plants with frequent WCs.
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zergling
hard to tell from the pics, but it could be hair, thread, or fuzz algae. It could be due to low CO2 and/or a deficiency in nutrients.

http://www.aquariumalgae.blogspot.com/
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enchanted
My biggest problem here it really doesn't fit "Any" description.

1.) It's brown not green.

2.) It's very thin, and a strong current (i.e. my python) will easily pull it up for the most part.

3.) Hard to remove not because of strength, but it is so weak that it just falls apart.

4.) Clumps together.

It seems like Hair Algae (from descriptions) but the wrong color, completely.
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enchanted
Oh, and it seems the other picture (after removal of the algae for the most part) didn't come through.

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jaidexl
I know exactly what you're talking about, there's a thread somewhere discussing the exact thing which quite a few people have been dealing with lately. I just kicked mine but am not positive how, things I changed were recharged CO2, resumed daily excel dosing for a few weeks, sped up the filter a tad (since most of mine was in dead spots), increased trace dosing (Flourish), added ten ghost shrimp and two more otos to pal around with my lone oto. Any of those could have done it, or a combo, but I think you're on the right track by adding more plants to start with. IIRC, it seemed that many were in the middle of a trace or CO2 deficiency, but is still hard to pinpoint the exact species and cause of it.
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jaidexl
Here's one of the threads, http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/algae/50371-algae-i-d-cure-needed-good.html
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