# Help with cladophora



## cholly (Jun 12, 2007)

I have a three month old 15 gallon tank that's got the beginnings of a cladophora infestation. No other algae, I don't even have to wipe my front glass. The cladophora started out in some hairgrass and I have to admit I must not have even noticed it for some time. It was only when tufts of it started appearing on my HC lawn that it caught my attention.

I have been physically removing as much of it as I can for a few weeks now, but that doesn't seem to be doing much good. Tank is running with pressurized CO2, about 1 bubble/second. It's also fertilized with the ADA line of liquid fertilizers. Lighting had been 96w of T5s for 9 hours a day; once I noticed the algae I cut that down to 48w of T5s for 8 hours a day.

I've been dosing with excel since day one, although only at the regular recommended dosage.

I've been doing as much research on cladophora as I could, and it seems the recommended courses of action are all hit and miss. Anyone care to make a suggestion on what I should try? Rosey barbs, who have apparently solved the problem for some, are probably not an option just because of what else I'm keeping... 3 threadfins, 6 pseudomogil gertrudae and a pair of aphyosemion australe, as well as a pair of otocinclus. But I'm pretty much willing to try whatever can be suggested.

Attached is a photo of the tank taken last weekend. As you can see, the cladophora isn't really visible. I'd really like to keep it that way


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## cs_gardener (Apr 28, 2006)

Are you using a syringe or pipette to dose the excel directly on the clado? Clado is quite tough, but after a few direct doses it starts dying back. That and diligent manual removal of the clado helped me get it under control. It wasn't a quick or easy process since I had to attack it with the excel section by section.


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## cholly (Jun 12, 2007)

As of last night, yes. I'd just begun trying overdosing excel via pipette, just started doing so. I used a 7.5 ml dose of excel and concentrated it on just two small patches of clado. Unplugged the filter beforehand so contact time would be increased, let it go 20 minutes before plugging it back in.

Too soon to see any results, of course. I figured I'll keep trying the 7.5 ml daily dose and see what happens. How many days did you have you dose a specific patch before you saw results, and if I may ask, what kind of dosage were you using?

If a couple of weeks go by and there's no improvement I'm planning to give H202 a shot.


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## cs_gardener (Apr 28, 2006)

I dosed about 1.5 times the normal amount of excel for the size of tank in one small area veeeerrrrry sloooowwwly so that it caused a high concentration in the area for as long as possible (and I did turn the filter off, too). It was 2 summers ago that I had the battle with it, but I think it took 2-4 doses to see the clado change color and then I'd move to the next patch. Once the clado changed colors the resident snails would start working on it, so that helped in cleanup. 

The tank I had the outbreak in is in front of a south-facing window, so I kept the blinds nearly closed to drop the light levels and that helped as well. Oh, the toughest clado to kill (requiring the most doses of excel) was the stuff right by the back glass and the window. I think that it started super-healthy because of the extra light and it was better established because I didn't see it initially. Clado mid-tank died off fairly easily, and there was no clado near the front of the tank.


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## Felf808 (Mar 21, 2006)

I only had major clado issues when there was too much detritus in the gravel which can be fixed with a gravel vac and increased flow in your tank with a larger filter or an extra powerhead.


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## cholly (Jun 12, 2007)

The tank is only three months old, has only had fish in it for two of those months, and has received weekly water changes all along. I really doubt there's much accumulated detritus, to be honest.

As far as flow, it's a 15 gallon tank with an eheim 2213. There isn't a single stem or blade of hairgrass that doesn't sway in the current. The tank already has something like 7X turnover. Admittedly it's nowhere near the levels of current I'm used to from reef tanks, but I doubt my fish could take those 20X-40X turnover rates.


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## Felf808 (Mar 21, 2006)

*shrug* if your co2 is at 1bps then what is the ppm? besides manual removal, excel spot treatments, and blackouts you might want to bump up the co2 to prevent further outbreaks.


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## cholly (Jun 12, 2007)

About 30 ppm, judging from the drop checker (using a dkh solution of 4). I've thought about pushing it higher, but the only reports of people trying that to combat cladophora that I've read have had negative results. 

You mention using blackouts to combat cladophora. Is that something you tried that worked for you? I'm curious because in other threads I've read that they don't do any good where clado is concerned, so if you've had a different, more positive experience with them and cladophora I'd love to hear it.


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## Felf808 (Mar 21, 2006)

i blacked out my tank for 5 days with garbage bags while dosing excel and it killed about 70% of it but it ended up growing back because only the ends of the strands were dead and not the lower parts that were attached to the plants and driftwood...i did water changes but i didnt bother to manually remove the rest so i ended up tearing down the tank


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## bigstick120 (Mar 8, 2005)

Felf808 said:


> I only had major clado issues when there was too much detritus in the gravel which can be fixed with a gravel vac and increased flow in your tank with a larger filter or an extra powerhead.


I have had the same experience, one corner of my tank used to get it. Crap built up there and had little flow. Adding a small powerhead and picking out what I could got rid of it. I have seen amanos munch on it a little as well


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