Algae I'm not sure how to get rid of...

[tiger15]

I think excel will help you get rid of the algae, but you have to administer adequate lethal level to the algae. According to excel instruction, you have to dose 5x after WC and 1x daily thereafter. When I had algae problem, I dosed 5x after weekly 75% WC and 2x daily thereafter, and the algae were gone in few weeks. The 1x daily is for liquid carbon, not enough to suppress algae IMO. I dosed 5x to the tank prior to filling up, so the effective dosage could be as high as 20x temporarily during lower water levels. The idea is to blast the algae, while fish can tolerate higher short term dosage. Glutaldehyde is an ingredient of SeaChem Paraguard which is formulated at even higher dosage than 5x. I’ve done it many times and my fish have never shown any ill effect, but make sure the filling water distribute the excel evenly. Be careful with shrimp though as I have no experience on how shrimp will react.

Excel is only a temporary fix, and if your underlying causes of algae is not fixed, it will return.

 

[Witcher]

Hi all,
Nitrates are quite high between 40 and 80ppm before water change (I just discovered this today, and is higher than I'd prefer), and no ammonia or nitrites.

Hey @Nathan G you have very lightly planted tank with massive amount of nitrates in the water (looks like your plants are sitting in nitrate soup) and I think that's the main problem. For tank with such small amount of plants I wouldn't add more than 10ppm NO3 weekly and if I'd notice such a massive build up, I'd change 80% of water and reduce dosage of nitrates to no more 5ppm weekly (and other nutrients respectively). And I'd perform excel/glut treatment as @alto suggests.

 

[Nathan G]

You're toxing your plants with too much Fe which is inducing a Zn deficiency. The high pH compounds this problem as the metals become unavailable.

It's been a while, and just wanted to say thanks again for pointing this out @Guest Guest. I think this was quite likely a significant contributor to the problem (other being increasing my co2 a bit). As soon as I switched to Tropica Specialized (with less of an Fe ration) I saw noticeable improvement within a week and soon after to where the staghorn was nearly gone! Then when I switched back to Thrive (keeping all other variable relatively the same), the algae started to appear again within several days.

For updated pics, check out my latest post on my journal thread.

 

[jaypeecee]

Hi @dw1305

I think that the problems a lot of people have with Otocinclus and Nerites is just that. They are organisms that have a very strict view of what food is, and once they've eaten what was available they wait around for some more to appear, and if it doesn't they starve to death.

Succinctly stated!

JPC