# Algae advice needed



## GTL_UK (13 Jul 2015)

Hi. 
Can someone point me In right direction how to get rid of these algae? 
Setup is tmc signature 900, 50w led lights running at around 60% for 8hours,  co2 2 hours before light,  ei fertilising and dirt/sand as substrate,  jbl e1501 filter with spraybar 






















Thanks


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## Martin in Holland (14 Jul 2015)

Looks like you have the lot, staghorn, hair algae, BBA, GSA.....
Light, CO2 and distribution should be re-evaluated. Check how much pH drop you have, lower your light (hours and intensity, atleast for the time being), maybe a filter hose in kinked or the filter is clogged (to much media). Does your spray bar spray all the way to the front of the tank? Ad some excel to help restoring the balance.


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## ian_m (14 Jul 2015)

Way way way too much light for way way way too long....get the idea. The light level for you level of CO2 and ferts is vaporising the plants causing them to die and leach organics into the water providing excellent food for algae. You must be very careful with LED lights as they can be very powerful.

After clearing algae try say 20-30% LED brightness for say 4 hours until plants settle in for say a month. Then slowly increase brightness and time.


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## GTL_UK (14 Jul 2015)

Yes it's mainly staghorn and hair algae on moss.  Week ago I lowered light intensity and duration so hopefully it will help. Filter is not clogged as I clean it every other week - maybe to often.. 
As for Excel, I would rather not put any chemicals into tank... 



Thanks


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## Jose (14 Jul 2015)

Also you might want to plant more densely or replace algae affected plants with new ones.


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## ian_m (14 Jul 2015)

Try 3-4 day 100% black put. Wrap tank in blankets for 3-4 days with lights off. No feeding or peeking. That should kill the algae which can then be removed using say a tooth brush and water changes.

Hydrogen peroxide will also kill algae and is less chemical than Excel (in fact all are chemicals including water, CO2....).


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## GTL_UK (14 Jul 2015)

Was thinking about blackout but im worried as most plants are crypts, will it not trigger melting? 

Thanks


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## dw1305 (14 Jul 2015)

Hi all, 





Jose said:


> Also you might want to plant more densely


 I'm Jose on that one, a higher plant mass would help. 

I think most people who have algae free moss in bright light also have shrimps, which are great moss cleaners

Will the floaters spread out to cover more of the tank? or are they pushed into a corner by the flow? If they will spread I would let them cover ~50%of the surface. 

Floaters are always a good option, because they have access to aerial CO2 (~400ppm).

cheers Darrel


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## zozo (14 Jul 2015)

Im also with Jose and Darrel. 

And an established algae outbreak like that is going to cost you some loss anyway.. No matter how you approach it you will lose parts of plants. Using h2o2 on moss will likely damage the moss as much as just cutting the infected parts away. The downside with peroxide is you never know the result till you see it, you could be lucky some mosses do good others are killed rather fast. Try some on a small part first and how it takes it, and that is still not a garanty the other parts would take it as well. I killed a lot of my precious moss with it and wouldn't advise to use peroxide on it. Rather leave to moss to an army of shrimps and see how it goes, if nesecairy help a bit with sciccors. 

Even with a black out you still have to cut away the plant parts infected. When algae grows on a plant it attaches in the pores and cells of the plant, that leave is damaged anyway and get necrotic edges where the algae was and most likely to die over time. Green spot is less agresive than the beard and hair family when attacking leaves. 

With certain plant species a longer term blackout can trigger some melting but rarely will kill the whole plant. But i came to find out that peroxide also damages the plant a bit, some plants take it better than others. If you do a peroxide treat and a blackout after that there certainly is going to be some melting, because you take away the plants energy supply to recover. I tested it on some rotala's and all older leaves did melt off after the peroxide and black out. That was just a curiousity test, i didn't do a blackout for my tank, but wasn't also that vastly infected yet before taking measures. 

Cut away heavily affected leaves and try the blackout first and see what's left after that. After that you could spot treat hardware and substrate with peroxide. Do frequent 25% water changes, extra filter cleaning and substrate vacuming 2 or 3 times a week. Inspect the bucket what comes out, keep the cleaning regime up till you find no more algae strains floating around in the bucket. Then go back to just WC once a week with a good firt regime and a steady co2 supply.

