Disaster Strikes!

Big_eyes · Jun 5, 2010

I looked into my tank earlier, gazing away as you do when I noticed it. That horrible green gooey bubbly slime that takes over plants! :sad:

I've suffered this issue before in one of our smaller tanks and thought I'd got rid of it before swapping plants over into my main tank. Wrooooong!!

So now I've had to throw away pretty much all of my plants as it had covered everything. They were doing amazing as well, two bunches of different plants had spread and covered the whole tank and were growing beatifully.

Now I'm left with a few poxy strands of vallis literally :sad:

spectrum · Jun 5, 2010

Oh dear

Is it algae, it sounds like it. If so you didn't need to bin your plants, lots of surface agitation, CO2 and extra water changes would have gotten rid of it.

Big_eyes · Jun 5, 2010

It's Cyanobacteria. I really don't understand how I've got it though, as I do 2 water changes weekly and shuffle the sand about on every other clean. In this tank I have 2 fluval U4's running (it's only a 180ltr tank) so don't see how it could be down to dirtyness? :huh:

One filter is on the bubbly spray pointing down and the other the bubbly spray pointing up to disturb the surface. They are at opposite ends of the tank facing each other -_-

Bignose · Jun 5, 2010

Well, cyanobacteria can form spores, so they can get into almost any water.

Big_eyes · Jun 5, 2010

Bignose said:
Well, cyanobacteria can form spores, so they can get into almost any water.

What causes it though in the first place?

I pride myself on the condition I keep our main tank in and spend hours cleaning and cleaning to the point I gain a fish geek title within our house :lol:

Bignose · Jun 5, 2010

My point was that since cyanobacteria can form spores, the spores can and will ride the air and just fall into your tank. It isn't necessarily anything you do wrong -- they just get in there.