# Cladophora! Will I ever be able to remove it all?



## Greengeek (6 Jul 2021)

Hi,

I've been battling _Cladophora in one of my tanks since Initial setup over 2 years ago. It’s never got out of control but it is a constant annoyance. It’s came in on the Buce and still plague the stems but has also got into moss and HC Cuba among others. As well as a few slightly attached to rocks and wood. I tweezer out clumps or syphon every day or two, I’ve dosed (not all at once!) bottles and bottles of Easycarbo, Excel, AlgExit, Floragrow Co2, as well as a couple of other algaecides. I’ve tried reducing lighting (ADA LED) for months running as low as 5 hours a day (normally 8 hours) I also tried 6 hours a day and it affects plant growth before the dreaded Cladophora. I’ve run co2 constantly keeping a lime green drop checker going day and night. Kept the temp on the cooler side, run soft acidic water, neutral water…tds no higher than 30.  I’ve played around with fertilisers, various kinds and methods. I perform weekly and twice weekly water changes. This is all over several years, not in one week. Lol But I’ve NEVER been able to remove it. 

I also tried draining the water and growing the plants via ’dry start‘ method and it survived no water quite happily!
Any ideas? _


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## ceg4048 (7 Jul 2021)

Hi,
   Clado is fundamentally a CO2 related algae and in the list of things you've tried, the missing item is an attempt at re-doing flow/distribution. Having said that, looking at your photo, the dropchecker appears to be blue, so I'm not sure what the situation is there. Soft acidic water will not have any impact on algae and neither will any control of TDS. We have to look at better ways of distributing CO2, which may require adding supplemental pump(s) or investing in a stronger filter system. Excessive light intensity is also a contributing factor, so there are a couple of areas in which to investigate.

Cheers,


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## Greengeek (8 Jul 2021)

Good spot the drop checker in the photo is blue in the photo, but Id just done some maintenance and had just cleaned and refilled the drop checker as it had some floating plants trapped inside making a mess..a attempted at outcompeting and reducing some light by adding a fast growing floating pond plant (as I don’t have a controller for the light) 

Can I just ask how Cladophora responds to Co2? Is it related to unsteady levels of Co2 or high/low issues? 

Low flow is a really good point, the flow is not strong in that tank, I‘ll add a small powerhead as it’s certainly something I had not tried. 

really appreciate your reply and advice.


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## zozo (9 Jul 2021)

Clado sp. is next to the Chara sp. a genus of alga that is very close to plantlife most of them are saltwater sp. and considered weeds. They favor and thrive in similar conditions as plants do and are extremely tough and hard to kill without killing all other plants around them. In low-energy environments, this alga is indestructible and forever present once you caught it and it grows faster than the plants.

This leaves you with fewer options to get rid of them. That is manual removal and optimizing the environment for healthier plant growth. And this could be better CO² distribution. In the end, with your helping hand with manual removal, the plants will outcompete and reduce alga growth and it might disappear about completely.

How this biological competition exactly works remains a little mystery and we actually don't fully understand if this is solely competition for nutrition or also has some Allelopathic nature. I personally tend to believe the latter one plays a fabulous role... 

On a maybe irrelevant side note:
I also experience personally that some vigorously hungry fish sp. eat it. I have several separate planted low energy environments, in 2 of them, both indoors also have Clado growing already for years. In 2 other outdoor environments that also house goldfish I have never seen 1 single strain of Clado. It seems they probably eat Clado at a very early stage of their development. I came to this conclusion because I have a 3rd fishless one outdoor that does grow Clado. And I swap plants back and forth between all, thus introducing Clado with it.  It must be the fish that are responsible... I've also seen Black Mollies eat Clado.

I'm in the middle of an experiment, raising a number of goldfish fry in one of the indoor tanks. And see what happens to the Clado in it.


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## tam (9 Jul 2021)

zozo said:


> I'm in the middle of an experiment, raising a number of goldfish fry in one of the indoor tanks. And see what happens to the Clado in it.


Interesting experiment let us know how they do. We raised some tadepoles in a tank for the kids to watch this year and it did make me wonder how they would do as a temporary clean up crew for algae. Bit seasonal though!