You already did down the light periode, now you could add floating vegitation like Salvinia and or duckweed or both to reduce the light intensity. you could also dim the light but floaters are more sufficient in the way that they help combating the algae after all the cutting you did. They floaters get a lot of light at the top and so will be triggered to grow fast, their roots will suck up the nutrients while your substrate plants get nutrients as well while slowly recovering in the floaters provided shade. You could throw in a hand full of Egeria densa as wel and just let it float for the time being, till your substrate plants have come back and show new lush clean growth you can take that egeria out again. Buy an army of shrimps like Japonica not the most beautifull but seem to be one of the best algae combaters and don't feed them to much cucumber etc. They eat almost everything, if you feed the fish froozen Dapnhia or bloodworm the shrimps also will snack on that they even snack on dry food. If you provide them with to much extra vegtable treats they will ignore certain algae. Hunger makes raw beans sweet.  You can spoil them with treats when the work is done. They stript al what was left of my slowest growing ever seen bolbitis diformis from staghorn. while reading a lot of articals where is stated that they don't.

There are many other strategies working as sufficient as you will find here, but this is the way i got around it. By the help of UKAPS members provided information. Just read articles, replies and filter out what suits your feelings and situation the best.

Good luck.


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## 5678 (14 Jul 2015)

I've got similar algae starting on my moss too. Seems quite easy to hover off and pull out, dosing liquid carbon is appearing to slow/stop it coming back too. 

What kind of algae is it?


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## GTL_UK (14 Jul 2015)

Thanks for all your advice! 
Biggest concern for me is staghorn!  Is there any specific reason for them to appear? 

Thanks


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## zozo (14 Jul 2015)

Staghorn as a Red Algae in the beard algae family Compsopogon altough it seems rather black/grey/dark green  the freshwater version appears mainly tropical or subtropical outside those regions its only to be found in places with elevated temperatures. So it's most likely introduced with some plants from the shop/nursery.

It likes clear running water and like our plants lots of light and nutritients. Because its a very ancient species it doesn't need such a nice stable invironment as higher plants do. So if the inveronment is not enough in balance for higher plants to grow enough to compete. The algae are in favour and wil outcompete the plants and over grow them.  It can be quite stuborn but is known as one of the easiest to combat. It reacts very good to h2o2 and liquid carbon and turns into fishfood.

The main point is to create a situation where you turn things around, thus more plants to outcompete the algae.  Because the plants are more demanding about their invironment, they need more stable supply of firts to make them grow fast. Faster then the algae who don't give a damn about stability they do good enough with unstable, as for that your tank is a nice example at the time. 

Now your chain is broken somewhere.. Maybe you have enough firts, enough Co2 and enough light, but not enough plants. Or just something else is missing or just unstable like unstable co2 supply, unstable firt regime and to much light above to less plants. If you dont want more plants you need to know more about how to get and keep it stable that way. Since that isn't so easy, the easiest way is add more (fast growing) plants, make a more stable firt regime and stabalize your co2 supply and down the light. Now your tank is driving with one foot on the gass and the other foot pumping the brakes.

When you reach a point where you removed and killed a lot and things are on cruise control and back on track, you can slowly up the light again if you think you need it. Than you will notice soon enough if you go to drastic in making changes. It usualy wont take more than 3 days for the staghorn to reappear again somewhere.  You'll never get it out. Don't panic, start cutting if you see some, most likely we all have it. Find and maintain a balance where the staghorn is pinned down in just being latently present.


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## GTL_UK (15 Jul 2015)

Ill go with 50% light for 8 hours(dropped form 100% 9 hours ;]), upped co2, floaters(frogbit) and 2x 50% water change per week and see if it helps


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## GTL_UK (22 Jul 2015)

Nearly two weeks now with changes and it made no difference....  
Can the green hair algae be due to deficiency or incorrect proportions of fertilisers? 

Thanks


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## Wisey (24 Jul 2015)

50% for 8 hours is still quite a lot of light I guess. My tank is 4 weeks old since setup and I am running at 20% for 6 hours with my TMC 1500 tile with it 30 cm from the water and about 70 cm from the substrate. I'm seeing a few minor bits of algae with that. You might want to try what Ian suggested before and reduce the light much lower, get rid of the algae, then gradually increased once stable.


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## dw1305 (24 Jul 2015)

Hi all,





GTL_UK said:


> Can the green hair algae be due to deficiency or incorrect proportions of fertilisers?


I'm not sure that it can. The problem from my point of view would be that the Green Algae belong to the same clade (<"Viridiplantae">) as all the other green plants (Mosses, Ferns, Angiosperms) and have the same basic physiology and photosynthetic systems. 

cheers Darrel


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## GTL_UK (28 Jul 2015)

Update!  As from today my tank is algae free! 
What I've done :
Two weeks light set to 20%
Massive overdosed glutaraldehyde on day one
5 x siamese algae eaters 
Co2 dose max out,  cannot count bubbles anymore 
Light is back on 80% now and I can't already see good growth 

Thanks


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