New Tank/Cyanobacteria/Old Tank Leaking Conundrum

[Byron]

Cyanobacteria is caused by high organics in the presence of light. The only way to deal with it is to address the organics/nutrients issue, and ensure the light is properly regulated for the aquarium. I can assure you that unless the cause--organics/nutrients--is not dealt with, the cyano will continue to come back over time. I had one tank in my fishroom that developed cyano, and I dealt with it and it never came back. But do not use chemicals, these do impact fish.

 

[Lcc86]

Dear Colin,

Yes I have some more pictures…

The blue green is not too bad at the moment. I pulled a lot of the plants I had out (2 Java ferns and 2 I’ve forgotten the name of) as they were covered in it. The plant that’s left seems a bit more resistant to it.

Have also photographed the chemical product I used to try and treat it.

The Roma arrived today and is sitting in my lounge. I know the safest thing is to set it up straight away but I feel a bit sad about bringing my blue green algae to the new tank. My plan is to put the current water as it is into the new tank and top up with treated tap water. Would that be the right thing to do?

The frame around the old juwel is plastic as far as I can tell.

Yes you can transfer over the water and filter. You could in theory transfer your decor over, give it a really good scrub in a bucket with some tank water with a kitchen brush to get rid of all the cyanobacteria. If you leave the lights off in the new tank for a week that should kill any that remains. But as Byron said if you don't deal with the cause it will come back, whether that's poor water quality, too much light etc.

 

[elizabethrosalia]

I get busy at work and sometimes my water change schedule slips, sometimes I’m away and the person looking after the fish might be overfeeding too. Lighting - I have a fluval app I copied some settings I found online but I don’t know whether I have too much light (and what colour combination) or too little. I think for knowledgeable fish keepers dealing with Cyanobacteria is probably easy but I’m very much in the beginner class, learning very slowly.

 

[elizabethrosalia]

 

[elizabethrosalia]

This is my graph - I don’t suppose you can tell anything from it? Thank you for all your help too!

 

[Lcc86]

I get busy at work and sometimes my water change schedule slips, sometimes I’m away and the person looking after the fish might be overfeeding too. Lighting - I have a fluval app I copied some settings I found online but I don’t know whether I have too much light (and what colour combination) or too little. I think for knowledgeable fish keepers dealing with Cyanobacteria is probably easy but I’m very much in the beginner class, learning very slowly.

I know next to nothing about lighting. For me the cyanobacteria took hold because of inappropriate conditions in my tank, once I got advice from people here and upgraded my tank I was able to get rid of it. I think lighting sometimes needs a bit of fine tuning to get it just right.

 

[Essjay]

I'll also leave the light to those with more experience.

Re other people feeding the fish, I find one of those pill boxes with a compartment for each day to be useful. I measure out one day's food in the compartments and tell the person to empty a compartment into the tank each day. And I hide the food tub so they can't add extra.

 

[Colin_T]

It’s in a sorry state, the cabinet is oozing gunk.

That would go well with Emerald's zombie guppies

Lutino panda guppies

One of the nicer looking smaller guppy breeding strains: Lutino panda guppies. They're no real albinos but lutinos for their eyes are wine red (wine red eye albinos). This means that they still have a low concentration of melanophores in their eyes while real albinos (RREA, real red eye albinos)...

www.fishforums.net

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This is my graph - I don’t suppose you can tell anything from it? Thank you for all your help too!

You have the light on from 11am to 10pm, which might be too long depending on how many plants you have and what type of plants.

The light intensity is at 40% so it's less than half as bright as it could be.

There appears to be a bit of blue light for a few minutes after the rest go off at 10pm.

The colour spectrum (red, blue, green and white in equal parts) is fine for plants.

I doubt the light is causing the Cyanobacteria. If you use a lot of dry food, that is more likely to cause it. A few glass/ ghost shrimp in the tank might help clean up uneaten food and reduce the blue green slime.

 

[Byron]

The light duration is a factor here. Closer to 8hours will likely help. Nutrients (organics) have to be available, and missing regular water changes increase these, but the light has to be there too.

 

[elizabethrosalia]

Thank you, I will throttle back on my lighting.

I have three anubias plants, one java fern and one I'm not sure what it is.

I do use a lot of dry food - maybe I'm feeding them too much also! I do a pinch for two minutes munching but it's not super scientific!

 

[Essjay]

Fish actually need a lot less than you'd think. Mammals like us use a lot of our food just to maintain body temperature (though today I'm not sure we need to ) but fish get their temperature from the water. Also a lot of fishkeepers, me included, don't feed their fish every day, we miss a day or 2 days every week.

 

[elizabethrosalia]

Here’s where I am up to! New tank in place half of it is old tank water and half new treated tap water. Put the old fluval 106 on and then thinking I will swap the filter media into the new 307 fluval filter in a couple of days time. Does this look and sound all right? I have plants and new substrate and two old ornaments from the tank. The pleco lives in one of them so it had to come over with him inside it.

 

[elizabethrosalia]

I also have some bio boost from aqua care to put in too - once I’ve had a well earned cup of tea!