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## zozo (9 Jul 2021)

I will, the tank has its own journal.  I will post it there. And this tank is a Clado grower already for many years. And since it was about fishless the last couple of years I did put the goldfish fry in it. Over the winter it will get even more. Still got over 20 baby goldfish outdoor. They will move in.

Shrimps and snails don't touch it, I believe a saw Amano's munch on it. But long-term sufficient Amano populations are too expensive for me.








						The Stove & Its Flowering Anubias.
					

Just been flicking through this again...almost forgotten what a great journal it is :)  Thank you Tim!! :) This tank is still running strong.. Actualy the longer it takes the stronger it runs. And i'm trying to pimp it with emersed growth in planters. But i haven't updated on it for a while...



					www.ukaps.org
				






tam said:


> Bit seasonal though!


Indeed, and for a very short period, the last time I raised tadpoles they turned into frogs within a little over a month or so.


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## tiger15 (9 Jul 2021)

I have two zero tech shrimp bowls by the window sill that receive direct sunlight in the afternoon.  One has Clado and the other has Spirogyra, and I can never eliminate either.  Clado and Spirogyra are similar except that one has branched filaments and the other has straight. They are the hardest algae to kill as they thrive in similar healthy environment as higher plants.  Interestingly, the two algae don't coexist in the same bowl but tend to dominate over the other as if an allelopathic warfare is going on.  Physical removal is not hard though as Clado and Spirogyra do not attach strongly to plants and tend to come off in strands.

I tried different approaches to fight these algae, all failed.  My high density Ramshorn snail, cherry and Amano shrimp have no impact on them.  I experimented with Excel at high initial dosage (2 ppm) for a while,  and although the dosage is safe for the shrimp and snail, it had no impact.  I tried to increase water change,  increase or reduce nutrients, none work.  According to Tom Barr, API Algaefix is the only effective control against Clado and Spriogyra, but I dare not to try as Algaefix is known to kill invert.  Presently, my only strategy is to pull a sunscreen to reduce their growth rate by reducing sunlight intensity, and to physically remove them when they over grow.

I never have Clado and Spirogyra in my high tech tanks though.  My shrimp bowls have extremely high light intensity and low CO2, the opposite of my high tech tanks, so their dominance must have something to do with light intensity and CO2.


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## ceg4048 (10 Jul 2021)

zozo said:


> the plants will outcompete and reduce alga growth and it might disappear about completely.


Hi Marcel,
                I'm having to continually remind hobbyists that plants can never even dream about outcompeting algae. People really need to consider how absurd this idea is. This is like saying that elephants can outcompete mice for food. Think about how many tons of food a animal the size of an elephant needs to survive. Then compare that quantity with amount of food a mouse needs. Above a certain tiny quantity of food mice could care less about how much food is available because they could never eat as much as an elephant. But the elephant cares and it's very easy for them to starve. In this analogy the mice are algae. We need to stop putting this idea of competition in the minds of beginning hobbyists. It's a very dangerous idea because it leads to miscalculation and ultimately, misdiagnosis.


Greengeek said:


> Can I just ask how Cladophora responds to Co2? Is it related to unsteady levels of Co2 or high/low issues?


Hi Greengeek,
                       The answer to this question is a corollary to the response I gave to Marcel. Clado does not respond to CO2 in the sense that you imagine. Poor CO2, whether unstable or simply low availability affects the health of the plants. It is the plants that respond to poor CO2 by suffering malnutrition when there isn't enough. When this happens their tissues begin to decay and their cells leach out into the water column. Algal spores can then sense that the plants are unhealthy and that's when their attacks will bloom. So the way in which you need to think about this problem is that plants need to be healthy. When healthy they can resist the attacks from algae and therefore the algae will not bloom.

This is the fundamental relationship between algae and plants. Algae are predators and the plants are prey. If you keep the prey healthy they can evade or resist the attacks by predators.

