What Im I Doing Wrong?

[madjoker14]

Hi everyone, so so my tank is doing pretty good, all my fishes seem to be happy but i have been having a problem and its ALGAE!!!!

im having some type of string algae thats warped around my java moss, and im also having some black algae thats coating my big leaf plants.

I have a 20g tank, with high lighting 55wpg and leave the light on for about 8 to 10 hours a day, i do use liquid fertilizer and put the amount the cap says wich is about 5mL a cap, and i do a 50% water change.

is there anything that im doing wrong or maybe a step i can take to prevent or even stop this algae attack?? thanks in advance for any info or help

 

[Ficious]

add some algae eating fish/shrimp??? plecos love algae...get a small breed of pleco...maybe something shy so its not just sittin out there eatin all your plants.

 

[rdd1952]

Rather than adding fish to take care of the algae, you need to find the problem and eliminate it. Different fish/inverts eat different types of algae so you don't know for sure that the ones you get will eat what you have.

How long has the tank been set up?

Is the tank ever exposed to direct sunlight?

How often & how much do you feed?

What type ferts are you using?

 

[Mr. Convict]

How many plants do you have in your aquarium? (ie. is the tank heavily planted or just has a few plants etc.)

I'm a bit confused by your lighting, do you have 55 watts per gallon (wpg) ie. you have 1100 watts of light over your aquarium? or do you have a 55 watts of light? (this would mean 2-2.5 wpg).

And also, with your lighting, do you use siestas? or just have the light on for 8-10 hrs straight?

I case you didn't know (sorry if you do) a siesta is a period of about 2 hours of no light during your simulated photoperiod (time you have the light on over your aquarium)

How it works:

The average photoperiod of a plant (the amount of time it receives sunlight on any given day) is about 12 hours. Therefore for our plants in our aquariums to survive, we try to simulate this photoperiod by using the lights that we have over our aquariums. In using siestas, we take off the light sometime during that 12 hours, ensuring that there is at least 4 hours of light on either side of the siesta. For example, I leave my light on for 4 hours, then take it off for 2, then put it back on for 4.. Understand?

This doesn't affect our plants (providing that the siesta isn't too long). Algae, on the other hand, cannot cope with this period of no light.

Hence, if you leave on your light for the straight 8-10 hours, this may be what caused this problem.

Keep in mind that i could be wrong.. and your algae breakout may be due to something different, but this is what i feel it is.

Hopefully you get this sorted out

PS. it would be also useful to note that java moss is a very low light demanding plant which easily survives in <1 wpg...

 

[madjoker14]

to answer rdd1952, (1)the tank has been set for about 6-7 months (2)nope no sun exposer, (3)I feed my fishs twice a day and i only feed them what they can eat in about 3-5min and (4) and im using a iron enriched aquatic plant fertilizer, the company is Nutrafin...

and as for Mr.Convict i have 55watts per gallon and yea i do kinda just leave the light on for about 10-12 hours,what your saying is true and i mean might as well give it a shot and see what happens because its making the tank look verrrrry nasty (i hate algae) but thanks for the advice so far, keep it going lol : )

 

[Corleone]

Are you sure it's 55 watts per gallon? My whole HOUSE doesn't have 1100 watts worth of lighting. 4 watts per gallon is considered very high.

 

[Dave Spencer]

You have CO2 issues. It is a high light tank and you have black algae.

All the siesta will do is prove that your CO2 is inadequate.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...amp;mode=linear

Algae responds to a siesta better than plants, but it is the build up of CO2 during the lights out that off sets this.

If you don´t have CO2 in this tank I would recommend running pressurised at 30ppm.

Dave.

 

[waterdrop]

Mr. Convict's advice sounds like it would probably work very well to help you. Interested to hear his opinion about the 4-hour stretch min thing and may apply it to a timer setup myself!

I still can't imagine that there is not a misunderstanding about the watts per gallon. Are you really shining 1100 watts over a 20 gallon tank? It would look like a tanning spa in there. That would be way more I thought than the high-light, high-tech methods of the planted tank enthusiasts, which would max out at maybe 4 watts per gallon. Surely you mean total of 55 watts for the 20 gallon, which would work out to 2.75 watts per gallon, which would be a high-light technique.

