Out of Control Algae

[Silencedogood]

I cannot get rid of this algae. I switched my substrate from gravel to sand and ever since then, I've had a full algae explosion. Water changes and scraping the algae of don't do anything. I purchased two mystery snails to try to combat it, but the algae started growing on their shells instead. My tank is planted so I can't use any chemicals and the last time I used chemicals, it killed all of my fish. I have also cut down the light as well. If any one knows any tips that would help with this issue, I would appreciate it!

 

[Freddo96]

Have you tried keeping the lights off and covering the tank for a few days? Still feeding the fish or any form of phosphate removal in the filtration

 

[Lunar Jetman]

How long are your lights actually on for each day?

 

[Silencedogood]

Have you tried keeping the lights off and covering the tank for a few days? Still feeding the fish or any form of phosphate removal in the filtration

No, because the tank is planted. I have decreased the amount of food I'm feeding the fish and I've never heard of phosphate removal in the filtration.

 

[Silencedogood]

How long are your lights actually on for each day?

About 7-9 hours.

 

[StevenF]

One your full tank picture you have stem plant on the left side of the tank and a similar plant on the right side of the tank. The have what appears to be green healthy growth near the top of the tank. But half way down there are no leaves. Basically the old leaves are dying while the new growth look healthy. This is common in plants suffering from a mobile nutrient deficiency. Plants can remove some nutrients from older leaves and move them to support new growth. When the nutrients have been removed from older leaves the leaf dies and falls off. removed

A healthy plant will retain old leaves as long as possible Typically only dropping them when the stem diameter increase or damage occurs to the leaf. So for the two plants I have mentioned they should have leaves from the bottom to the top.

However an unhealthy plant will grow slowly and as a result the plants will leave a lot of other nutrients in the water which will fuel algae growth.

Fortunately the list of mobile nutrients is quit small:

Nitrogen, You don't want zero nitrate. And you don't need that much to get good growth 5ppm should work.

Postassium

Magnesium , If this is the problem you have use a GH booster to to increase magnesium, and calcium levels. Plants need both.

Phosphate, You can test for this and generally 1ppm should be enough.

Chlorine, Yes plants do need chlorine but gasious Cl and chloramine are dangerous. You want chloride salts like calcium chloride which are safe. Note water conditioners don't remove chlorine, They simply convert hazardous chlorine to a safe chloride salt. Tap water typically has some chloride salts in it.

Molybdenum

Frequently some plant fertilizers don't have nitrogen and phosphate While others typically have only trace quantities of magnesium. And of course if you are not using a fertilizer that might be your problem.

 

[Silencedogood]

I think the plant leaves just recently started falling off because they were covered with black algae. The leaves at the top are new so they don't have any algae (yet). I am using a plant fertilizer, and my gh is on the higher side. I definitely have nitrates and I think my calcium and magnesium is good because my snails have healthy shells.

 

[Silencedogood]

And 2 weeks ago, both stem plants were half the size they are now. They are having very rapid growth.

 

[hansgruber7]

My understanding is that usually algae outbreaks are caused by an imbalance in nutrients and lighting based on what your plants are using. Usually you need to reduce one or the other. But sometimes you need to increase one or the other. Any time you have excess of either lighting or nutrients based on what your plants are using, it creates space for algae. Things that have worked for me:

Adjust lighting (sounds like you already have it pretty low at 7-9 hours). Usually reducing lighting helps, but counter-intuitively sometimes you need to increase your lighting. I assume it's not getting any sunlight?
Reduce feeding
Remove some fish (lower bioload helps)
Check phosphates and address high levels
Adjust fertilizers (usually decrease, but counterintuitively too little can cause algae too.)
Add fast-growing plants (frogbit helped me, but there are others)

Sometimes an algae outbreak is part of the lifecycle of the tank and it's just a phase. How long have you had it?

