# What did you have for breakfast...pea green soup



## nonamethefish (Feb 25, 2004)

The ten gallon heterandria formosa tank looks like a daphnia culture tank right now. The fish dissapear within 6 inches from the glass(much to there delight). I think that adding the water chestnuts did that. Right now Im doing water changes, but it just comes back.

The tank is at about 1.5 wpg(T12 lights).

Is that all I can do, or have you guys tried anything else?


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## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Green water blooms are the result of excess nutrients caused by a change to the stability of the tank. Water changes help but slowly. There are various things you can do: black out the tank for two days, diatom/micron filtration, add daphnia, UV.

Hang in there, it will go away.


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## nonamethefish (Feb 25, 2004)

Daphnia sounds interesting. Does anyone have any methods? This tank has only a sponge filter on it, so daphnia couldn't be added into a filter compartment.


On a side note, my hets LOVE daphnia. So any that esapes would quickly be eaten.


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## guppy (Mar 7, 2004)

the best way to get rid of green water is the diatomic filter but it cost a bit for one of those water polishers... or water changes but it takes a while so hang in there


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## nonamethefish (Feb 25, 2004)

No diatom filters available. i'll have to tough it out.


The elodea is still growing thick and the hets are indifferent to water color.


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## ShaneSmith (Feb 15, 2004)

Are you just going to wait for it to go away or blackout? Tell me if waiting works. I am having the same problem in my tank and tried to black it out before without success. I think doing the waterchange is key after the blackout, That is the only way i've gotten it to work in the past.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

You can wait for ever for green water to clear up on its own. I have gotten rid of it by clearing out all the fish and introducing Daphnia. After they clear the water, I do not immediately add back the fish, but wait until the plants have become more dense. Then the fish can be added, and the GW does not usually come back. 

I have also experimented with a Daphnia "cage" that sits in the fish tank and prevents the fish from getting at the Daphnia or the Daphnia from getting out and being eaten. It works, but you have to be careful of the material the cage is made of or you might poison your plants. A good material is monofilament polyester with mesh size of 0.2 to 0.5 mm. Avoid woven nylon thread material.


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## ShaneSmith (Feb 15, 2004)

WHat is black pool screen made of?


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## nonamethefish (Feb 25, 2004)

It seems like its clearer. I think I can see the lava rock in the back now. 

Wouldn't suspending a fishnet in the water work too? The adults prolly couldn't swim through the mesh.


Well, at least I can use water change water to feed my daphnia culture!


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## nonamethefish (Feb 25, 2004)

I tried a 6 day blackout. When I turned on the light, the water was crystal clear.


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## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

you can use those cheap water cartiages from Home Depot etc and add a 5 micron filter cartiage and run your filter or a powerhead through that.
Also, those Hagen quick filters are good and do pretty close to same thing for even cheaper. 
Main thing is to kill/remove what's there. Once inoculated, it will hang on for dear life, so you need to remove or kill it. Blackouts work on mild cases.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## discusaigon (Mar 10, 2004)

do we have a precise idea on what is the cause of green water?

It is often said that green water comes when there is to much nutrients in the water but do we know exactly wath kind of nutrients are involved?

to much NO3?PO4? Fe?, ... ?

on this page on the krib :

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/green-water.html

someone says that he was able to remove green water by adding KNO3 and K2SO4 :



> Green Water
> by "M. Pearlscott" <pearlsco/u.washington.edu>
> Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997
> I've written a bit about green water in the past few months, but seeing
> ...


What do you think about this methode?


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

I run excess PO4 (1-3ppm...tank dependent) and NEVER had had a green water issue because of it.

I DID have green water twice, but it was always after stirring up the substrate a substantial amount. THis ends up kicking a bunch of ammonia into the water column and this I believe is what is the source of GW evil.


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## discusaigon (Mar 10, 2004)

ok so a pic of NH4 would be the culprit.

