# Back from Vacation...Green Water!



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

I just got back from a week away from my tanks and one (20 Gallon) has developed a really bad case of green water. It's a relatively new tank which is probably why it happened (only about a month old in its current form). I only missed one dosing of ferts and was a day late on my water change. What can I do to get rid of it? I can't even see if everything is okay in it! Should I try a black out? Keep fertilizing? Lots of water changes?

Currently dosing 3x a week:

1/8 tsp CSM+B
1/4 tsp KNO3
1/4 tsp K2SO4
1/16 tsp KH2PO4

Lighting is 104W for 10-11 hours a day.
CO2 is two DIY yeast bottles.

There are 6 rummynose tetras, 2 ottos, and 2 amanos in there right now. As for plants, a carpet of HC is all.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

A 3 day blackout should cure the problem as would a diatom filter, but he blackout is free. Either of those will take car of the issue now but you must figure out what caused it in the first place to keep it from coming back.

Since it is a new tank I would guess the GW came from a NH4 (ammonium) spike in the tank while you were gone. The higeher levels of NH4 may have been caused by a decrease in CO2 levels while you were away making the plants slow their uptake of NH4. 

Do a waterchange and add your ferts before the blackout. You can do another WC after the blackout if it makes you feel better but I don't think it is needed. Let us know how it works out for you.


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

You do have a high light intensity too, more than 5 watts per gallon, and you leave the light on for a long time. To make things a lot easier on yourself at least cut the lights on time down to 8 hours. Things can get out of control very quickly with that much light.


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Will the HC do alright with a shorter light period or intensity? I have one bank off now, so it's only 52W or 2.6wpg. I'm just worried about killing off my HC.


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

2.6 watts per gallon is adequate light for a 20 gallon tank, so I don't think the HC will stop growing. It will probably just grow higher in trying to reach for the light. Everything I have read says those plants that signal that they have had enough light for the day, by folding their leaves, for example, do that after about 8 hours. That convinced me that 8 hours is enough, and thats all I do now, with no growth problems.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

I to have noticed the majority of stem plants close up their leaves in the range of 8-10 hours. By lowering my photoperiod to 8 hours I have eliminated or at least reduced the amount of algae in my tanks. Plants have not *seemed* to suffer from the light reduction either.


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Well I'm trying a natural approach. I put in a breeder net with a whole bunch of daphnia and turned off one bank of lights and shortened the light period. Most of my stem plants close up after 12 hours, so that's why I had it set for 12. I'll let you all know how it goes...I might be resorting to a blackout. :sad:


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Well, no luck with the daphnia. I popped a few in a jar filled with green water and they've cleaned that up nicely, but the tank continues to be pea soup. So I'm resorting to a black out. I will let you know how that works out in 3 days.

It seems green water is somewhat "contagious" as well, since my 29 gallon has started to get cloudy. I'm going to be posting another topic on this and why I think algae may not be omnipresent but instead pathogenic. My question is, what do I do? Cut lights or leave lights? Stop fertilizing or continue fertilizing? I've gotten advice both ways, so I'm unsure of what to do, besides black out the tank!

If I cut the lights or light period, the plants will photosynthesize less, using less nutrients, thus freeing up more nutrients for the GW which can withstand lower lights better than plants (unless there were always excess nutrients, in which case cutting back would further exacerbate the problem). If I stop fertilizing, the same is true, plants will use up all the nutrients they can then stop, leaving some excess nutrients for the GW once they run out of another. 

Following this logic, I should do nothing! Yet that clearly isn't working. If GW is pathogenic, then really I can't do anything but a black out.

I've heard GW may be caused by NH4 spikes, so what if I just stop or cut back on my KNO3 to force the plants to use up all the nitrates and ammonia? I'm grasping at threads here as I watch my tanks fade into oblivion! Anyone?


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

GW is a mysterious problem... I beleive its truely caused by an ammonia spike then once its there its very tough to get rid of. I have tried so many things short of spending a ton of money on a UV sterilizer or a Diatom Filter. I have even tried cutting nitrogen to force a little defficiency, the GW cleared in a couple days the first time I tried it but then came back as soon as I added any Nitrogen. After the months I spent trying to get a grip on the GW problem in my tank I found that as long as CO2 is kept at high concentrations, nutrients are balanced (this takes time to figure out but try going lean answering any defficiencies then build it up, if EI fails you first like it did for me). Then once you get all these things in check, set your lighting to an 8-10 hour photoperiod (be sure you dont get a lot of light from nearby windows or other stray light sources), this seemed to have the most dramatic effect on my GW problem. I have been GW free for several weeks now after a several month long bout with it. I think its safe to say I have overcome it with purchasing anything expensive or really spending any additional money. The best weapons for GW are control and balance. By the way I have been able to dose approximately 3 times as much ferts now that I'm on a 9 hour photoperiod, its as if the plants start to slow nutrient uptake to a crawl after that much exposure and this is when GW gets its chance to strike, at least in my case. My plants are also growing much faster and better on the shorter photoperiod. The general rule I have found proven true more often then not is that more light is generally a good thing, but longer photoperiods are not. 
I hope this helps. 

