# some anti algae advice needed



## vlada (Jun 21, 2004)

Hi,

fourteen days ago I have accepted the fact that my aquarium (something over 400 litres) is horrible (due to algae problems - there was a lot of hair alagae and the green algae you can see on the picture) - so I have started to read this forum to receive some advice (and was great source of information) and started to fix the issues. I wish I was more lazy that time ....


I have purchased pressurized bottle of CO2,
added two 58W fluorescent tubes, so there is now 4 x 58W cool white tubes.

Last week I I have bought more plants (so there is no place to put any more)

Next day (after the plants were added) fish started to swim like crazy - the movement was not coordinated - some have been trying to swim through the gravell etc. I have put them in a small tank into fresh water however it was too late for most of them. 13 died (It was xiphophorus helleri- I think that the english world for them is 'catfish'). Hopefully I don't see that as a major problem - they were ****ting everywhere... 

I have meassured NO3 concentration and it was 25mg/liter (and that is true till now). Does anyone have an idea why this happened ? Is it because of No2/NH4 poisonining ? Is it possible that I have brought the poision together with the plants ? (These were purchased directly from a farm for aquarium plants)
This never happened to me before - I have been changing 20% of the water every week and there was reasonable ammount of plants I believe.

Ok, A little frustrated I have bought an external canister filter, hoping it will help. And yes, since then it was good. For a week.

I have left the city to enjoy this weekend. However when I returned yesterday to the flat there was something in the air (strange smell  The aquarium looked like Coca Cola and company - the valve of the CO2 bottle does not guarantee constant pressure output (building a Co2 system here in Czech republic would be a great story itself) - the temperature changed - and the result was that aquarium water seemed to be boiling. Ph 5.6 speaks for itself. I have never before measured below 7.2.

I hope that I will find some place to buy the valve with constant preasure output soon.

The bad was that the rest of the fish died. The good think is that hair algae does not like it either, It is dying now. It changed it's structure - it is not that strong as before - feels more like cyanobacteria when you try to remove it. 


There is still a problem with another type of algae - it is attacking plant leaves which does not make me very happy.. ( See the picture) It is still spreading. What kind of algae it is ? What would you recomend me to get rid of it ? I have bought some chemical called "Algo stop depot" in the local pet store, but I am afraid to use since there is no description what is inside. (Do you have any ideas ? Does it harm plants either ?)

I am dosing PMMDD except KNO3 every day (I have 25mg/l of NO3 now). Thanks for any hint,

Vlada


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