Huge Algae Problem

[Neo8223]

Be careful... it will melt some plants. It is good stuff, but some plants just can't deal with it. Check the plants first to be sure you don't have one that it kills.

Flourish Excel seems to affect plants at random though - it is said that it often affects vallis, riccia and one or two others. Personally it has never done anything bad to my vallis, I've had it with a plant similar to riccia (monosolenium tenerus) and it also did nothing bad. It may be related as much to different peoples water conditions as anything else.

I have both of these in my tank. Its affecting the riccia. Should i treat the riccia still? I'll take a runner off the vallis and babysit it in my dads tank for the course of the treatment and if the riccia fails, then i'll just get some more off smithrc.

3 cannisters seems a bit excessive for a tank of that size (same as mine, around 15 UK gallons) - I had two Nutrafin cannisters and with the Nutrafin ladder or a ceramic diffuser it managed happily to keep my drop checker green. What filter do you use and where is the ladder/diffuser placed in relation to the filter output? is there a lot of water surface agitation?

Actually, one is a nutrafin cannister, next is a 2l water bottle and the third is a small water bottle. Extreme DIY. The drop checker is turning ever slowly more green and i've totally turned off the air pumps all together.

The CO2 glass diffuser is situated at the bottom far right of the tank, just above the filter inlet. I've got a very weak spray bar which gently releases the water throughout the whole top of the tank.

I think moving plants around too much, too much fish/or waste is a good cause for Staghorn.
There may be more, but those I've managed to show do cause this algae.

How to resolve that and move plants/uproot etc?

Did you do a large water right away after moving gthe pkants around or did you wait for 2 or more days?
If you move plants around, add too much food, have too many fish etc all of a sudden, do a water change, like 50-80%.

This will prevent the staghorn.

If you move plants around and do not do this step, then often times you'll get the staghorn.

Could be the excess plant waste 2bh. Its difficult to remove the fish waste as my tank is sooo densely planted. i'll get a propper syphon vac very soon.

I've never seen it unless I did things like that or progressively over loaded tanks. I have some rather high levels of fish, but if you keep pushing things(as I like to do and explore what happens when you do), you will get GW, BBA and staghorn all at once.

Staghorn is easy to deal with though of the 3, causes more damage to plants than GW, but is not as tough.

My suggestion:

Lots of water changes
DIY, you don't have the $ yet, so change the DIY CO2 bottle weekly and keep mup on nit really good, consider the DIY CO2 reactor venturi I designed for DIY folks for 2$ plus a small powerhead(which you might find lying around or can nab one for cheap).
http/www.barrreport.com/articles/41-diy-...-co2-users.html

This will greatly improve the CO2 and the stability of the CO2 supply.
These work better than any other device for DIY users BTW.

I used DIY CO2 for 10 years
I'm well aware of the pitfalls and methods to get things to run correctly.

Excel will help some, just follow the instructions, that ought to kill it off.
Use a turkey baster pipette etc, slowly squirt on the infested spots good with the filters off, wait 2-5 minute, turn things back on.

That's about it, be patient and slowly prune off/out the remaining algae over the next 2-4 weeks.

Regards,
Tom Barr

WOW Thats a pretty amazing cannister. Although i am getting a propper kit now, that would make a pretty good back-up! I did get all of those at once! I looked in my LFS and didnt find any flourish excel, but am going to go to a pretty big maidenhead aquatics in Iver, alternitivly, just by off ebay.

This is a very interesting post Tom, never fail but to learn from your posts. nry Tom likes to induce algae in his tanks so he can identify the causes and then learn the cures (and pass the info on to us thankfully) this is why he will push the limits that most of us would think of as abnormal, I expect he does pushes lots of parameters in the course of research.

WOW! never knew that! You are an inspiration to all of us!

 

[Neo8223]

Hi all, Just a quick update. The flourish excel worked a treat. It arrived from e-bay yesterday and i put the dose in my tank immediatly. I can now see the bearded algae and the stringy stuff dieing off.

I do however have another question. I am doing EI, do i still do a 50% water change tomorrow? If so, should i add more flourish excell?

 

[nry]

Do the water change as required. Note sure with Excel, I have only ever dosed as per the bottle instructions.