Cube3
New Member
I have had an algae problem for over four months. I am no expert so apoligise for vague terms and descriptions. It started with a normal 20% water change and gravel hoover! Over the course of the next week the water turned green with clarity down to less than 4 inches!
A clean change of filter wool and new charcoal a week later but with no improvement. 3 weeks in I visited my local tropical fish shop, they suggested restricting lighting to no more than 4 hours a day. Returned to shop 1 week later with news that the bloom seemed to be getting worse, by now I could not see hardly any fish, although they seemed unaffected and feeding well. They provided an algae bloom treatment, after the week long course, no improvement, 3 weeks later returned to shop. They seemed unable to help any further. Went to another local shop (Tugs Tanks, Southend) Spoke to a very helpful chap who told me that there are only three things that cause algae, Excess Food, Excess Light and I think he said high phosphates levels. He suggested keeping the light levels to a minimum and sold me a filter additive for the phosphate. Well to keep a long story short it did nothing to improve visibility, I decided to eliminate light completely for a couple of days. So with the tank wrapped in black bin liners and no lighting I thought that the algae would never survive, a week later after total darkness the algae was just a thick.
At this point I gave up and the algae stayed for several weeks, during this time I placed some filter wool in the up tube from the undergravel to the heater/pump head. I left this wool in there for weeks with out it collecting any algae. A month later I came home to see that the fish where gasping for air, I then realised that the pump head make-shift filter had blocked all flow. I washed the filter and normal flow returned and so did the health of the fish over night.
Over the course of the next 3 days the pump head filter is becoming blocked within 12 hours and the algae has began to clear to the point that it has almost undetectable.
I don't know the reasons for this but it would nice to know and may help others in the future.
Regards Simon
A clean change of filter wool and new charcoal a week later but with no improvement. 3 weeks in I visited my local tropical fish shop, they suggested restricting lighting to no more than 4 hours a day. Returned to shop 1 week later with news that the bloom seemed to be getting worse, by now I could not see hardly any fish, although they seemed unaffected and feeding well. They provided an algae bloom treatment, after the week long course, no improvement, 3 weeks later returned to shop. They seemed unable to help any further. Went to another local shop (Tugs Tanks, Southend) Spoke to a very helpful chap who told me that there are only three things that cause algae, Excess Food, Excess Light and I think he said high phosphates levels. He suggested keeping the light levels to a minimum and sold me a filter additive for the phosphate. Well to keep a long story short it did nothing to improve visibility, I decided to eliminate light completely for a couple of days. So with the tank wrapped in black bin liners and no lighting I thought that the algae would never survive, a week later after total darkness the algae was just a thick.
At this point I gave up and the algae stayed for several weeks, during this time I placed some filter wool in the up tube from the undergravel to the heater/pump head. I left this wool in there for weeks with out it collecting any algae. A month later I came home to see that the fish where gasping for air, I then realised that the pump head make-shift filter had blocked all flow. I washed the filter and normal flow returned and so did the health of the fish over night.
Over the course of the next 3 days the pump head filter is becoming blocked within 12 hours and the algae has began to clear to the point that it has almost undetectable.
I don't know the reasons for this but it would nice to know and may help others in the future.
Regards Simon
