Taking Over...

[JLW]

ARGH! Help me kill this ... stuff!

IMG_0275.JPG (213.76 KiB) Viewed 4176 times

I have what I think is best termed string algae. I've always had some small clumps of it that didn't bother me in my main tank. In the past week or so, it has exploded, and just taken over. I remove handfuls of this stuff daily. I don't understand, as I haven't changed anything -- although it did coincide with an increased temperature to combat ich (which is now back to normal). It will go from just a few bits to EVERYWHERE in 24-48 hours. It has completely smothered several plants, including my Nelsonia.

I've never had an algae problem like this before. I'm doing big water changes, using excel, cut back on light and ferts, and nothing is helping. Would adding CO2 help?

Any ideas as to the cause? Any ideas as to fixing it?

[150EH]

I think this is the type of algae Rachael use 300 Amano shrimp on and it was cleared in a day, so 150 = 2 days, 75 = 4 days, and so on.

Sorry I don't know the solution for the cure, I had a less agressive thread type algae and added micro ferts and Fe did the trick. Most of the time cutting back on ferts is the wrong thing to do but playing with the lenth of the photo period may be helpful, and try to keep C02 consistant and increase it a little if you can without gassing your fish, I would continue removing what you can by hand and don't make too many adjustments at once, good luck.

[DonkeyFish]

Sadly, looks like the dreaded cladophora (sic?) to me. I have no answer as to a cure other than manually pulling as much as you can, or if localized pulling all the contaminated flora-carefully since the stuff breaks off and strands will wind up everywhere. Multiple sources do tell of large numbers of hungry Amano shrimp taking it out. Good luck.

[krisw]

Hard to tell from that picture if it's clado or not. Could be spirogyna algae too. How high did you raise the temperature? You may want to do a massive (80%) water change, and start running at half-light for a week and stop dosing. Remove as much as you can manually, and shoot the worst areas with a single syringe (say 50-100mL) of Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) from the drug store. I find that it can be helpful to follow the H2O2 treatment with more water changes, but do as time permits. It's possible that the temperature increase damaged/stunted some of your plants, so they stopped growing. If you continued your normal dosing, you likely had nutrients sitting in the water for the algae to use. If any of the plants died, that's more organics from decaying plant matter. Not to mention the possibility of a massive microorganisms die-off that would contribute more organics to the water. As mentioned, Amano's are particularly helpful to deliver the killing blow after weakening the algae with the aforementioned treatment.

[JLW]

Hmmm... think Rachel will give me a deal on 5000 Amano Shrimp?

I shot the temperature up to 90 degrees. Got rid of the ich, but ... caused this! Or, at least, this started then, so I'm blaming it. I've stopped adding any fertiliser but excel -- which should be getting rid of the algae. I'm hesitant to want to try peroxide, as I'm afraid of stressing or killing the fish. The algae, at least, isn't killing my fish.

Any ideas on what caused this? As I said, I've always had little tufts of it on the rocks and driftwood, which I don't mind: it looks nice. But, now its gone hay-wire on me. Is it generally caused by high phosphate, nitrate, iron, gremlins? Once I get it back under control, I want to make sure it stays that way. Its really destroyed my tank: all of my plants have been ripped up with the "harvesting," a lot have gotten smothered, uhg.

[krisw]

Not many plants survive at 90 degrees. There's very little doubt that this is what threw everything out of whack!

[JLW]

Well, I think I've got it pretty well under control.... I ripped out all the plants yesterday and removed every single last bit of the stuff. There are a dozen Amanos wandering in the tank, which should(?) keep it from coming back. The tank has some definite barren spots where I lost some plants to the sudden onslaught.

Its strange, I've popped the temp up to get rid of ich before, but I've never had anything like this happen.

[150EH]

My CO2 was off for 6 days for a broken part and my tank has not fully recovered after more than three weeks, so it doesn't take much change to throw the whole thing out of balance and the really depend on routine. I'm glad to hear your tank is doing better.

[JLW]

Very frustrating, though, as I lost some favourite plants. At least I didn't lose my anacharis and cabomba. :p

[DonkeyFish]

Whatever you lost I'd be willing to bet someone around here has...