Flow and distribution in the planted tank is vital because that is how nutrients and CO2 are delivered to the doorstep of the plants.
If you haven't done so already I suggest you have a look at the sticky thread flow-in-the-planted-aquarium
Not only is the total flow rate in the tank important, but also the way in which it is delivered must be uniform and consistent. You may need to use several smaller Koralia type wavemakers placed evenly along the back of the tank or you may wish to invest in a stronger filter which can deliver somewhere on the order of 7X-10X the tank volume per hour.  Have a look at the thread and it may give you ideas. 2 years is a really long time to suffer Clado, so it hints at one of the fundamentals. Also consider the timing of the gas in relation to the activation of the lights. CO2 technique is a LOT more than simply opening a valve.

Cheers,


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## zozo (10 Jul 2021)

ceg4048 said:


> Algal spores can then sense that the plants are unhealthy and that's when their attacks will bloom. So the way in which you need to think about this problem is that plants need to be healthy. When healthy they can resist the attacks from algae and therefore the algae will not bloom.
> 
> This is the fundamental relationship between algae and plants. Algae are predators and the plants are prey. If you keep the prey healthy they can evade or resist the attacks by predators.



Hi Clive,

Interesting... 
But I'm a tad confused now, because what you describe above very much sounds like a form of competition to me. In this case, you describe algae solely as a parasitic grow form that likes to use the plant as a growing medium to attach to? But, then I should not have written "We" but "I" don't know if this competition is about nutrients or if it has more of an allelopathic nature. My belief tends more that it is more about allelopathy with developing a better immune system against a parasitic predator. I'm not sure if you kinda confirm that my belief is correct that nutrition plays a minor role.

Thus if Mice were parasites lurking in the dark waiting to attack unhealthy Elephants then I definitively see a competition here. Only not competing for food, the Elephant would be the food or food and or living space provider.

I can't see any absurdity in this interpretation.

Anyway, isn't all this a competition for living space but simply not for nutrition? And in your interpretation, healthier plant leaves provide less living space for alga to grow and therefore alga goes latently present. Which actually sounds very plausible.

But what confuses me again, the 2 low-energy aquariums I'm referring to both also grow algae but they don't really attack the plants and attach to the substrate and hardscape. The filamentous one of what I think is a Clado sp. and if iI let it grow it grows from the rocks and the strains will eventually intertwine with the plants and mosses but it attaches to very few plant leaves. In the end, and if I don't remove it it will grow a thick mat cover, shade and suffocate the plant below it.

1 tank also grows BBA and it's the same thing plant leaves are BBA-free but the wood is covered with it and I find tuffs of it growing on the substrate. In these cases adding CO² would have 0 effects on fighting this alga since it grows from the hardscape? Am I correct to assume if I would add CO² it would not only favour the plants but also favour this alga growth and make it worse. And manual removal would be the only remedy?

This is a nice one








						(PDF) Competition for Light and Nutrients in Layered Communities of Aquatic Plants
					

PDF | Dominance of free-floating plants poses a threat to biodiversity in many freshwater ecosystems. Here we propose a theoretical framework to... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate




					www.researchgate.net
				





> not only do the
> upper species (pelagic algae) have a primacy for light (sim-
> ilar to ﬂoating plants) but the lower species (benthic algae)
> have a primacy for nutrients, supplied from below, whereas
> ...


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## ceg4048 (10 Jul 2021)

zozo said:


> Hi Clive,
> 
> Interesting...
> But I'm a tad confused now, because what you describe above very much sounds like a form of competition to me. In this case, you describe algae solely as a parasitic grow form that likes to use the plant as a growing medium to attach to? But, then I should not have written "We" but "I" don't know if this competition is about nutrients or if it has more of an allelopathic nature. My belief tends more that it is more about allelopathy with developing a better immune system against a parasitic predator. I'm not sure if you kinda confirm that my belief is correct that nutrition plays a minor role.
> ...


