• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Help to battle algae in new tank

I

Iwagumi_Scaper

Member
Joined
9 Jun 2018
Messages
124
Location
York, UK
Hi all,

So I've been doing a dry start on some Monte Carlo for a few months and have just recently flooded the tank and within a week I have a lot of algae growth. Some on the substrate but not too much, some on the rocks, and some appearing on the glass now as well. Injecting fairly high doses of co2 to begin with to keep the plants happy but gradually reducing. The tank is only 25L, with a 25W LED light producing 1200 lumens at max power. Now, this is possibly where the problem is coming from. I have it going at full whack for 8 hours a day at the moment. Should I reduce the intensity for such a small tank (height is 23cm approx)?

CO2 has been running at 1 bubble per second for the first week, which turns my drop checker yellow towards the end of the light cycle. This will get reduced to about 0.5 bubbles per second. Flow around the tank seems pretty good and the co2 is being distributed nicely. I'll also be starting a regime of fert dosing later this week.

If anyone can help with a strategy to get the tank balanced it would be great.

Many thanks,

Chris
 
Edvet said:
I would reduce the light to 5/6 hours, do large waterchanges every other day, brush away the algae as good as possible.
Click to expand...

Hi Edvet. I've just done some tank maintenance today. Spot treated the BGA with hydrogen peroxide and after a few hours manually removed as much as I could followed by a large water change.

I was wondering however - h2o2 turns into water after 24 hours or so. If this is the case, could I do a blanket treatment in the tank where I just drop 3ml or so (following the 1ml per gallon advice) and let it work on the whole tank as it mixes with the water?

Some people say you need to do a big water change afterwards, but if it turns into water, what's the point? :lol:

Cheers
 
Are you able to dim the light? 25W sounds a lot to me for this size. I started a CO2 enriched 54L tank this summer with 15,8W LED, manually blocked the light first (and still with floating plants) and I think I started with 5h, now at 7h. I was surprised to see virtually no algae, but then again my Monte Carlo died (no dry start)...
 
Majsa said:
Are you able to dim the light?
Click to expand...

I am indeed. I've got it turned down quite a bit now. I wanted to have the extra power if I needed it (for future tanks as well). A lot of people I've spoken to think it's actually blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) and it matches the photos I've been looking at. From what I've read on various forums sometimes it can be introduced to a tank during a dry start somehow which may well be how I got it in the first place. That's when it started to grow.
 
One of the main causes of blue green algae is excessive light. I would therefore second reducing the light intensity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top