# greenwater awwww poo



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

well i have tested for ammonia and nitrate with my red sea kit and i got zilch.
i know Velvet Guard works on GW (ooodinum) but i have no where to put my shrimps and snails, and no one seems to know if it's safe to use with them. the bottle doesnt say. i run EI, and a bit over 30 ppm co2. lights run 12 hours

all this time and never have i had gw. i said something about not having it and now i do... ](*,) ](*,) 

i'd use willow, but i cant figure out what is or isnt willow haha

someone below said blackouts dont work longterm. i can only imagine the tiny bit of light reaching the plants below, that i just got too.. grrr


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## chiahead (Dec 18, 2004)

try running a diatom filter. Clears it up really fast. I just recently started using this method an I love it. I run some Diatom powder through my HOT magnum and within a few hours its crystal clear.


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

i would but i dont have the money for one and my lfs doesnt rent one. doing anything that requires lfs interation is impossible for me. they dont take plants, not even free. my wife bought a fish that ate everyone, she didnt do her research and they dont trade back they take them back... for free. they are not hobby friendly as it were.

ian


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## chiahead (Dec 18, 2004)

you can buy a HOT magnum from alot of places online for about $40 or so.

http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=22139;category_id=2981

there handy cause you can pull it off easy and swap between tanks if need be.


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

yeah that might be a good idea. i wish i could put the diatom powder in my fluval. in the meantime, to get light back up i'm gonna try one or two days darkness


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

I don't know the dosing schedule you have but my first comment would be that 12 hours of that much light may be hitting the upper limit of light period length.

Try reducing it to 10 or 11 hours and see what the result is.

A diatom filter may get rid of what is currently floating in your tank water but will not fix the cause...


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## freshreef (May 14, 2004)

i fight g/w in my nano tank with out nothing but petience (i had diatom filter n uv - but did not have a place in the tank for them  )- make sure your parameters are good and make a lot of w/c and cut the lights to 5-6 hours a day - in about 14-20 days all gone and never came back


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

today this morning i went to ten hour days of light. does algae produce oxygen like plants, and does it use oxygen in the dark like higher order plants?

i suppose i should turn the co2 off while blacking out shouldnt i?


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## shalu (Oct 1, 2004)

urville said:


> does algae produce oxygen like plants, and does it use oxygen in the dark like higher order plants?


Sometimes in an algae infested tank, you see a lot more pearling from algae than from plants


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

well crap.... i just hope my plants and fish survive the blackout and that theres enough oxygen


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

This is what i have been dosing on this 29 per the fertilators results

1/4 t. KNO3
1/8 of a ml of Fleet
1/2 t. of the CSM+B not sure if it meant dry or mixed solution

friday night i do a 50% water change and i dose the fleet and kno3 
saturday i dose traces
sunday nothing
on monday i dose the fleet and kno3
tuesday the traces
nothing on wednesday 
nothing on thursday
back to friday
i change the co2 weekly

in the ten gallon culture tank i dose much higher, and i dose the potassium using mortons salt substitute. i have no problems in this tank.
i dont dose the potassium in the 29, i'm told the salt substitute which is like No Salt it's potass chloride, is bad for the fish. but i get a bit from the kno3

what do you guys think is it obvious to everyne but me?


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## david lim (Mar 30, 2004)

For blackouts I normally do a big w/c, cover the tank with a blanket, and add h2o2 for 3-4 days. but it seems your apprehensive with the blackout. When I was out of town awhile ago my mother was caring for the tank and gw started to occur. Since she was only topping off, I told her to go ahead and just add h2o2 with the regular light schedule. The gw disappeared. 

I would suggest to stop dosing the tank until the gw disappears and just rely on big w/c maybe 3x a week. During this period I would do what morb suggested with lighting in conjuction with adding h2o2. If this doesn't work then I don't know what would.

You must keep in mind that most algaes are opportunistic organisms and when you add all of the nutrients at one time during the week you're giving them an opportunity to grow. To reach a more stable tank situation you need ot have a more stable dosing regimen of smaller daily doses. Just food for thought ..


David


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

hydrogen peroxide? it wont hurt anyone? had to ask this.
in what dosage? 

i can change the timer to a 5 or six hour period. i only use like a 40 or 60 watt lamp in the room itself and it's all the way across the room. and i could remove 20 watts till the GW goes.

you know i totally wanted to does macros and traces every other day, but i could never figure out how to break those dosages down that small.


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## david lim (Mar 30, 2004)

If you're running large water changes 3x a week then I wouldn't worry about the peroxide. For a 29g I would add ~1 capful after every w/c. 

Keep the lights but just make it 5-6 hours.

Is t. for tspn? or tblspn?

David


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

david lim said:


> If you're running large water changes 3x a week then I wouldn't worry about the peroxide. For a 29g I would add ~1 capful after every w/c.
> 
> Keep the lights but just make it 5-6 hours.
> 
> ...


i have two different peroxide cntainers with different size caps. say 4 or 5 ml?
t is teaspoon
T is table spoon
heheh i cook too


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## david lim (Mar 30, 2004)

yep then that's a little bit of KNO3. How often are you feeding and how much are you feeding fish? 

