# Causes and prevention of green thread algae



## Aqua Hero

at first i thought it was gone but it still around and growing moderately. what causes it and how do you stop it?


----------



## Tim Harrison

best read this http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm


----------



## xim

Green thread algae is the easiest to get rid of by using algae eaters, especially Amano shrimps.
I've tried almost all the recommended schemes:

Reducing fish feeding: didn't work.

Upping CO2: yes, I know it's hard to know if you are injecting enough of it. But it didn't work.

Frequent water change: 50% wc every other day for one full month. Didn't work. A good exercise, though.

Black out: 3 days. They came back.

Fertilisation: I've tried both doing full EI, and also tried stop dosing until the plants showed 
deficiencies. Both didn't work.

Lighting: Very low light for 6 months, some plants died but algae didn't. I've stopped believing in low lighting since then.


Nothing worked, until I followed Tropica's guide about keeping 5 Amano shrimps per 5 litres.
http://tropica.com/en/guide/algal-control/


After bringing in 70 Amano shrimps into my 340 litre tank. 
They've changed my tank from this.




 


 

To this.



 

 

Then it's dawn to me why most aquascapers in Asia don't need high flow rate, 
large amount of ferts, or trying to find how much CO2 they can inject into the tank.

Algae? 

Add more shrimps.

Having not enough budget to buy enough shrimps or the deadline is too close and can't wait for the shrimps to do the job?

Algicide. Then add as many shrimps as you can afford.

Their strategy about algae is simple: always keep the grazing pressure greater than algae's propagation rate.
After that, it's just conversation about plant deficiencies, rare or difficult plants, and scaping.


----------



## Aqua Hero

My god you tried everything. Crap the only place I know that sells amano shrimp sells them 5 shrimp for £20. That's gonna cost my between £60 - £80. Just for algae. I will buy the shrimp but only ten. 

The algae isn't as bad as yours was but I can see it trying to expand. Cheers though. 

Sent from my D2303 using Tapatalk


----------



## xim

xim said:


> Nothing worked, until I followed Tropica's guide about keeping 5 Amano shrimps per 5 litres.
> http://tropica.com/en/guide/algal-control/



Correction: 1 Amano shrimp per 5 litres.


----------



## xim

Aqua Hero said:


> My god you tried everything.



I haven't tried liquid carbon though. Because I figured it would be too expensive long term for my tank size.
By the way, the things I did might have stopped the algae. But in my case, there just might be too much algae
to control by those “passive” methods. I had less than 20 Amano shrimps at the time. My efforts probably didn't
bring the algae's propagation rate down enough to the level that was controllable by that amount of shrimp.




Aqua Hero said:


> Crap the only place I know that sells amano shrimp sells them 5 shrimp for £20. That's gonna cost my between £60 - £80. Just for algae. I will buy the shrimp but only ten.
> 
> The algae isn't as bad as yours was but I can see it trying to expand. Cheers though.



If your situation is not as bad. I think you don't need as many shrimp per litre as mine then.
You may use other species of shrimp as well. Especially ones that can breed in your tank,
to save cost.


----------



## Aqua Hero

xim said:


> I haven't tried liquid carbon though. Because I figured it would be too expensive long term for my tank size.
> By the way, the things I did might have stopped the algae. But in my case, there just might be too much algae
> to control by those “passive” methods. I had less than 20 Amano shrimps at the time. My efforts probably didn't
> bring the algae's propagation rate down enough to the level that was controllable by that amount of shrimp.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If your situation is not as bad. I think you don't need as many shrimp per litre as mine then.
> You may use other species of shrimp as well. Especially ones that can breed in your tank,
> to save cost.


i have cherry shrimp but they dont seem to do much. i will just some amanos. i tried liquid carbon and it did kill some of the algae. but it also killed parts of the moss so i want to try a different method


----------