Good luck


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

> By the way I have been able to dose approximately 3 times as much ferts now that I'm on a 9 hour photoperiod, its as if the plants start to slow nutrient uptake to a crawl after that much exposure and this is when GW gets its chance to strike, at least in my case. My plants are also growing much faster and better on the shorter photoperiod.


Hmm...that's very interesting. Can anyone else support this? If plants do "turn off" after a certain number of hours that would make sense, it's just hard to figure out why you would be able to dose 3x more and the plants would be growing better with a shorter photo period. Maybe a longer photoperiod gives them less time to recover and grow when the lights are off? Don't plants actually do most of their growing when lights are off?


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

davis.1841 said:


> GW is a mysterious problem... I beleive its truely caused by an ammonia spike then once its there its very tough to get rid of.
> Good luck


I have to agree with davis.1841 here, I have just won a battle with GW on a 1 month old El natural Hybrid. My tank is soil substrate with pressure C02 to make up for plant usage but not at high levels, I run it under 10ppm. I'm lightly planted and have a heavy fish load (by El natural standards). I also have a continuous flow water change system. lighting is 200W CF with 9 hour photo period.

The tank was setup and stocked from the beginning so I turned the WC up to 30 Gal/Day to keep the NH4 down until the tank stabilized. I guess I should mention it's a 80 Gal tank. The tank cycled normally for a non heavily planted tank with the NH4 at a trace level then the N02 at trace level. the levels never came above the minimum amounts the test kit could read. after the cycle all test read 0 NH4, N02, N03. so I assume that the only nutrient in the water is the NH4 that the fish produce. The tank remained cloudy after the cycle and I waited for it to clear up for two weeks. It didn't look like GW unless you looked the long way through the tank then it had a greenish tint. I figure the 30 Gal/Day probably kept it from really taking over but couldn't get rid of it either.

So here we have a tank with no fert dosing and as low of nutrient levels as you can find IMHO that supports GW.

I have a fill/drain fitting on the plumbing for the tank, and 30 Gal/Day was maxed out on the WC system and wasn't getting rid of the GW so I hooked a hose up to the fill line and upped the water into the tank to the max flow that the overflow drain could handle. after a couple hours it started to clear up a little but I was starting to out run the heaters capability to keep the tank warm. I drilled two small holes in the bottom of a milk jug and sat it on top of the center brace on the tank above the spray bar, filled it with hot water to trickle into the return flow from the filter. I was able to maintain temperature that way. It took 4 hours to clear the tank, then I ran it for another 2 Hours to make sure the GW was gone. so far 4 days later no GW.

If you have the capability to flush your tank you can get rid of the GW that way. I realize not every one can run their water directly into their tank, but I thought this information may add to the discussion on GW.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

I think the reason I could dose more is that the plants now were using everything I would put in the tank, not that they couldn't before. I just think that before they would use what they could during the first 8-10 hours then once nutrient uptake slows down the GW gets its real chance and then it would use anything left over. So if nutrients weren't exceptionally low (1/3 of what i dose now) the gw had everythign it needed to flourish and turn into peasoup. I should probably mention that before all of this I would keep the gw in check by having a very lean fertilizer regimine. I noticed that everytime I dosed more the GW got worse, if I kept thigns very lean it never really got that bad and I could at least see the plants. So basically giving the gw a chance by adding a couple hours to the photoperiod is where my problem was. Oh yeah I forgot to mention this little bit of info to. I also now have my lighting on the full 3.5wpg in the 75gallon tank now for the entire photoperiod. I couldn't do this before, I had only half the lighting 130watts on for 12hours with a 1-2 hour burst of an additional 130watts using my Coralife 48" 260w CFL fixture. Once I changed the photoperiod I was able to also increase the length of the time the full 260watts were going to the full photoperiod length, 8-10 hours. The plants also probably use more nutrients now because of this fact as well. 

Maybe this clears some things up.  

