GlassWalker
Member
This one is new to me. Is it staghorn? The long strand going across the pic is probably the same stuff, hitching a ride on the filter outflow.
Tank is 68L lit with 24W PL for 10 hours a day. No carbon. One dose of EI macro/micro each week. TetraPlant substrate capped with sand. 20L water change most weeks. Livestock includes 3 amano shrimp, 8 copper harlequins, 17 minnows, and a billion MTS. I guess the latter means I might be overfeeding? I have two filters. One is an in-hood system rated at 400lph, picks up from back right corner, returns back left. Also have a Fluval U3 internal located front right, blowing straight across. Due to the closed design there is no practical way for me to use an external short of throwing away the lid with associated filter and light. This would be a bad idea as I have lost several of the copper harlequins in the past to jumping.
In reading up, causes seem to include flow (I think I have a fair amount given the small tank) and dirt. I might be guilty of the latter, and if I'm overfeeding that wont help. So, more regular filter cleaning, plus feeding less is my thought. Any other suggestions? I do have EasyCarbo, but this tank also has a ton of vallis which is known not to like it, and I have experienced it in the past too. I've also heard vallis can grow to get used to it if introduced slowly. Is that agreed?
I call this one green hair algae, but realise that is a bit like calling anything with feathers a bird. I have seen this before, and I comprehensively lost the battle with it. It consists of green strands, which have more green strands branching off it. They glow, break off, and is spread by the water current where they get caught on other plants and grow. Repeat until tank is covered in it. Manual removal is almost impossible since tiny frags will be everywhere and it will just grow back. I haven't found the secret sauce to get the plants to out-compete it yet. It hasn't got bad in this tank yet, although I consider a non-zero amount of this to be bad anyway.
In a previous tank, this can grow from zero to tennis ball size lumps in a week in areas of high flow next to a spraybar. It forms a long tentacle on duckbill outputs, and I got it up to over 3ft in a 2.5ft tank, again following the flow.
Anyway, the current tank is a Fluval Roma 125L. Lighting has mostly been 1x25W LED, although recently I put back the 2x20W T8, upgraded to electronic ballast, no reflectors as the LED PSU was playing up. I do intend to put the LED back in place probably on the weekend as I now have a replacement PSU. Again 1 dose of EI per week. TetraPlant substrate capped with sand. No carbon. Once again I have vallis in here. Filtration consists of two external filters: APS1000 with spray bar return (pickup and return on same end of tank) and Fluval 306 with duckbill (pickup and return on other side of tank, flowing across the surface). Either 20 or 40L of water change a week depending on how I feel at the time.
If it matters, this tank has had repeated outbreaks of a floating green algae on the water surface before. It never goes into the water, but will coat anything passing through the surface. Under a microscope these are needle shaped. By trial and error, I found if I run an air filter in tank, this particular algae goes away very quickly (days). I'm not sure what to make of that.
This tank is technically overstocked, with 4 bristlenose plecos, and one unknown pleco, as well as 20-something ember tetras. There are MTS in this tank too, but not in excess. I don't particularly want to keep the plecos, but removing them now will be challenging short of replanting the whole tank. Actually, if the algae isn't controllable, that might not be so bad... nuking the tank IS an option, although I might also be tempted to close the tank. I can rehome the embers in another tank (hopefully without spreading the algae in the process) and sell the plecos on.
Oh, I'm sure you're going to tell me I wasted my money, but in the distant past I did try interpet hair algae killer on it which did absolutely nothing to anything other than give the LFS balance sheet a boost.
Any suggestions?
I can add, if I get another regulator, I have enough spare bits to add CO2 to the 125L tank. I'm not sure it is practical on the 68L.