You said you already had GW after stirring up the substrate.

How did you clean it?

Did you use hard methods as UV or nolight or big water change?
Or did you clean it by using an apropriate fertilising method?


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## cS (Jan 27, 2004)

So I am el cheapo, so no UV or diatom filter for me but the following has worked for me:

The first time I had green water, a 3 day complete black-out solved that problem. The second time I had it, the black-out did not work. I therefore lowered lighting and performed a 90% water change every other day for 6 days (3 90% water changes total w/ filter media cleaning) about an hour prior to light's out. That worked better than I expected: no leggy plants from the black-out and my altum angels laid eggs (no viable young though, but the fact that they laid eggs was jaw-dropping enough). I have not had a chance to test this method again because I have not had a GW bloom since then.

Thomas Barr (plantbrain) claims NH4 as the trigger for GW under high light. GW serves as a warning sign that plants are not removing NH4 from the water column fast enough. That means (1) you have a high bio-load, (2) your plants are in poor health, and/or (3) NH4 is leaching from somewhere (dead fish, NH4-rich fertilizer sticks leaching, etc.); so examine your plants/fish setup to prevent future GW blooms.


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

4 day black out was temp fix. 
fixing nutrients didn't seem to work (re-appeared)
coagulants didn't work
several massive water changes didn't work


..bought a UV and it worked like a charm 

I only used it when the problem was there. it is in the closet now.


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## discusaigon (Mar 10, 2004)

> Thomas Barr (plantbrain) claims NH4 as the trigger for GW under high light. GW serves as a warning sign that plants are not removing NH4 from the water column fast enough. That means
> 
> (1) you have a high bio-load,
> (2) your plants are in poor health, and/or
> ...





> I run excess PO4 (1-3ppm...tank dependent) and NEVER had had a green water issue because of it.


If PO4 is missing, is it possible that plants are not able to eat NH4?

( I'm having about 0 ppm of phosphate since few days and GW starts to apear... :? )


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## cS (Jan 27, 2004)

I think there's more to your situation than a simple lack of PO4 for a few days. Gomer's PO4 comment was, I think, meant to dispell the notion that "high" PO4 causes GW. But without knowing much more about your setup and fish load, I can't garner a guess as to what exactly caused your GW.

IME, the two times I had green water were soon after I dosed some Algae-Killing product, which along with killing the algae, also obliterated all snails, and _harmed the plants_. Death of snails contributed burst of NH4, and with the plants in shock & my high light, it was no surprise that I had GW. Now that I know better, I focus on making plants healthy and not worry about algae. By some unknown mechanism, healthy plants = no algae (well, most algae anyway).


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## discusaigon (Mar 10, 2004)

That's right, I didn't say enough about my tank.

So, three weeks ago, I have seen my bee shrimp carrying eggs so I did want to put out all the fish I had (about 10 guppies) in order to have baby shrimps.
Here the probleme started.
As I didn't gave food to the tank for a week, all of my plant stopted to grow and cyanobacteria began to apear.

So I did test NO3 and PO4. I was at 1ppm PO4 and 0ppm for NO3.

From that, I began to add KNO3 daily, cyanobacteria disapeared.
the same week, I cleaned the filter (may be the cause for a NH4 pic and for the GW...?)
At the end of the week, I did test again the water, and I was at 0ppm PO4.

Now I 'm still running with 0ppmPO4, still adding KNO3, (and Iron and trace daily I forgot to tell you).
I didn't had the time to do anything for the GW since last WeekEnd when GW began.
It is cleaning itself now.
I can suppose why it did apear. but I have no idea why it is desapearing this time without doing anything. :?

For all that time, my plant continued to produce bubles.

Now that I have only shrimp in that tank, I give less food than before so I begin to have interest about PO4 suplementation, I'm just begining to read the topic on phosphate ( http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=505 )and it is very very interesting!!!! thanks a lot for all thoses informations


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