# Cladophora/ BGA takeover



## black_lung (Dec 19, 2006)

My 10 gallon is under siege. For the past month I've been somewhat neglectful with weekly water changes (went from once a week to once every 2 weeks) as well as fertilizing (went from once a day to once every 3 days) and to top it off, right before I became neglectful at the beginning of the month I decieded to uproot half the amount of sagittaria in the tank, thus releasing a years worth of mulm into the water column. So anyway, now that I've gotten used to my new work schedule and am back on track with the tank maintence, I'm ready to do something about this mess. Cladophora is EVERYWHERE..I pulled out 5" strings of it last night. It is literally entangled in 90% of my plants, but it's especially bad in the dwarf sag and glosso. The glosso and rotala are getting so choked by it, they're starting to die. I also noticed some bits of blue slime algae growing in my moss last night, I suspect this is from the stagnant water that resulted from my allowing the moss and sag to grow into a monster mass of foliage and plastic mesh..since I removed some plants last night and stirred the water up more, it's spread. Noticeably.

What's the best way for me to go about getting this back to normal? I was thinking about trying the Excel method for the cladophora- will this have any effect on the BGA? My nitrates are at 0 right now because I've forgot to dose. Will getting that back up also help with the cyno? I'm really not good at dealing with algae..usually I have none, so when it shows up it literally eats my tank alive.

Specs are: 10 gallon, lit by 40 watt pc bulb 10 hours/day, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 0, ph 7.0, phosphate .25, no external co2, stocked with 6 threadfin rainbows, canister filter, running about 9 months.


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

With a ten gallon tank I would tear it down, kill off all of the algae, discard plants I couldn't kill the algae on, then restart the tank, probably with fresh substrate too. Then I would make sure to keep the plants growing and healthy so algae would be unlikely to restart. You can use 1 in 20 bleach to water solution to dip the hardy plants and kill off algae, as long as it isn't so extensive that the plant can't recover. Or, you can use hydrogen peroxide, or even Excel to kill off the algae.


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## meredymae (Jan 5, 2007)

Yea, I had some clado in a newt tank once and nothing would kill it. I was even careful not to mix fish nets with other tanks. It's a demon. I would ditch all the substrate and any hardscape that it has attached to and get rid of all old growth plants. Just keep the new growth that is still healthy and try to start over. 

Biggest thing with clado IMO is just being careful not to infect the tank--I don't put anything in my tanks that has any amount of strings on it.


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## black_lung (Dec 19, 2006)

:sigh:
I really didn't want to have to replace everything and put my fish through the stress of a potential cycle crash. But, I guess I get to do my yearly re-scape early after all


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

Save some filter mulm and add it under the substrate of the new tank. And, if you don't clean the filter before using it on the new set up that will also help jump start the cycling. Then use lots of plants from the beginning and there should be no cycling problem at all.


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## skewlboy (Jun 9, 2006)

so double dosing excel won't kill it?


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

Excel works great for treating minor algae infestations. It also works great as the last step when you do a major clean up of algae. But, I have seen nothing to suggest that using Excel alone will allow a tank with a massive algae infestation of several species of algae to recover and become a healthy tank. Sometimes hard physical labor is the best solution to a problem.


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## skewlboy (Jun 9, 2006)

toothbrush to remove the clado tumbleweeds and thought i had it all. Got rid of my marimo balls (possibly the source?). Think it will be enough?


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