Thread Algae

[Themuleous]

Well I finally got rid of my staghorn and BBA in my nano, but am now plagued with fine wispy thread algae. So I added 10 shrimp but they've not touched it, wondering if any one has any suggestions.

Could I be dosing too much iron? The trace mix I mixed up might be stronger than I think as I was less than accurate about mixing it up! Or should I starve the tank for a few days to get the shrimp hungry?

FYI have increased water changes to 60-70% every other day.

Thanks all

Sam

 

[voo]

I started getting BBA on some of my java fern but last week i stopped dosing ferts and added flourish excel instead. This has killed off the BBA, which is now white and almost gone. These last few days i have started adding ferts again, although since i stopped dosing the ferts i have stopped getting the thread algae - the worst used to be on the front glass which needed to be wiped off weekly.

Try stopping the ferts for a while, or lowering the dosage, see if that'll help with the thread algae.

As for the shrimps not touching it, maybe they are finding enough food elsewhere in the tank so that they dont need to eat the algae?

 

[Themuleous]

Those were my thought Voo, cheers, will lower the ferts and reduce/stop feeding the fish for a few days, see what happens. At the end of my tether with this bloody tank!

Anyone else?

Sam

 

[bingy_bong]

Im going through the exactly the same
I set up my tank recently, then came the green algae on the glass and on the plants
Changed the lighting duration to 3 hours on 3 off 4on and added 4 ottos. Two weeks later gone Ha
Came home yesterday after bieng away for a week to find the algae has been replaced with hair algae/thread algae.
A Friend who just happened to be passing came in and remarked that the tank looked as as though it had been in the attic for 100 years and he wasnt aware that you could get aquatic spiders

 

[Themuleous]

Anyone else?

 

[JamesC]

Anyone else?

You asked so here goes.

Stopping dosing is not the answer. Some folk say it works because they already have a limiting issue in their tank so plants are lacking and not growing to their full potential. Because the plants are being limited they are not using up the other nutrients very quickly which then is a trigger for algae to take advantage. Now if these nutrients are removed then algae will often be affected making it look like removing these nutrients is the answer. It will normally end up with more algae problems in the future though.

My suggestion is not to use test kits to try and dose to a particular nutrient level. This is hard work and very prone to error. Just dose to what is suggested in the EI article. Look at where you might be lacking. How is your GH? Some water has very little Mg. Add some epsom salts or seachem equilibrium to compensate. An idea if you are using home made traces is to half the amount and make up the other half with a branded trace like tropica or flourish. I know Tom says that you don't need to add more potassium if you are dosing EI but I find it helps me. Even then I still get a bit of pinhole in my stricta. And lastly but not least is CO2 - but I think you have that fixed now.

If I make a change then I give it 3 weeks to see the effects without making any other changes in the mean time. Making too many changes too quickly makes it very hard to know what is going on. When your tank is settled then you can look at reducing dosing to suit your particular setup.

Hope I haven't come across too matter of fact but hopefully it may give you and idea or two.
James

 

[Themuleous]

Thanks for the thoughts James, will give the every other day water chances a good few weeks before I try anything else.

Would hope my trace mix is ok, using the one from AE, which is supposed to be good, but it doesn't contain all the elements like flourish or plant nutrition does, another thing for the xmas list! The plants are certainly growing ok though, thats a good sign I guess, no obvious sings of deficiency.

Thanks again

Sam