Hi Marcel,
                Well, really, we want to avoid getting bogged down with semantics in order to better understand what's going on in the tank. If we follow that path then we'll end up defining everything as a competition and will lose all sense of what the point is. We are well aware what the  expression "competition" is referring to within this context. I'm referring to the general and pervasive myth in this hobby that there is some kind of competition going on specifically for nutrients between plants and algae. This then leads to the false idea that nutrients in the water are bad and that somehow, plants have the ability to remove nutrients from the water faster than algae can get to them and in so doing can starve algae out of existence. This leads to the idea that nutrients in general are bad and that the purpose of plants is to "mop up" this nutrient spillage in order to avoid algal blooms. You know this pervasive and long standing philosophy all stems from the one basic premise that nutrients cause algae and that nutrients are bad in general.  We've been fighting this for years, so that any time someone uses the expression "competition" it reinforces and  in the minds of beginners, validates these false concepts. This is the reason it is absurdity - because it is one false concept built on another.

Do you imagine that if elephants and mice are in the same location with a limited food supply, that there is any competition between the two? If the food supply is limited, which of the two will die of starvation first? This is the situation we have in the tank. Nutrients are food and we determine whether the supply of nutrients are limited or unlimited. When we limit the supply the plants, who require orders of magnitude greater food  will always be the first to starve. Algae will never starve. It is virtually impossible to starve algae out of existence and that is why the false doctrine of "competition" between plants and algae is absurd.

So we should use this word cautiously because that is not the relationship between the two. As I have described, the relationship is predatory, however you want to describe it. It is this relationship within the confines of the tank that determines the outcome in any tank. If plants are not present in the tank then there is no relationship and the behavior of algae is completely different. The relationships are environment specific. This is why we make so many mistakes, because we read about relationships in one ecosystem and automatically decide that the same relationship exists in the tank.

In the article you reference the complex relationships between all the organisms is different than it is in our tanks. Our tanks is not a pelagic zone. It is an artificially created ecosystem with specific relationships developed in this box only. Some behaviors are the same, but the overall system cannot possibly the same.

In some ecosystems, unnatural levels of nutrients upset the balance in that system and yes, nutrients are a bad thing. In some systems, nutrient cause algae, but not in our system. We can study and learn from the behavior of algae but we should not automatically transcribe all that we observe in those systems into our system.



zozo said:


> But what confuses me again, the 2 low-energy aquariums I'm referring to both also grow algae but they don't really attack the plants and attach to the substrate and hardscape. The filamentous one of what I think is a Clado sp. and if iI let it grow it grows from the rocks and the strains will eventually intertwine with the plants and mosses but it attaches to very few plant leaves. In the end, and if I don't remove it it will grow a thick mat cover, shade and suffocate the plant below it.


Yes, because the plants are healthy and they can resist the attacks. So for example, the method of attack is to afix themselves to a static surface, however, healthy plants have a growing and dynamic surface. They produce waxes and proteins that slough off and algae have less of a chance to affix themselves to these dynamic surfaces. So there are defense mechanisms healthy plants have to evade algae. Rocks are inanimate and are a static surface, so algae can affix themselves to any hardscape. There is not much we can do about that other than to mechanically remove them.


zozo said:


> 1 tank also grows BBA and it's the same thing plant leaves are BBA-free but the wood is covered with it and I find tuffs of it growing on the substrate. In these cases adding CO² would have 0 effects on fighting this alga since it grows from the hardscape? Am I correct to assume if I would add CO² it would not only favour the plants but also favour this alga growth and make it worse. And manual removal would be the only remedy?


This is another environment specific case in which we have to take into account how healthy the plants are, how much light there is, the diurnal and nocturnal movement of the gases and so forth. We cannot jump to the conclusion that throwing CO2 at a tank automatically will rid the tank of BBA because BBA love CO2 as well. How we implement CO2 and how the plants respond to the addition of CO2 will determine the outcome. BBA and all Red Algae in general are tenacious so once established they will not simply go away. They would have to be forcibly evicted via chemical and mechanical means and then a new relationship can be established between plants and BBA within the new CO2 environment.

This is the problem we have because our concepts regarding algae are false. Algae are not an "infection". They are often the dominant species and there is a behavior which is established from their relationship to other organisms in the system.

Cheers,


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## zozo (11 Jul 2021)

Thanks for explaining your point of view, Clive... It all makes sense... I actually always had my doubts that plants do compete over nutrients since we tend to keep the nutritious value in the water up artificially. Then if there always is enough then this obviously goes for both parties and there is nothing to compete for. My personal knowledge simply ain't extensive enough to argue with the general consensus that says almost where ever you look plants should outcompete alga.