I also hope with all of this you can see the I have tried pretty much everything I could but untill i found a balance, altering almost any factor can really make it worse.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

on a side note I'm putting my tank through a little test right now. I'm trying to jolt the system a little to see how stable it is. I have moved the biggest crypt in the tank without a waterchange (tonight is waterchange night). Plus I increased the photoperiod by about 30-45mins. Its still in the 8-10hour range but I'd rather avoid a full blown gw problem again. I've heard that moving crypts can set off GW by causing a little ammonia spike, I'm interested to see if my tank is balanced well enough now to handle something like this. Plus I like the crypt more now that its in a new spot.


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## houseofcards (Feb 16, 2005)

Are you running the full 100watts all day or are you doing a midday burst of 100watts. If you have a way I would only run the full 100watts for no more than 3 hours per day. 

In a new tank with that much light and so little plant mass it's a very difficult balancing act. With diy co2 it makes it that much harder. You need to have the following:

Minimal fishload (your done, Ideally, nothing in but shrimp/a few otos for a month)
Minimal feeding (a pinch 5 days a week no more, once a day)
Frequent waterchanges (I would say twice a week for a while)
Consistent Co2


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

> I think the reason I could dose more is that the plants now were using everything I would put in the tank, not that they couldn't before. I just think that before they would use what they could during the first 8-10 hours then once nutrient uptake slows down the GW gets its real chance and then it would use anything left over.


So say your plants are using 3x the fertilizer with a shorter photoperiod because you increased your wattage over your tank? What would happen if you left it at 130W all the time? I'm guessing the increased wattage is what has caused your growth to increase and allowed you to add more fertilizers. Using your logic, the best solution is more light for less time. I'm curious to see the results of your experiment to try to knock the tank out of balance, because I've been told so many times how high light is bad because it is so hard to keep under control. Maybe it's not so hard if you reduce your photo period accordingly.

I'm also still wondering if maybe a longer "recovery" period helps plants grow and use more nutrients. Perhaps (and this is a stretch of my limited biology), when plants are given a longer period to respire, they use more of the stored energy (and thus nutrients) from photosynthesis. Not having a long respiration period may mean the plant switches back over to photosynthesis before using all of its stored energy, meaning it will use less nutrients during the next photosynthetic period and grow more slowly (since it has less time to burn sugars to produce chemical energy). Anyway, starting to get a bit off topic! 
:focus:

By the way, I figured out I triggered GW in my 29 by "cleaning" the christmas moss I have. I was unaware of the connection between disturbances and GW and figured the filter had taken care of all the debris and stuff stirred up.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

well the reason I know that the increase in nutrients wasn't completely from the change in intensity is I was able to increase nutrients with a shorter photoperiod regardless of intensity... I didn't up the intensity to the full 8 hours untill I knew I could without an outbreak of pea soup conditions. Nutrient uptake did definately increase even more though once I uped the intensity... I think it sounds like your getting what I'm trying to say though about more light is much easier to manage with a shorter photoperiod.

As far as my little experiment goes, I didn't notice any changes like haziness or cloudiness or even any green tinge 24 hours after moving the large crypt, it was however Waterchange day so I did my water change and to hopefully keep the expiriment going I moved 2 more crypts, disturbing the substrate much more this time so we'll see what happens after a couple days. By the way I'm going to throw it another curveball this weekend, my lfs is having a HUGE sale on fish so I'm going to add a couple more.  So I'm really going to find out what this tank can handle.


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Alright, so I unveiled the 20 long today after a 4 day blackout and all the green water is gone (yay! :high5: ) but my tetras were breathing a little heavy, so I tested the water and it seems I have a small increase in nitrites, from 0ppm normally to somewhere between .1 and .5ppm. Is this normal after a black out? What should I do? Fertilize or no?

pH: down from 7.8 to 7.0
KH: 90ppm down from 120ppm
GH: 75ppm (same as before the black out)
Nitrite: .1-.5ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm down from 20ppm


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

the increase in nitrite is probably due to the die off of the algae and fishwaste... your plants haven't been photosynthesising like normall so your filter had to make up for it. It shoudl go away really fast once the lights are back. I would go ahead and dose NPK, traces, iron and anything else you normally do, as long as CO2 is up. congrats on killing your GW hopefully it stays away this time.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

By the way a little update on the experiment i was talking about. So far so good no GW or even any haziness. Granted I know its only been a couple days but I added 19 fish on thursday, 15 more neon tetras and 4 more otos. If anything I've noticed more pearling. I still can't say it wont come back I really tried to upset the tank.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

so its been a while now and still no sign of returning green water, I've tried everything to set it off again I have moved every crypt in the tank and still nothing so I think its pretty stable now.


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