# Algae in my el natural



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

Hi,
I have various types of algae now growing in my el natural tank and it's getting thicker on the plants now. I believe this was sparked due to increased organics/ammonia levels from rapidly stocking the tank. I have reduced the stocking levels now and added an oto to help out, what else should I do? In a "normal" tank I would do water changes and gravel vacs, and dose nutrients. But I don't want to throw things out of whack and get on a treadmill of water changes. Any ideas? What's the consensus on el natural tanks and algae?


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## Homer_Simpson (Apr 2, 2007)

Carissa1 said:


> Hi,
> I have various types of algae now growing in my el natural tank and it's getting thicker on the plants now. I believe this was sparked due to increased organics/ammonia levels from rapidly stocking the tank. I have reduced the stocking levels now and added an oto to help out, what else should I do? In a "normal" tank I would do water changes and gravel vacs, and dose nutrients. But I don't want to throw things out of whack and get on a treadmill of water changes. Any ideas? What's the consensus on el natural tanks and algae?


Somebody more qualified can probably best answer this. EL Naturalism is still virgin territory for me and I am still learning. For what its worth, my experience with otos has been that they only consumed diatom algae. The Siamese Algae Eater is one of the few algae eaters next to the Nerite Zebra snail known to devour all types of algae, but the SAE grows quite large so you need to have a fairly large tank and the Zebra Nerite will litter your aquarium with never ending eggs resembling salt crytals that will never hatch. You said you reduced stocking levels, so I am assuming you have no room to add amano shrimp or cherry shrimp to your tank and it make be a risk if your ammonia levels are high as these shrimp tend to be highly sensitive to water quality. Normally, shrimp are not known to add too much to the bioload and can be rather efficient consumers of algae and dead plant material. Most people can safely populate their tanks using the 1/4" per gallon rule for shrimp vs 1" per gallon rule for fish. What specific types of algae do you have? What are your tank parameters with respect to lighting, photoperiod, size? I would probably try and manually remove as much as possible. Increase the number of floating plants and if stocking levels allow a couple of amano or cherry shrimp to help clean up the algae. Increasing floating plants may give the plants the edge in outcompeting the algae and the algae may begin to recede. Also the floating plants should help to quickly neutralize ammonia levels and help prevent future ammonia spikes.

If the above does not work you could reduce photoperiod or go to split photoperiod with your lighting until things get balanced again.


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## LuckyLucy (Oct 20, 2007)

Carissa1 said:


> Hi,
> I have various types of algae now growing in my el natural tank and it's getting thicker on the plants now. I believe this was sparked due to increased organics/ammonia levels from rapidly stocking the tank. I have reduced the stocking levels now and added an oto to help out, what else should I do? In a "normal" tank I would do water changes and gravel vacs, and dose nutrients. But I don't want to throw things out of whack and get on a treadmill of water changes. Any ideas? What's the consensus on el natural tanks and algae?


If there are any inhabitants, do water changes until the ammonia is under control. I wouldn't worry about throwing anything out of whack at a time like this. How high is your ammonia? Is sunlight hitting the soil in the substrate? You might want to tape it up along the bottom if exposed to sunlight. It could be reducing iron. Get some floating plants if you don't already have them. If you don't have window light, floating plants will cut some of the light out and absorb some of the organics/amonia from your tank.

What are the specs of your tank? Lighting, stocking, size, filtration/current?

Lucy


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## LuckyLucy (Oct 20, 2007)

Nerite Snails and Cherry Shrimp are very good at cleaning up algae. Once your ammonia is under control, you can stock about 4 cherry shrimp per gallon as their bioload is fairly light. Nerite snails won't reproduce in a standard freshwater tank, nor will amano shrimp. Other inverts should, however. 

Lucy


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

I agree that you should do water changes to help to control the algae. They won't hurt anything.

If algae clinging to plant leaves you should remove those leaves too. Otherwise, they will act as a refuge for algae. The leaves will probably die eventually anyway.

