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Holiday…..algae fest!

KirstyF

Member
Joined
25 Jul 2021
Messages
663
Location
Kidderminster
So…..I enjoyed my two week holidays….but the tank, not so much. 🙄

Forgot to swap the Co2 bottle out before I left so it ran out at some point. Not sure when. The ‘tank-sitter’ mentioned I’d got some algae a couple of days before I got back and then realised the Co2 was empty. My fault not theirs tbf!

Came back to lots of algae on the glass. Almost all of the back glass coated, 2 or 3 inches high along the whole of the front and a central patch on the front from top to bottom.
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Some hair algae on a few plants,
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Brown algae on a number of Anubias, which doesn’t rub off.
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And some very unhappy looking AR with lots of GSA.
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I’ve had a good clean up and a 60-70% water change and I’m guessing that a bit of maintenance and re-stabilising Co2 will probably deal with most of the underlying cause but I’m wondering:

What is the brown algae coating the Anubias and is there anything I should/can do to help these recover?

Are the AR are a lost cause?

Always found the AR to be a bit of a pain, with low level GSA on lower leaves no matter what I do, but if I remove all the GSA affected leaves from these now I’m going to pretty much have bare stems with a few leaves on top. Should I just replace with fresh plants?

Any advice welcome. 😊

Just as a side note. I think I’ve probably cleaned a couple of small patches of gsa off the glass maybe twice in total since the tank was set up last November. Outside of that the glass has been entirely algae free. I’ve also had some GSA issues with slow growers and AR particularly, but relatively minor. Shocking just how quickly algae can take advantage eh!!
 
What is the brown algae coating the Anubias and is there anything I should/can do to help these recover?
Diatoms at a guess, get the tank back on track and ... poof the diatoms are gone.
Are the AR are a lost cause
You've resurrected them in the past, and suspect you can bring them back again... pinch out the old leaves.
Any advice welcome. 😊
Follow your gut instinct, you know the tank more than I do 😀
 
Diatoms at a guess, get the tank back on track and ... poof the diatoms are gone.

You've resurrected them in the past, and suspect you can bring them back again... pinch out the old leaves.

Follow your gut instinct, you know the tank more than I do 😀

Hey John

I would absolutely have said diatoms and a lot of the stuff on the glass had that typical gritty feel and came off real easy. I’m questioning myself just because the stuff on the leaves doesn’t feel gritty and won’t rub away. I wondered wether my industrious shrimp and ottos have cleaned away the top ‘layer’ as such and have left some tougher stuff behind. 🤔 I’ve added a few more ramshorns in this weekend so maybe they can earn their crust and clean up the remains for me!!

Yeah, I guess I might just have to put up with semi bald AR for a bit eh!! Punishment for poor planning! 😂

My instinct tells me I shoulda swapped the canister! 🙄😂
 
The first pic draws my interest. To my eyes it looks like bacterial biofilm, but it may well be diatoms. Apparently spreading from the substrate up. What intrigues me is the reason. I can understand that plants supported by excess CO2 have energy aplenty to defend themselves against parasites, epiphytes, and other negative factors. Once CO2 gets turned off they are in trouble. But why did the brownish film appeared on the glass?
Has anyone discussed such instances within this forum? Are there any answers at hand?
 
The first pic draws my interest. To my eyes it looks like bacterial biofilm, but it may well be diatoms. Apparently spreading from the substrate up. What intrigues me is the reason. I can understand that plants supported by excess CO2 have energy aplenty to defend themselves against parasites, epiphytes, and other negative factors. Once CO2 gets turned off they are in trouble. But why did the brownish film appeared on the glass?
Has anyone discussed such instances within this forum? Are there any answers at hand?

It’s an interesting point @_Maq_ and I’m curious too.

We have 3 known factors here:

Co2 failed
Ferts were reduced (EI dose spread over two weeks so technically 50% EI)
The tank didn’t get its normal weekly clean and water change.

The lack of Co2 would explain plant stress as you say.
The ferts are likely to have still been enough to not cause deficiency, I would think, but maybe the change could have added to plant stress!?
The lack of clean up/water change may also be a factor, although it’s fair to note that TDS is usually around 420 pre water change and was only at around 435 after the two weeks.

I do not however, clean the glass as part of my usual routine and, as mentioned, have never had either this brown film or much in the way of other algae before.

The front glass had a noticeable line where the film stopped, about 2-3” up from the substrate, other than the central section where the film was almost top to bottom. This section does not get direct flow from the rear placed gyres and I also have a light much closer to the front glass here. The film was also less pronounced at the very sides of the tank where it is shadier. The rear glass had film almost top to bottom for most of the length of the tank. This glass would also be exposed to more light and less flow.

