# 6 months later



## rpmsongs (Aug 22, 2010)

I'm still no closer to positively Identifying or eradicating my beautifully pearling, extremely resilient algae pictured below.

30 gallon tank.

Added:
2 New 36 w ada pc 8500k bulbs 
pressurized co2, 1 bps 
drop checker, 
ada style diffusor, 
flourish tabs, 
powerhead, 
Thermometer
air stone. on an hour before lights out, on till lights on. 
Amano shrimp

Keeping kh at 3.5 and gh at 5. temp at 78, ph is at 7 during the day. 
nitrites 0 nitrates 10-20

phosphates in a decent range.

I upgraded my filter from the fluval 104 to the 305. All I have in it are bio balls, old crushed coral for bacterial help and filter pads.

I'm filtering my new water using a carbon block filter, made by everpure. MH2

Lights are on 10 hour per day, 5 hours on, 2 hours off, 5 hours on. 10 minute overlaps between bulbs.

Dosing seachem's trace, flourish, nitrogen, potassium, phospahtes, Iron(daily), as needed.

30-50% WC per week.

flourite red gravel, 3 years old, thoroughly cleaned before setting up.

Tank is home to 2 corys, 3 har rasporas, 8 silvertip tetras, 1 angel fish, 2 zebra snails, hoards of Malaysian trumpet snails. some amano shrimp. 5 amazon swords, 2 sq ft of java moss, 7 or so cabombas, some unidentified crypt looking plant, another plant I thought was money wort, 1 anubius, and about 5 sq inches of micro sword. Also, duckweed.

Everything is covered by some kind of algae, I also have some bba, I had soft stuff that grew on the glass, and now have hard stuff that grows on the glass.

it's a nightmare. It's just laughing at me. It's gone on long enough. What am I missing? Should I do a blackout? never done one.

The only thing that seems to have slowed it was a few months ago when I had a red cathode bulb running 24/7. the algae seemed to turn brown with no ill effects on the plants. I turned it off because it was annoying. I pulled some of the algae out and did some tests with nutrients. Lights, bags, damp paper towels, and ferts. all the test subjects did fine, even the one in the excel bag, but the only one that didn't do well was in the potassium bag.

Everything's on timers. I'm feeding the fish spectrum community food once or twice daily for 30 seconds each time.

WTF HELP!!! S.O.S.......

Old pics:


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

OMG!!! worse case i ever seen..so green and healthy though! dang, prettier than my BBA lol


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## neilshieh (Jun 24, 2010)

i recall having that algae before... from what i remember it's almost like strands of cotton right? i forgot the name... i think it was hair algae or something i'll go find out (pm me) 
from my experience manually taking out was the only way. 
i would have said don't get it infused with another plant but...
have you considered mollies?
but yeah, from the pictures they look like the algae i had. (well it didn't grow in my tank... some guy gave it to me along with cherry shrimps)
here'd be my description: like cotton strands, pearls like a regular plant, is just a floating mass, "twirls" very easily


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## rpmsongs (Aug 22, 2010)

I'll post a vid tomorrow. It grows in stalks to the top of the tank. right in front of power head, it's fearless.


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## rpmsongs (Aug 22, 2010)

these pics are old, actually 4 months old, but I have pictures of this going all the way back to october.


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## ValorG (Dec 23, 2007)

I manually took this stuff out, and OD'd on flourish excel. My black beard algae comes back but not this stuff. Got eradicated


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## HolyAngel (Nov 3, 2010)

I would raise your lighting and/or check your co2. Or dont have any bulb overlap. That drop checker should be limegreen-yellow. Too much light and not enough co2 is what gave this algae a place in my tank originally. Raised the co2 and switched down to 2 bulbs from 4 and bam! I've never seen that algae in my tank again


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## Glaucus (Oct 11, 2009)

rpmsongs said:


> I'm still no closer to positively Identifying or eradicating my beautifully pearling, extremely resilient algae pictured below.


I'd say that what you are growing (very well) is spirogyra algae. This algae has strong threads, grows in a clump, but unlike cladophora doesn't have branches. It can grow to great lengths.

Now spirogyra grows in areas that are rich in nutrients just like your tank is. When the temperature is warm enough and there is enough light, spirogyra produces lots of oxygen hence the pearling.

The type of plants you grow, hardly need the amount of fertiliser that you provide, the pictures you posted show mostly slow growers moss, java fern, echinodorus. I'd advise you to try out PPS PRO and start using a leaner fertilisation scheme. Ditch the backwall containing the moss and do not introduce it back into the tank until you got the massive algae outburst under control. Its easier to keep the aquarium glass free of algae than a moss mesh background. Introduce some fast growers (other than algae species). Put in some floating plants too. After this report back to Glaucus.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

i had some of this stuff about as bad as yours and i removed almost all of it with a tooth brush and upped my co2 and it was gone in a week. oh and i did two waterchanges every week 60%


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## rpmsongs (Aug 22, 2010)

All great and snide free advice. Thank you. I will try raising the co2 next week. I've been removing it manually for months, keeps growing back within a week. So! I've been thinking of taking the moss wall out. I imagine it would be fine if I just watered it with a spray gun once a day for a while. yeah? I'm not even that attached to keeping it, though it is a large amount of moss which could come in handy on the next tank. So, the tests I did a few months ago where I put them in bags with different nutrients, water, and a paper towel and placed the bags under an 18 watt lamp for 10 hours per day. The one that died first was potassium. The one that's still alive is phosphorus. Funny huh. I even had one bag with a 30 gallon dose of excel and it wasn't the first one to die. I knew the samples were dead when they turned brown. After the first sample died I removed the light. It did feel like an 8th grade science experiment. 

Video still to come...


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## mike dunagan (Mar 11, 2011)

yikes looks like a challenge.


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## soonerpuffer (Aug 4, 2004)

I have gone throught the similar algae outbreak. The best solution is take as much algae out, increase your co2 , reduce the hour of light, put more fast growing plants, more water change. It should clear up in a week or two.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

This is also known as hair algae. The well documented cure for it is adding more potassium nitrate. Sounds a bit counter intuitive but more nitrates in the water trigger it to die.

After adding nitrates up to about 25 ppm and keeping it there you'll notice the algae start to go brown/gray and go soft about a week later, and then you'll probably need about another week for the algae to detach from the plants. Manual removal will help.

I've never used liquid ferts as my supplement for nitrates, I use the dry chemical KNO3, but I suppose its the same thing.


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