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

I had an algae problem that was not quite as bad as yours but was headed that way. We do a weekly 75% water change and still have algae. I have a tendency to overfeed as well as leave the lights on longer for the plants. I believe both these contributed to my algae problem. Today my assistant cleaned that tank and all the decorations 3 TIMES, it took her several hours but the tank is sparkling clean. I highly recommend you do something like this immediately. It's easier if you remove the fish into several different buckets of tank water along with a bubbler to keep it oxygen in it. The scrub like there is no tomorrow. We changed all filters on the AquaClear except for the biobeads. The sponge (like yours probably is) was covered with vile amounts of sticky slimy brown stuff - it wasn't worth cleaning so we tossed it and the carbon filter out and put in fresh new ones.

Tonight I showed huge restraint and put in about 1/2 the food I usually do. My concern has always been that I have two night feeders in the tank and I always want food left over when I turn out the lights for them to eat. The dojos, I swear, eat 2x their body size, they must have stomachs as long as their 6 inch bodies and they are getting bigger all the time (I love these fish anyway) - they just don't know when to stop eating. They've always been my clean-up crew since they mostly eat pellets and any pellets left over in the morning after the night feeders eat seemed to be eaten by them. But they are sloppy and fast eaters. They crunch the pellets and excess particles fall out of their mouth and they don't want them.

I also bought a UV sterilizer a while back and used it on my 50 gallon tank, it seemed to help a little. This time we put it in the algae full - 29 gallon tank and we will see if it helps. But the three water changes and all that scrubbing at least got rid of all traces of algae in the tank (I'm sure some will come back). What IS frustrating is that both the dojos and the loaches I've got in there are supposed to love to eat algae - but I think they love the pellets much more because they show no interest in the algae in the tank.

This tank looks understocked but it isn't - it's jus that I have a quite a size assortment and one of the biggest eaters doesn't come out until the middle of the night: - 2 - 6" dojos, 2- 4" loaches and 12 tiny 1/2" neon tetras and 3 tiny 1" rasboras. It's kind of my "leftover" tank where I put fish where I'm overstocked elsewhere. Oh it also has a a 5" bristlenose pleco (female) that only eat at night. I rarely see her. I think our weekly heavy duty cleanings is the only thing that makes it not quite as bad as what you've had to deal with.

1. Make sure your tank is not over stocked
2. Change filter parts as directed by the manufacturer, instead of washing them in tank water and re-using them (once you've gotten rid of the algae problem that can change)
3. Make sure you are not over feeding - difficult to do if you have night eater but many of the night eaters also should be eating the algae.
4. Do a SERIOUS 75% water change multiple times and scrub every square inch of that tank, keep changing the water until it is clear - it may take 3-4 times in a row. Clean all plant leaves, remove all fake plants and clean them off and scrub off all the algae you can (we had some that just won't come off).
5, Continue from that point with weekly 75% water changes (hopefully only 1 of them per week).
6. Try a UV sterilizer (I'm on the fence about it myself).
7. Put your lights on a timer - perhaps 10 hours a day.
8. Check your filters every few hours to make sure they are not clogged up. - I have to "fix" mine several times a day due to plant debris.

Best of luck - you''ve got a lot of work in your future!

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

After looking at all your pictures, my tank was actually far worse than yours - in mine you could no longer see any fish. Just cloudy green,

 

[Silencedogood]

Sometimes an algae outbreak is part of the lifecycle of the tank and it's just a phase. How long have you had it?

About a month now.

 

[Silencedogood]

I had an algae problem that was not quite as bad as yours but was headed that way. We do a weekly 75% water change and still have algae. I have a tendency to overfeed as well as leave the lights on longer for the plants. I believe both these contributed to my algae problem. Today my assistant cleaned that tank and all the decorations 3 TIMES, it took her several hours but the tank is sparkling clean. I highly recommend you do something like this immediately. It's easier if you remove the fish into several different buckets of tank water along with a bubbler to keep it oxygen in it. The scrub like there is no tomorrow. We changed all filters on the AquaClear except for the biobeads. The sponge (like yours probably is) was covered with vile amounts of sticky slimy brown stuff - it wasn't worth cleaning so we tossed it and the carbon filter out and put in fresh new ones.