Good luck!

Bill


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## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

It's a 10g tank with 6 bettas and one oto (recent addition). Ammonia is only at trace levels. It gets 10 hours of light a day via one 23w cf. There are no floating plants, I haven't been able to locate any suitable ones (plants are hard to come by here). Also I have never seen shrimp or nerite snails available here either. There were some trumpet(?) snails I saw the other day, are these any good? Will they eat my plants? The tank gets virtually no sunlight, only a small amount of indirect when I remember to open the blind.

The plants are doing extremely well lately, it was a slow start but they are really filling out. It's just that the algae is a problem. I just did a large water change last week because I was having a problem with ich and wanted to try to get a fresh start. The ich hasn't returned so I think we are good in that department.

The affected leaves are mainly right beneath the light. I positioned the light further from the water to try to reduce the intensity in that area.

It's not a matter of the plants dying or needing to outcompete, leading to algae, the plants are doing spectacularly. But whatever the plants like, the algae appears to like too. It was after I added the bettas that algae started taking off, so I think it was the ammonia spike that started this problem (very small, but still a spike as far as algae are concerned). Maybe I'll try manual removal, adding another oto, and reducing lighting to 8 hours/day for a while and see if that cleans it up.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

If you can identify what the algae is, we might be able to diagnose.


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## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

Hm. Green dust, bga (very small amounts in brightest light), some beard algae, some hair algae....anything I've left out? Some really dark stuff that comes off in sheets. Maybe bga again. The bga and green dust are what are causing the biggest problem. Surprisingly, there's just a smattering of gda on the glass, but some leaves are covered to the point where I can practically peel it off especially closer to the light. Then again other leaves are crystal clear. Older leaves are faring the worst.

Oh, something else I forgot to mention. Some of the leaves on some hygro plants look like they have clear spots. That's the only way I can describe it. I do have pond snails, maybe they're eating them? Or could it be a deficiency?


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

How old is your tanks? It sounds like there's complete nutrient deficiency.
Lowering your photoperiod down drasticaly (4-6 hours) might help and dose some ferts but first physically removing the algae and do a 4 day blackout, no light at all.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

dose ferts in a NPT? 
I wouldn't.
The plants should be getting what they need from the soil.
Adding ferts to the water column feeds the algae.

Fast growing floating plants are what I'd recommend. I really like najas grass if you can find it. hornwort or anacharis. duckweed, water lettuce, frogbit, salvenia.


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## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

The tank has only been up for two months. The algae all really started when I added fish so that's why I'm linking the algae problem to the ammonia spike and not to a deficiency. If anything, there should have been more nutrients available when I added fish, not less.

The one oto I added had an extremely full belly the next day so I added a second one. Hopefully between that and the reduced photoperiod it will be ok. I also vacuumed quite a bit of debris from the substrate that was probably adding to the issue. It's not totally overtaken, like I said the plants are really doing well finally.

If things don't improve I may have no choice but switch to a weekly water change/dose ferts regimen for a while. I'm quite sure that would solve the problem but would rather not go that route if I don't have to.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

DataGuru said:


> dose ferts in a NPT?
> I wouldn't.
> The plants should be getting what they need from the soil.
> Adding ferts to the water column feeds the algae.
> ...


yeah, I dose a little potassium, Mg, Ca whenever I feel the need. It helps the plants and it doesn't seem to increase algae. (My tank has been up for a year now)

Carissa1 seems to be on it with the ammonia.. You might want to get an ammonia test kit.. It's not that accurate but it's good enough. If you were to get a test kit, that's the one to get. Fast plants like DataGuru mentioned is a must too. You might want to introduce CO2 or excel


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## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

I have an entire battery of kits. 

Can't get excel....co2 would probably be a bad idea because the plants will then adjust to it...then if I remove it or it becomes unstable the algae will return with a vengeance.


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