4 ml sounds dandy. 

david


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

i feed the fish once a day. i use small pinches i feed a little watch them eat it, a little more, and thats it. never hits the ground. but i have close to a full bioload. close, but not full. oh and i feed on shrimp pellet to my shrimps, why they like eating the,selves is beyond me, but they rarely get much as my fish all go down and hog the food and then pick around till its gone.. i'd say my fish are kept, kinda hungry. not mean hungry, just enough that i definitly never have problems with anyone being finicky. 

thanks again for the help!!

i get how i can take the kno3 powder and seperate it into days, but what about the fleet. a drop a day? should i be dosing more potass. i'm at 4ppm only from the k in kno3?


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## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Urville,

Greenwater is a blessing in disguise. Plants still grow well in it and a number of other algae can't deal with it and go away. Unless you've got folks coming over to see your tank I would recommend letting it run it's natural course and fizzle out on its own. Dose your tank normally and do normal water changes. When the GW's gone you'll know your tank is in balance. 

Regards,
Phil


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

Phil Edwards said:


> Urville,
> 
> Greenwater is a blessing in disguise. Plants still grow well in it and a number of other algae can't deal with it and go away. Unless you've got folks coming over to see your tank I would recommend letting it run it's natural course and fizzle out on its own. Dose your tank normally and do normal water changes. When the GW's gone you'll know your tank is in balance.
> 
> ...


my red plants dont seem happy, plus that could take literally forever. the combination of possible variables is... overwhelming. plus wont it just keep eating once it's here. it takes just right variables to get it, but i thought once you have it like snails, if theres food then it will eat?

it's not that some is coming over, although i do have the first Aquarium Society meeting in a week and a half, the contest ends in december.


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## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

When you say your red plants aren't happy what do you mean? 

Because of the GW most other algae won't proliferate and you can feel more comfortable increasing the nutrients going into the tank. GW indicates a sudden spike in Ammonia from what I've found through experience and it shows up because your plants weren't in good enough health to deal with that spike. 

I most recently had a GW outbreak that started a week or so ago because I unknowingly ran out of CO2 on a super high light tank and the plants started dying. Prior to that the plants were showing signs of non-mobile nutrient deficiency so were already weakened when the CO2 ran out. All that dead plant matter released a lot of ammonia into the water and the undernourished plants couldn't deal with it. BAM, Green Water! 

I took the opportunity to get the CO2 back up into the needed levels and cranked up the fertilization. A week later I did a 50% water change so I could get a peek at the plants and remove as much dead mass as possible and found healthy new growth. After letting it sit and stew for another few days with increased fertilization I did another 50% WC. More healthy growth was seen and the GW hasn't come back. It's still a little hazy in there, but nothing like it was. Sticking with the increased supplimentation regimen and decreasing the photoperiod and intensity for a while has allowed the plants to start recovering has kept the GW from increasing again. 

In the past I've used both Diatom filters and the Time Method to get rid of GW episodes that have occurred after major upheavals in the aquarium, ie massive rescapes. Even though the plants are healthy they've been traumatized and take some time to get back up to snuff. In that time GW can pop up. It just takes some time for the plants to re-establish themselves and start getting the nutrient levels in the tank back in balance. As long as you continue to supplement the tank normally the plants will recover quickly and the GW won't last more than a couple weeks. If you don't supplement the tank well the plants will be weakened and the tank won't get into balance and the GW will linger. The same can be said about any alga, really.

If you've got folks coming over in a week and a half my recommendation would be to ramp up the CO2 and fertilizers for the next week to get things going in there. A couple days before the meeting do a 75% WC and run the DE filter. That should give you time to do another DE treatment before the meeting if necessary. The week with extra fertilization should give your plants a little boost.

Regards,
Phil


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

sicne the gw outbreak the reds they look a little... pale. like they arent getting enough light. 

i checked my ammonia, although it is a test, it said 0 nitrite too.
it was really weird. I mean I have a Bacopa thats growing so big so fast I cut it like every three days. and I still got an outbreak. no one died. in fact it happened immediatly after a water change. and unless my water drastically changed i dont see why that did it. and why didnt it cause the same thing in the other tank? the only thing i did different was to dose only the po4 and not kno3.
](*,) 

i totally cannot get a diatom filter right now. my hobby is definitley on a budget at the moment.

There should be an APC book. seriously, cause i was dosing EI, but then no one ever told me you could go as high as 50ppm or 100 ppm of nitrate and not kill anything but inverts. Some knowledge was progressed, but some was still archaic. I thought if i got to about 35 40 everything would die, that was popular info back in the day, heck the test kits still say danger at those levels, and caution at 20-30ppm. I mean i know you cant go that high overnight or anything, but still you get my meaning.


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## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

urville said:


> well crap.... i just hope my plants and fish survive the blackout and that theres enough oxygen


well it turns out that after one day things looked not good plants wise. so i abandoned this train of thought. i have no access to diatom anything nor uv.... h202 did nothing.

so i will now change 100% of my water and then port my output from my canister to a bucket once the tank is full this way
i can keep alot of bacteria and not cycle.

it's this or try this bottle of "Algae Destroyer Advanced" my friend lent me. it says safe for plants and fish.

i know what caused it, so now i just need to kill it.
so which do you think i should do? the others are just not options.


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## Dewmazz (Sep 6, 2005)

The title of your post attracted me to the thread. It was honestly one of the funniest titles that I've ever seen on the forum.  I'm really sorry to hear about all the grief that algae is giving you  . I hope you find a solution very soon and good luck.


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## Oleg (Jun 15, 2004)

urville said:


> ...i'd use willow, but i cant figure out what is or isnt willow haha...


http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=img&cs=utf8&q=willow+tree&rys=0&itag=crv&_sb_lang=pref

 Hope this helps


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