Please Help With Algae Problem

[This Old Spouse]

Hi, everybody. This should probably be in the planted tank section, but I never seem to get responses there. I have 4 tanks running now. Please see my sig for details. They're all established for more than a year except for the fry tank which has been up for several months.

The problem started when a friend was looking after my tanks while I was away for 10 days. He came to feed the fish, and then left the lights on in the three bigger tanks, so when I got home several days later, the tanks were overrun with junk all over my plants. My stats are good on all tanks, I do regular water changes of 50% at least, and I dose with Flourish twice a week.

So how can I take care of this problem??

The 20g cory tank:

The 29g tiger barb tank:

The 55g:

EDIT: If you look at the photo in my sig, that's what the 20g cory tank looked like before. Pretty much algae-free.

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Personally I'd cut the lights to the tank altogether for a few days. Don't dose ferts whilst you're tanks in black out. Cleared mine up lovely! I also had black hair algae on the edges of some of my stem plants. All my plants seem to have survived although, I don't have any very demanding plants which may have been a big factor in their survival.

 

[stu40]

Personally I'd cut the lights to the tank altogether for a few days. Don't dose ferts whilst you're tanks in black out.

Do you mean you left the lights off, or did a blackout ?

 

[KrystaK]

She left the lights off for an extended period to kill the algae, and didn't add any plant food while the lights were out.
I'll have to try that

 

[Steve H.]

Looks like BBA and possibly Staghorn algae. Both caused by low or fluctuating CO2 levels. Probably caught hold due to the extended photo period, and depletion of CO2 due to that.

Cut your lighting time to 6 hours, manually remove as much as you can, and spot dose with Flouish Excel.

I will edit in a link from the planted section.

http/www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm

This is a great guide for algae ID and elimination.

Hope you get it kicked soon!

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Sorry, not a complete black out, but simply kill the lights for a few days to starve the algae of light. Any natural light that enters the tank can't be helped unless you do a full black out. Jumping on the CO2 bandwagon, I also forgot to mention I dosed Flourish Excel every 3 days as normal but not the trace elements. Sorry!

 

[This Old Spouse]

Looks like BBA and possibly Staghorn algae. Both caused by low or fluctuating CO2 levels. Probably caught hold due to the extended photo period, and depletion of CO2 due to that.

Cut your lighting time to 6 hours, manually remove as much as you can, and spot dose with Flouish Excel.

I will edit in a link from the planted section.

http/www.theplante...co.uk/algae.htm

This is a great guide for algae ID and elimination.

Hope you get it kicked soon!

I only have the lights on for about 5 hours as it is. But I'll try leaving them off for a few days to see if that does any good. How do I spot dose? Just use an eyedropper?

 

[SchottayB]

Use a pipet. I had this algae when I had no co2 running in my tank. Since having co2 it's gone... but I don't know of other options to cure it sorry