Still having green water...

[Sharoane]

I posted about a week ago to ask advice on clearing up my tank water, which has become quite green. Here's a recap...

I have a thirty gallon tank. It is not overstocked. I have three danios, four otos and a small pleco--by small I mean he's about two inches long. I have some plants. The plants are doing well. My ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels are all fine. My water is green.

It's not solid algae, either, it's a green tint to the water. I do water changes every other day. I de-chlorinate, I'm careful to put in the same temp water that I take out. I don't overfeed--as a matter of fact I'm probably starving my fish. I do have strong lights for the plants but I kept them off for a couple of days, I covered the tank to be sure no stray sunlight got in, etc. Nothing is helping at all.

The green has been around for close to three weeks. It's just annoying, because I can't see my fish most of the time. However, when I do see them they appear quite happy and healthy.

Help?

 

[endparenthesis]

There're two more things I can think of that you could try that might make a difference.

First, if your light is on more than maybe 12 hours a day, you should cut back. You may even want to lower it to 10 or 11 (or even lower) if nothing helps.

Second, you may want to add a few hours of darkness in the middle of the day (easiest to use a timer). It doesn't sound like it would do much, but it's probably the most useful thing I've done to keep algae at bay. Plants are more complex than algae... they're capable of starting and stopping the photosynthesis process more readily than algae. Algae takes a while to get started again. So you throw a wrench into the algae's growth process, while the plants chug away like nothing happened.

If that doesn't help, I guess there's something in your water supply algae likes (lots of phosphates maybe).

You could also get some more plants to soak up the nutrients.

My green water went away with some lighting adjustments and lots of water changes.

 

[cation]

This happened to me a couple of months ago. It was driving me crazy. My water levels were fine, pH was constant, but it would not go away!

I met my BF for a cocktail one night, and sitting next to me was a guy who "does tanks" for a living. (Well, that and work at my favorite lfs in town - I hadn't seen him there before, now I see him there all the time!) In fact, if there are any baseball fans out there, he put together, stocked, and cares for Jamie Moyer's tank. He told me about a great product - he swore it would not affect my biological filter, and that it was the only truly effective remedy he had encountered for green water.

I went in and picked some up. Took care of the problem right away (w/in 24h). It did not crash my tank, and the problem hasn't come back. And it's cheap! I bought a tiny bottle for about $1.50 and still have almost all of it!

It's called AlgaeFix. Don't use it with inverts, but it's fine for fish and plants.