There are some talks about using salicylic acid as an algaecide, so I thought it was pertinent to add this testimonial.
This is a tank where almost nothing happens and nothing changes. Eventually the floating plants go through a bad phase, then they pick up again and that's it. It is now more than 1 year old and since very early on I've had problems with green thread algae, one of the nasty kinds - I'm thinking either cladophora or spirogyra, I'm really bad at identifying, but you can see it in the pictures. Every water change, I would remove a handful of it. The pictures in the previous post were taken just after a water change, so that is how it looked after I removed as much as I could.
I started treating with salicylic acid, mostly because I wanted to try it in my main tank, and when I had it in hand I thought, well, why not use on this tank too? I'll say the dosage used off the top of my head because I'm not at home now, but it was very, VERY lean. If I remember it right, it was 1mg of salicylic acid in a 500ml bottle of tap water. I remember it being just at the limit of the solubility for this acid. I actually warmed the water a bit in the microwave to see if it helped, but it took a few days until it was fully dissolved. Then I dosed 10ml per 100L per week. That's 30ml in my main tank, and 8ml in this one.
In this tank, nothing happened for 1 month. I would remove the algae as usual and it would grow again. Then, 1 month after the treatment started, I removed the algae and it didn't grow back. And now it is almost all gone. In the main tank, it also hit the algae right in the face, but it is a tank where a lot is happening and changing as I adjust things, so it was hard to say how effective this treatment was. But with this tank, I'm pretty sure it was 100% the salicylic acid that did the job.
This is a tank where almost nothing happens and nothing changes. Eventually the floating plants go through a bad phase, then they pick up again and that's it. It is now more than 1 year old and since very early on I've had problems with green thread algae, one of the nasty kinds - I'm thinking either cladophora or spirogyra, I'm really bad at identifying, but you can see it in the pictures. Every water change, I would remove a handful of it. The pictures in the previous post were taken just after a water change, so that is how it looked after I removed as much as I could.
I started treating with salicylic acid, mostly because I wanted to try it in my main tank, and when I had it in hand I thought, well, why not use on this tank too? I'll say the dosage used off the top of my head because I'm not at home now, but it was very, VERY lean. If I remember it right, it was 1mg of salicylic acid in a 500ml bottle of tap water. I remember it being just at the limit of the solubility for this acid. I actually warmed the water a bit in the microwave to see if it helped, but it took a few days until it was fully dissolved. Then I dosed 10ml per 100L per week. That's 30ml in my main tank, and 8ml in this one.
In this tank, nothing happened for 1 month. I would remove the algae as usual and it would grow again. Then, 1 month after the treatment started, I removed the algae and it didn't grow back. And now it is almost all gone. In the main tank, it also hit the algae right in the face, but it is a tank where a lot is happening and changing as I adjust things, so it was hard to say how effective this treatment was. But with this tank, I'm pretty sure it was 100% the salicylic acid that did the job.