Even with that it doesn't sound like you are doing a full high-tech planted type setup, as you don't mention CO2. I'm not a planted tank person, only a beginner reading about it, but I believe the thing about algae is that it will appear in an opportunistic way whenever the plants are not using all the basic resources, ie. whenever their growth is constrained by a lack of one of the basic resources. If you are putting in lots of light and lots of fertilizer, but not CO2, then plant growth will be constrained by lack of CO2 and the algae will appear to use up the excess light and fertilizer.

Anyway, as I said, I'm only a beginner about plants but these were my thoughts when I saw your thread,

~~waterdrop~~

looks like we're all in similar company with these thoughts~~!

 

[madjoker14]

OMG i feel like the only rookie yes that is what i ment lol i ment to say i have a total of 55watts but its 2.75wpg sorry everyone, and yes i did forget to mention i have a DIY yeast with a glass ceramic defuser, i know for those DIY you cant really tell how many ppm but it about 1 bubble every 2 to 3 seconds... sorry about that guys, i should have mention it from the very beginning good.gif

 

[Mr. Convict]

Interested to hear his opinion about the 4-hour stretch min thing and may apply it to a timer setup myself!

You can play around with your times to suit your schedules and stuff, and it also depends on the amount of plants in your aquarium and such, PM and we can talk, keep in mind that i most likely will be at the same level as you in terms of knowledge lol, but you know what i mean..

Joker -

Don't sweat that wpg thing, everybody makes mistakes

How do you diffuse your Co2?

Assuming its diffused properly, the only thing i can think about is that you don't have enough plants.. I personally have not had this problem [much], but i've never really had that much wpg, and it did happen to me when i had no plants in an aquarium. I have read that it happens more with higer wpg though. The only advice I could think of would be to put more plants in your aquarium (I have aquariums where i don't use siestas, but because of the amount of plants i have and i have no algae). Or, use siestas, trust me, after a while you will see results, provided that you don't skip many days consecutively.

Goodluck, tell me how it turns out

 

[Dave Spencer]

Madjoker, Mr Convict and Waterdrop,

If your tank needs a siesta then you do not have enough CO2. Saying that algae struggles to adapt to the siesta is a myth. If you have algae in your tank, switch your lights and see what starts to pearl first, your plants or your algae. Algae is a far simpler and more adaptable organism than aquatic plants.

The siesta should be assigned to the rubbish bin because it is a quick fix for an underlying problem.

Dave.

 

[Mr. Convict]

After reading your post i went looking around different forums and sites and found very contradicting information.

Some sites say that a siesta did nothing for them, while others suggested using siestas to help rid of algae problems (most notably george farmer on this very site)

People also say that people used siestas when they didn't have enough CO2.

I do believe that you are more knowledgeable than me, so I believe you.

It's just that i joined this forums way back in '06, and at that time when i was still a fish noob (lol) and learning about planted tanks, siestas were very often used and recommended, so i guess it just stuck with me, as so far I've been using them with no problems in my tanks. But then my tanks aren't too heavily planted, nor do i believe joker's is, and he says he has CO2 (granted that we don't know his mixture etc. so we can't say for sure if he gets enough CO2, but i assumed he did) so i recommended him the only thing i can think of that has (as far as i believe) worked for me.. Siestas

As to joker, I'm sorry if the information/advice i gave was wrong, but i knew no better.

To Dave, thanks alot, i probably wouldn't have found out otherwise and kept telling other people to do it. Its all part of the learning process i guess.

As for me.. gonna get more info.

Goodluck joker, I think dave should have some advice lol

 

[Dave Spencer]

Compared to running reef tanks, hi tech planted tanks are years behind. As such, the line of thinking on filtration, lighting, ferts, algae etc. is a pretty dynamic thing at the moment.

The siesta has pretty much been confined to the bin on UKAPS, ASW, APC etc. Ask George for his views on the siesta now.

Whilst the planted tank hobby is about growing plants, the light levels and use of CO2 means that an underlying knowledge of algae and its causes is needed to be successful. A relatively new understanding and theorising of CO2 as a major algae trigger has highlighted the worth of the siesta.

You are not wrong to give advice on using the siesta, Mr Convict, as the build up of CO2 during the lights off is beneficial to the plants, but the OP has probably got BBA and/or staghorn algae, the cure for which is increasing CO2 levels and getting it stable.

The best method for removing the already existing "black" algae is to dose normally with Flourish Excel, which provides carbon in an organic form, but the main reason you should give it a try, Madjoker, is because it contains Polycycloglutaracetal which is pretty potent at killing off the black stuff.

Pics of the algae would help alot.

Dave.