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Blue/green Algae

Robj

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My tank has been cycled since early June. In early August I had a huge outbreak of blue/green algae over a week when I was away. It seemed to cover everything. I picked most of it out & rinsed the rocks off to remove from there. I then blacked the tank out for about a week & a lot of the balance seemed to die off. It has not come back to the extent of before, however I do notice it just starting to form before I do the weekly water change. Any tips on how best to handle this? Or is it just a war of attrition by reducing the light exposure & big water changes until its eliminated??
 
More setup information please. Also, is it planted? Do you already have fish in there?
 
More setup information please. Also, is it planted? Do you already have fish in there?

Tank is an Aquatropic 100 so 160l

Water readings are:
NH3 0
NO2 0.5ppm
NO3 30ppm

There are plants. Fish wise 8 rosy tetras, 2Bristlenose, 6 zebra loach.
 
How much plants (photo would help)? What are the lights and lighting hours? pH? Tank height?

I see nitrite in your readings, are you still cycling? (You should really try to keep it below 0.25 ppm, it is toxic to fish.)
 
How much plants (photo would help)? What are the lights and lighting hours? pH? Tank height?

I see nitrite in your readings, are you still cycling? (You should really try to keep it below 0.25 ppm, it is toxic to fish.)

4 amazon swords, keeping the lights to about 6hrs at the moment, pH 8, tank height is 40cm. Cycling was completed some months back, tank was set up in April & cycled until June.
 
So, why are you still getting nitrite readings then? If the tank is cycled, there should be none, if it isn't, that would explain it (just because you went through the motions of cycling, doesn't mean something hasn't killed off some of the bacteria since, and it is important to find out what it could have been).

What wattage are the bulbs, what diameter (T5, T8?) and how many do you have? Are the lights on a timer?

To solve the cyanobacteria problem in the long term, you need to solve the aforementioned nitrite problem and you should get a lot more plants, especially fast growing ones, as they will out-compete the bacteria.

So, first step I would take would be daily manual removal of all cyanobacteria until the nitrite problem is sorted. Once it is sorted, I would manually remove all the cyanobacteria that you can and do a 7 day blackout. On the day the blackout is finished, I would again manually remove all cyanobacteria and heavily plant the tank with suitable stem and floating plants, increasing lighting to 12 hours per day.

Basically, a tank your size can't sustain 4 swords without some serious fertilisation because they are very greedy plants and 6 hours of light per day, in my experience, encourages algae and cyanobacteria because that is not enough for the plants.

If a number of blackouts do not solve your problem, you may have to try antibiotics, to remove the last traces of it, but unless you solve the root cause, the bacteria will come back.
 

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