No matter what aquarium algae removal or how long I black it out for, I can’t bring this algae that just covers absolutely everything under control. I remove everything and scrub it all down and remove every speck of algae that I can see, then it all immediately comes back. It chokes out all of my plants and I could use any tips or advice
Posted by MTDLuke
25 Comments
How much light is the tank getting?
From a window or bulbs?
How much water movement does the tank have from a filter, power head or air pump?
What are your water parameters? Most likely your nitrates are too high and/or light is on for too long.
At this point, your best, cheapest, and easiest solution is going to be taking the whole tank apart, cleaning everything, and starting over.
Next time, watch your light levels, light duration, and feeding amounts. Lower all of them.
At this point, your best, cheapest, and easiest solution is going to be taking the whole tank apart, cleaning everything, and starting over.
Next time, watch your light levels, light duration, and feeding amounts. Lower all of them.
No more than 6 hours of light a day (ambient and from a light on the aquarium) and feeding fish 2x a week?
Is this not Cyanobacteria?
It looks like cyano which means too much light and not enough water movement for the size of your tank.
Given that you don’t have an exact amount of light or much info on the water flow other than using a job, I would scrap the substrate, change the water and make sure your light isn’t on more than 6 hours a day. If the cyano comes back again, consider adding a small powerhead to your tank.
You can buy “treatments” but they don’t address the root cause.
What size is the tank? And what does it currently have living in it? I can base better suggestions off of this. Do not brake down the tank and clean it as one person suggested. I wish I could get alge growth in my tanks.
It is Cyanobacteria which is not algae.
You don’t need to scrap the tank. But I would treat it with Chemiclean or Ultralife blue-green slime remover and do a massive water change.
As others have mentioned it most commonly appears due to too much light and poor water flow
Oof. Been there.
I got mine when it was a lot earlier though and I cut off the lights for a week or two weeks and that helped me
But it was also rough on the plants
Ultralife blue green algae remover
Usually people treat this with just a 3-5 day blackout. Use plastic and/or sheets to cover so no light at all can come in. Airate but don’t feed those days. Used that myself some time ago, worked like a charm. The plants can handle the blackout fine and come out clean. Cyano never came back.
The tank needs to cycle properly
You’re at the point where you need surface plants. They will serve to block out light and consume nutrients in the water as well. I also had issues with cyano before I finally threw in the towel and put red root floaters in my tank. Now, my tank is free from cyano.
Cyanobacteria not algae.
I’ve gotten rid of it with Erythromycin and it never came back. That works or any blue-green slime treatment. They also have Antibiotic in them.
The light and flow adjustments will help it not come back but I’ve never had go away just from that. I needed something that treats bacteria.
Oh and the erythromycin didn’t hurt my cycle at all.
Goodness gracious
Id hit it with some slime out then siphon out whatever you can it actually comes out pretty easy i had the same issue but managed to come back strong. But like others have mentioned you have to find your balance between your light, circulation, co2 and nutrients/waste and take care of the root problem.
https://preview.redd.it/rcobgrizfuug1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35f3d5a119a58f7bef0da7f77a6ba2d2329a1727
It means there is a leak of nutrients into the water column. Turning on aeration and turning down light for 3 days(24hours) helped me, amost all algae became red, then brown and turned into detritus, and i had lots of detritus worms eating on that rotting algae, cause once i added water from river. Coil snails eat algae good, check up algae eating organisms and introduce them to your tank.
Blue green slime remover and less light will get that under control. That’s not algae. Follow the directions, do water changes, and don’t over feed. I battled a milder case of this for a long time and as soon as I used the slime remover and lowered my light intensity and duration 90 percent was gone in a week.
Looks to me like you’ve got a cyano bacteria problem (blue-green algae)
Do you have fish in there? I had the same problem when I started my tank. In the end a combination of the following things helped to get rid of it and it never came back since:
1. I used removal stuff I bought in the fish store. I can check what exactly that was tomorrow in the morning if needed.
2. I tried to remove as much as possible manually every day or at least every second say in combination with some waterchange as I’ve read back then that cyano bacteria doesn’t like getting pushed around a lot.
3. I added some fish and dosed a lot of starter bacteria daily. I’m convinced that this was the main success factor and my theory on why this helped is: Cyano is some kind of bacteria and it competes with the ‘good’ bacteria for food, but as cyano has much lower standards it wins if there’s much. Back then I was still cycling my tank, so no fish in there, which means no food for the ‘good’ bacteria, so it was easy for the cyano to win the competition. Adding some fish and starter bacteria then started the cycle of good bacteria.
This might be complete bs, but for me it helped and I wanted to share those things as all the standard tips didn’t help me back then.
What kind of light do you have? Make sure there is NO blue light. Makes the algae bloom like crazy.
One theory is that overfeeding leads to algae growth. Perhaps that can also lead to cyanobacteria.
I had a black version take hold in both my tanks, suprisingly one dose of ‘fritz slime out’ and a slight decrease in light totally fixed it!
Less light, more flow, regular water changes