# Help identify algae PIX.



## shoteh

Any ideas on what this is? It's been coming back again and again. Any ideas what I could do? This seems to make my tank dirty, there's also brown dusts all over my plants as well. Not sure what it is. It's in a 7 gal with PBall co2 and 2x18watt dual satellite with weekly ferts and water changes.


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## joycould

The first thing I would do is get the plant out of the pot that it came in. I find that when I don't get all of that fiber from the roots the tank seems to develop algae.


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## shoteh

Thanks joycould, that could possibly be a reason why there's algae, but I have seen other tanks without the pot so I dont think it's that. But I will be taking the pot out though to maybe eliminate another factor. Any other ideas anyone?


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## shoteh

Ok so I have done a few water changes and still it keeps coming up. 

Here are a few things I have tried without luck:

-Cut my light (actinic) out so I only have the 18watts left. 
-Introduced rosy's, mollies, amano's, and oto's and none of them will eat it though the amano's do seem to be around it often (it seems as they don't eat it) 
-Water Changes every three days and manually taking as much as I can out of my HC
-Up'd my potassium
-Up'd my co2 to 70ppm
-And I'm in the middle of a 3 day's blackout. 

I'm so frustrated! I'm about to leave planted tanks. I'm loosing patience and money trying so many things, my wife is getting really mad at me.  Please help anyone with any other ideas?


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## hoppycalif

shoteh said:


> Ok so I have done a few water changes and still it keeps coming up.
> 
> Here are a few things I have tried without luck:
> 
> -Up'd my co2 to 70ppm
> 
> Please help anyone with any other ideas?


I see one possible problem. When people say they have 70 ppm of CO2 in their tank I immediately assume they are measuring tank water pH and KH and using the tables to determine their CO2. That just doesn't work accurately, and almost always gives you a much higher number than the actual ppm of CO2 in the water. If this is how you are measuring it, you may only have 5 ppm of CO2. Just get a drop checker and use 4 dKH distilled or deionized water in it and you can verify how much CO2 you actually have. If you are very low on CO2 you will be very likely to run into algae problems of all kinds.


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## shoteh

Thanks hoppy, I understand what you're saying, I actually do have a drop checker and It is yellow (turned my co2 up from green). I just said 70ppm just because someone saw my ph and kh like you said and said that it was up there to around that number.


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## Missy B

I had the same problem over and over again. I increased my CO2 and got on a consistent fertilizing schedule, and it hasn't been a problem since.


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## hoppycalif

The other half of the CO2 concentration problem is water circulation. The plants consume the CO2 in the water, so without good circulation the water around each plant will be short of CO2. In addition it is possible that the water flow across a leaf makes the CO2 more accessible to the leaf, by reducing the slow moving boundary layer next to the leaf. So, you could try using a small powerhead in the tank aimed to supplement the water circulation around the tank.


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## shoteh

Thanks for the advice guys. Since my tank is only a 7gallon, my aquaclear 20 basically is strong enough to move all my plant in my tank so the current should be strong enough. Taking the stuff out manually is so hard. I'm gonna try to get as much out then again up co2 and ferts again. I dunno? (sigh)


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## shoteh

Ok so I don’t want to claim victory just yet but this is what I concluded to after 5 long weeks of battling this P.O.C. algae.

I don't know what caused this algae but for me the time frame of when this algae erupted was when my co2 tank ran out and I neglected to get it refill due to being too busy until three days after; while still maintaining regular light schedules. (Warning, if your co2 runs out, leave your lights off until you can get everything back on schedule, if not many things could go wrong). Anyway after hell broke loose, also known as rhizoclonium, it would not leave my tank no matter what I tried(you can see my list of what I tried above) Anyway I had a few ideas left before I was gonna throw my tank out and fortunately my tank cleared up for almost a week now with no more algae in sight. 

This is a little experiment I did to get there.

I took some baby tears and java fern that was full of the algae out and put them into a 2.5 gallon tank with the same water, temp, and a constant filter moving water. I wanted to test to see if anything would eat this so I added each kind of fish for three days in a row to see if things cleared up or not. Ie added one type of fish without food for three days, then took them out and tried the same with the next type of fish, etc. The tenants I used were: three black mollies, three guppies, three rosy barbs, three ottos, and 3 amano shrimps. Only two of the five showed any kind of interest in the algae. The guppies picked at the algae but it wasn't apparent if they ate anything. The amanos cleaned most of the Java Fern free by the last day. I continued to leave them in there and by 6 days, all the algae was gone. 

Now you could say that maybe I didn’t leave the other tenants long enough to see a change, but I didn’t want to waste anytime plus I noticed that none showed any interest in the algae other than the two I mentioned. So although I cannot guarantee anything, I can say that with my experiences with this algae, that if you don't feed the amanos anything, they will resort to eating this algae. Now you must also consider that this was only in a 2.5 gallon tank.

After knowing that the Amanos will eat this I decided to try it in the 7 gallon but decided to add 5 more amanos. Before I added them I spot cleaned using H2o2 3ml per gallon on the gravel and the plants that were the most infected (Twice)(meaning I did it, then did a water change after 30 minutes, then did it again the next day) Then I manually took out the biggest amount of algae I could and maintained regular dosing, co2, and lighting. I am typing this on my 6th day after and there are no more algae. I even fed my amanos today and will be adding the rest of my tenants (5 embers) in a few days.

According to my experiences, neglecting my co2 was how it was caused, though just upping my co2 and maintaining regular schedule was not enough. I had to kill them with h2o2 and then keep the few down with amanos and then maintain my regular schedule before it cleared up. Of course it’s still only a week later so I don’t know if I’ve beat it so my fingers are still crossed.


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## shoteh

Updated pix. No algae for about 4 weeks now!!!


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## star rider

I read this thread with quite a bit of interest.

I have begun battling this same algae? for about 2-3 weeks now. what I find interesting is the fact that you let your CO2 run out..which coincidentally happened to me.. I allowed my planted tank to run for about a week sans the co2..it was after I added the co2 back that this algae appeared..the tank has been runnig about 2 years with no real algae issues until now.

I cannot place amano shrimp in this tank however,, as it houses Dicus and angels...I will however up the CO2 a bit and manually clean the tank. and see what happens.


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## Varig8

Try overdosing Seachem Flourish Excel (I do 5x recommended dose) In my experience it will kill off any unwanted algae within a week- it may take a 2nd OD after 3 or 4 days for really thick patches-and you will usually see the algae either turning a bright red and then dying, or turn translucent white and then disintegrate. I keep a ton of plants & mosses, lots of rare hard-to-find expensive ones, as well as the majority of common ones. The ONLY 2 plants that I have seen the Excel have negative effects on are Susswassertang & Monoselenium Tererum- it will literally melt them away along with the algae!


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