The pattern of the film would imply that light and/or flow was a factor in where it was most prevalent but why the glass was so noticeably affected is a little beyond me.

Could it be that, as the glass is not regularly cleaned, it would therefore likely have a reasonable level of biofilm in place (albeit not visible) and either a chemical release from stressed plants or imbalance due to the above factors has triggered a change that has allowed this visible film to be produced? Or would this have happened regardless of how clean the glass was?

Note, it appears to also be on some leaves of slow growers too but certainly the glass was most heavily affected.
 
Your notes about water flow and illumination add useful detail but do not solve the mystery.
I've learned that cleaning the front glass is useful even when it's apparently clean. The theory is that so called conditioning film consisting of adsorbed organic compounds is a prerequisite for bacterial colonization, and that in turn is a precondition for algae growth.
Anyway, we still don't know why?
 
No we don’t.

I believe that algae needs light and a food source at fairly low levels in order to grow, so all of our aquariums technically provide conditions that are suitable for algae, right? However, a tank full of healthy plants is much less prone to algae growth and we can also see algae ‘attacking’ an unhealthy plant in a tank and leaving all others unaffected.

My feeling is that healthy plants actively inhibit algae and/or unhealthy or stressed plants ‘trigger’ algae. Whether this be via release of chemicals, increase in dissolved organics , Allelopathy etc

Would it therefore be unreasonable to consider that stressed plants can or do release compounds into the water that trigger algae growth and then that algae growth can and will take advantage of whatever conditions it finds within that environment; not necessarily restricted to just the stressed plants themselves. (In this case, a pre-condition on tank glass?)

With this being a 7ft tank. The issues have shown as hair algae on moss and some stems at the rear of the tank but no-where else. These are both areas that are more prone to collecting detritus/waste due to location and leaf formation.

Also, increased GSA on AR that were already suffering from GSA.

And then the glass which potentially had a pre-condition as you have mentioned.

If you look at the issue but ignore plant vs glass, the areas affected were affected by different types of algae, but all areas potentially had a pre-condition for algal growth.

If we believe that healthy plants have a level of active defence against algae then you could also start to consider that the glass is an area that both ‘attracted’ algae, and also had no defence against it?

This is slightly over simplified and could be utter codswallop of course but just my thoughts. 😊

The answer, I have no doubt, is way more complex and science based than this, but way out of my balliwick!

Also, just to note, the glass has been left uncleaned as a potential additional ‘biofilm’ food source for my otto’s (every little bit helps) though in fairness, now the tank is much more mature, this is probably no longer necessary. 😊
 
My feeling is that healthy plants actively inhibit algae and/or unhealthy or stressed plants ‘trigger’ algae. Whether this be via release of chemicals, increase in dissolved organics , Allelopathy etc
Would it therefore be unreasonable to consider that stressed plants can or do release compounds into the water that trigger algae growth and then that algae growth can and will take advantage of whatever conditions it finds within that environment; not necessarily restricted to just the stressed plants themselves. (In this case, a pre-condition on tank glass?)
Something like that. Plants can definitely defend themselves against epiphytes. I don't know the details, and I doubt the science has revealed the mechanisms completely, but we can presume it works with an energy cost. Plants well fed with CO2 have enough energy to defend themselves. If CO2 suddenly drops, they are stressed.
Whether they release any substances which the algae can "sense" as an opportunity, I'm not sure. Possibly. But I'd rather believe the other way, i.e. plants quit production of chemicals which inhibit algal growth not only on their surfaces but also in the tank as a whole. However, if this is the case, I'd expect the science already knows which substances are at work here. I'm often reading papers on ecology, namely on switching of natural waters from clear to turbid state due eutrophication. It's a victory of algae over macrophytes. Scientists often observe and describe these processes, but the mechanisms involved seem to be far from clear. At least as far as I know and am able to comprehend.
Allelochemicals come to mind, naturally, but the issue seems quite evasive.
Anyway, as a practicing aquarium hobbyist, I have little doubts that healthy plants in high numbers do suppress algae, one way or another. It's only that we'd benefit a lot if we knew these mechanisms in detail.
 
Quick update. A week after the big post holiday clean up and Co2 back on….no return of algae on any glass. Very little return of hair algae, just a few strands here and there….the Anubias are still a bit grubby but I think the clean up crew are working on it….. and the gsa on the AR, we just won’t talk about yet!! 🙄

So, pretty happy with that. In fairness, I was kind of expecting a bigger fight! 😊
 
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