And I always wondered myself what they actually are competing for then. From now on I try to avoid using this word in relation to planted aquariums.

And now it's mentioned I come to notice that in threads about fighting algae CO² is always mentioned. But the question of what surfaces are the alga growing is never asked. Then if it's not attaching to the plants there is little need to suspect CO² issues.


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## tiger15 (11 Jul 2021)

Organism are always in competition and natural selection will not allow two organism to coexist in the same niche perpetually.    Eventually, one will outcompete and dominate the other  under  the niche.  This is reflected in high diversity in new growth forest versus low diversity species in matured forest. Even in apparently high diversity rain forest, you will find each plant and animal species occupy one niche.

Algae and plants are in competition for light, nutrients and CO2.  If the conditions are favorable to plants,  some algae will subside, and vice versa.  But there are many types of algae, some thrive in rich conditions plants prefer, others do well in lean conditions plants struggle.  The best strategy to grow algae free plant is to provide positive growing conditions for plants, not the other way to starve off plants in the hope that algae will go first.

Healthy plants will resist algae attachment, and I believe (without data) that allelopathic effect is happening on contact, though not necessarily in the water column that is detectable.    That said, you can have healthy algae free plants, but algae can still thrive and attach to hardscapes.   Algae are never absence in the cleanest aquascapes nor the healthiest streams, except that they are not visible on plant surfaces.

Clado and spirogyra are very difficult to eliminate, as they thrive under the same healthy conditions as for plants.  Unlike BBA, they only attach to hardscape, not healthy plants so it is easier to remove.  Another strategy is to eliminate hardscape by massing plants, so there is little place left for them to adhere to,


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## Greengeek (11 Jul 2021)

ceg4048 said:


> Hi Marcel,
> I'm having to continually remind hobbyists that plants can never even dream about outcompeting algae. People really need to consider how absurd this idea is. This is like saying that elephants can outcompete mice for food. Think about how many tons of food a animal the size of an elephant needs to survive. Then compare that quantity with amount of food a mouse needs. Above a certain tiny quantity of food mice could care less about how much food is available because they could never eat as much as an elephant. But the elephant cares and it's very easy for them to starve. In this analogy the mice are algae. We need to stop putting this idea of competition in the minds of beginning hobbyists. It's a very dangerous idea because it leads to miscalculation and ultimately, misdiagnosis.
> 
> Hi Greengeek,
> ...





ceg4048 said:


> Hi Marcel,
> I'm having to continually remind hobbyists that plants can never even dream about outcompeting algae. People really need to consider how absurd this idea is. This is like saying that elephants can outcompete mice for food. Think about how many tons of food a animal the size of an elephant needs to survive. Then compare that quantity with amount of food a mouse needs. Above a certain tiny quantity of food mice could care less about how much food is available because they could never eat as much as an elephant. But the elephant cares and it's very easy for them to starve. In this analogy the mice are algae. We need to stop putting this idea of competition in the minds of beginning hobbyists. It's a very dangerous idea because it leads to miscalculation and ultimately, misdiagnosis.
> 
> Hi Greengeek,
> ...



thank you, I’ve added a Seachem Tidal 110 and the additional flow is making the co2 bubbles circulate much more efficiently (in a large anti-clockwise circle across the tank) previously they left the diffusor and just went straight up. Already some of the Cladophora has blown free from the plants and been caught in the sponges I added to the intakes to stop the shrimp getting sucked in. That’s one good thing about Cladophora, it’s usually not attached to the plants as much as just tangled in them. 

Its not pretty but is a vast improvement flow wise.


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## dw1305 (12 Jul 2021)

Hi all, 


ceg4048 said:


> So for example, the method of attack is to afix themselves to a static surface, however, healthy plants have a growing and dynamic surface. They produce waxes and proteins
> that slough off and algae have less of a chance to affix themselves to these dynamic surfaces. So there are defense mechanisms healthy plants have to evade algae. Rocks are inanimate and are a static surface, so algae can affix themselves to any hardscape. There is not much we can do about that other than to mechanically remove them.


That one for me as well. 

cheers Darrel


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