Tonight I showed huge restraint and put in about 1/2 the food I usually do. My concern has always been that I have two night feeders in the tank and I always want food left over when I turn out the lights for them to eat. The dojos, I swear, eat 2x their body size, they must have stomachs as long as their 6 inch bodies and they are getting bigger all the time (I love these fish anyway) - they just don't know when to stop eating. They've always been my clean-up crew since they mostly eat pellets and any pellets left over in the morning after the night feeders eat seemed to be eaten by them. But they are sloppy and fast eaters. They crunch the pellets and excess particles fall out of their mouth and they don't want them.

I also bought a UV sterilizer a while back and used it on my 50 gallon tank, it seemed to help a little. This time we put it in the algae full - 29 gallon tank and we will see if it helps. But the three water changes and all that scrubbing at least got rid of all traces of algae in the tank (I'm sure some will come back). What IS frustrating is that both the dojos and the loaches I've got in there are supposed to love to eat algae - but I think they love the pellets much more because they show no interest in the algae in the tank.

This tank looks understocked but it isn't - it's jus that I have a quite a size assortment and one of the biggest eaters doesn't come out until the middle of the night: - 2 - 6" dojos, 2- 4" loaches and 12 tiny 1/2" neon tetras and 3 tiny 1" rasboras. It's kind of my "leftover" tank where I put fish where I'm overstocked elsewhere. Oh it also has a a 5" bristlenose pleco (female) that only eat at night. I rarely see her. I think our weekly heavy duty cleanings is the only thing that makes it not quite as bad as what you've had to deal with.

1. Make sure your tank is not over stocked
2. Change filter parts as directed by the manufacturer, instead of washing them in tank water and re-using them (once you've gotten rid of the algae problem that can change)
3. Make sure you are not over feeding - difficult to do if you have night eater but many of the night eaters also should be eating the algae.
4. Do a SERIOUS 75% water change multiple times and scrub every square inch of that tank, keep changing the water until it is clear - it may take 3-4 times in a row. Clean all plant leaves, remove all fake plants and clean them off and scrub off all the algae you can (we had some that just won't come off).
5, Continue from that point with weekly 75% water changes (hopefully only 1 of them per week).
6. Try a UV sterilizer (I'm on the fence about it myself).
7. Put your lights on a timer - perhaps 10 hours a day.
8. Check your filters every few hours to make sure they are not clogged up. - I have to "fix" mine several times a day due to plant debris.

Best of luck - you''ve got a lot of work in your future!

That's a lot of cleaning lol. Btw, the pics of my tank were after I had water changed and algae scrubbed three days before. I'm thinking that it's probably an imbalance in the water since this started after I added sand.
Would a bristle nose pleco help at all?
Is there a way to find the root cause of the water/nutrient imbalance?

I do have a lot of fish in this tank but most of them are juveniles and the adults are small.

 

[Brendanpat]

Hi . I absolutely hate algae . I'm only happy when my tank is sparkling clean . I've been battling with algae from i changed to real plants. I'm finally getting on top of it at last . Just takes time i think . The biggest addition i think was floating plants . I got salvinia. It's great for shading some light and gobbling up the nutrients. I only have my tank light set for 6 hours a day because it gets some indirect sunlight aswell . So it's hard to judge that . Goodluck with your battle!

 

[hansgruber7]

I would just caution that if you do a deep clean, be careful to do it in a way that does not kill all your beneficial bacteria. Did you cycle your tank before adding fish? That could be contributing to the issue if it wasn't fully cycled. I also think you have a lot of fish in there; that increases the bioload which can increase algae. On the margins, Nerite snails and shrimp can help reduce algae but it doesn't address the root cause of a major outbreak. Check out Aquarium Co Op on youtube. They have some great videos on battling algae. Also, switching to RO water can reduce algae in my experience. Good luck!