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old algae, new algae

Still fighting the battle on clado here. I have been gradually increasing the EasyCarbo dosage on the tank. Historically I've used the medium planted dose of 1ml per 50L (as opposed to heavy planted dose of 1ml per 25L). Tank is 125L but does have a fair bit of bogwood, rock and substrate so let's call it a round 100L. I have worked up the dosage now to 6ml/day, which is 3x that I was using before. So should my baseline be taken as the standard of heavily planted dose? I'm guessing maybe the latter, since I do have a lot of plant mass in there...

Just what sort of dose is suggested for removing clado without impacting fish? I'm going to need another bottle soon. This high dosage is really using it fast... on the positive side, I haven't observed any adverse effects on the vallis.

As a side note, today I found a lower cost source of crystal shrimps. I see they could contribute to the consumption of the algae, and I always wanted shrimp anyway. It wouldn't be hard for me to adapt the water characteristics of this tank to be suitable for them.
 
Back again, and I did some serious tank content shuffling last weekend. In short, I've moved all the livestock out of the clado infected tank, hopefully not carrying any of it into other tanks. That leaves me with a tank that is full of plants, clado and MTS. As far as I'm concerned, I have an easy option, which is to bin the contents of the tank. But there are a lot of plants in it, and I have a load of easy carbo I'm not planning on using elsewhere. So let's try nuking the clado again! I've got nothing to lost except a little time, and it would be a learning exercise.

Previously I've used up to 6ml/day (3x standard dose of 1ml per 50L) without impact. I'm thinking of hitting it at 10ml/day (5x standard dose) and see if that does anything! If the liquid carbon works, how quickly could I see an impact? Would there be any direct benefit in combating the clado if I were to add CO2 also? I've discontinued CO2 on another tank that I've switched to low tech, so I've go a spare kit now.
 
3 days in at 5x dose and no obvious change to the clado or anything else in tank yet.

Random thought did occur, which is under what conditions does the glut degrade? I moved some from the original bottle into a dosing bottle to make the dosing easier, but the dosing bottle is much lighter plastic so if it photo degrades, that would not be ideal.
 
A week of 5x dose EasyCarbo did exactly nothing to the clado. I've gone up to 7.5x dose now. I'm starting to wonder if either my EC has gone off, or if clado is indestructible. The only visible animal life in tank are bladder and MTS and they still seem to be around.
 
You might just wrap the dosing bottle in foil to limit light (which does negatively impact glutaraldehyde), also store the bottle inside the cabinet.
Glutaraldehyde does degrade over time even when kept cool & dark, I don't know what the aquarium trade may be doing to stabilize the compound but in a lab setting, I replaced the bottle annually (even if only a small amount had been used BUT using for rather different reasons, so this may not really be all that applicable to the aquarium trade usage ...)
Out of habit I buy Excel in smaller bottles that I expect to use within a few months - found a bottle I'd forgotten for a year or so, it was definitely no longer the same as the newly opened bottle, so I plan to dispose of it.

IME it's much easier to limit algae than to clear out infestations, pretty sure there are some "dips" that help reset the system if you're inclined to tear the tank down: just clean the plants somewhat manually as you go, trim damaged leaves/roots etc as you would normally for replanting, & "store" in clean water; strip down the tank substrate etc, rescape, thoroughly clean filters & so on.
When it comes to "dip" solutions, research carefully for each plant - I don't know is there's any discussion here regarding this sort of treatment, there are some mad dippers over on the American forums 😉 though perhaps this has passed out of vogue.

If you're in the mood to rescape, just the clean up & replanting your tidied up plants & adding CO2 etc may be sufficient to break the algae hold on this tank.
 
Reducing light intensity in low tech work's wonder's but hard to move folks off their high dollar lighting.
I have moved plant's from moderate light, to very low light (ie) 4x54 watt T5's Ten inches above water's surface,thirty inches to the substrate, to one 32 watt T8 and seen algae retreat from the edges of Vals,anubia,crypt's. Tuft algae disappear from leaves/ wood.
Does not happen overnight, but within a few week's the algae goes away.
Return the plant's to previous tank with reduced intensity (raised the light) and all was/is well.
No chemical treatment's required.
Monthly cleaning of filter material helps also.
 
First up, the tank these plants are in is no longer active, in that I'm not keeping livestock in it. It is only kept on for experimenting with the clado as a learning exercise. I don't care if it gets nuked in the process, but if the treatment is successful and the clado is eliminated, not merely controlled, then I will give the plants away for free locally. There are a lot of plants and I don't want to write them off if there are minimal effort solutions that might work. If there is a whole tank treatment that might works, I'll try it. I will not handle plants individually and would rather bin the lot as I haven't got time for that. The plants are in the same tank they were in before, the juggling referred to other livestock.

Filters got cleaned much more regularly than monthly, the dirt buildup was pretty fast. My water changes may be smaller than some desire around here, typically 20 to 40% depending on my mood at the time.

Interesting on the light sensitivity of glut, as I noticed early EasyCarbo bottles were opaque white, but newer ones are black. I'm moving it into a dosing bottle to make things easy, but that is even more transparrent than the white bottles. So photo-degradation is a possibility there. It may explain why my massive doses seem to do no good or bad.

Not sure on light reduction possibilities. Currently running the Fluval freshwater LED bar (25W) over it, which I've put up for sale elsewhere anyway so will need to remove at some point. I could return to the original 2x20W T8 which are subjectively less bright. The reflectors have been lost long ago so efficiency should be pretty poor. Tubes aren't that new either.

Think I read somewhere a H2O2 dip might also help. Given I'm not running other livestock in this tank, I wonder if a whole tank treatment of that is a possible nuclear option if glut doesn't work? Assuming my H2O2 hasn't gone off too. The bottle expands over time and I have to de-gas it now and then.

Oh, CO2 addition is a possibility too, I removed it from another tank which I've gone low tech on as I'm fed up with excessive growth all the time.
 
Just agreeing with post # 12 submitted by Clive as well as relaying my own experiences .
I guess chemicals are more fun for some to fart around with than other's.
Would seem to me however that if condition's are ripe for it's return,then chemical treatment's would bring possibly only temporary relief.
 
I do believe this problem is an introduced one, not one that spontaneously appears from nowhere. In a similar way I don't get the potential of a Vallis outbreak unless I introduce it in the first place. I had this previously on one other tank, considering I run all my tanks similarly if it was so easy to appear from nowhere, all my tanks would be infected sooner or later. More likely I had a failure in biocontrol when doing a previous round of tank shuffling leading to this tank's infestation. All algae are NOT equal. I got the general theory of planted tanks, but separate from that, if you do get different algae, there are different methods to control them. That's all I want to do. I'm fairly sure I don't have any nutrient shortage here. Liquid carbon is used. Lighting may be more an area of discussion.

Why do I get the feeling I left one Matrix to simply join another one?...
 
Hi all,
The Green algae (Chlorophyta), like Cladophora, are part of the same phylogenetic lineage ("Viridiplantae clade") as all the mosses, ferns and higher plants.

This means that they all share the same photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll A, chlorophyll B) and basic physiology etc.

One result of this is that, if you create conditions that are suitable for plants you have suitable conditions for green algae.

cheers Darrel
 
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