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I havea 5.5 gal. with dwarf anubias and java fern. I have a beard algae problem on both species and a brown film algae on the glass. I'm looking into buying some shrimp, some snails, or maybe an algae eating fish. What's the best way to handle this?

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Do you have any fish in there now?

Hi,

What you want to do starting off is remove as much as possible manually. Wipe the glass with a cloth or paper towel, the brown film will come right off. Cut off any leaves infected with the BBA as it can't be removed manually.

Can you describe the beard algae a bit more, specifically color, size and texture?

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Back in the saddle!

Well, the plants are very young and dont have many leaves. If I cut off the ones with algae, I think it might kill some plants. The beard algae forms mainly around the edges of the leaves. It is about half a cm long and is gray in color. It forms in strings about as thick as a man's beard.

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

I currently have 6 serpae tetras.

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Really that's a lot of fish for a 5.5g tank. Serpae's aren't really the smallest tetra. I sure wouldn't add any algae eating fish. I'd say that and a lack of CO2 would probably be the problem. I'd reconsider your stocking and think about maybe trying some DIY co2. Together that will help you out.

Also, what lights are you using on the tank?

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I'm using two 30 watt fluorescent bulbs. 1 is an actinic blue and one is a 6500K trichromatic. What about snails?

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

I'd say you have a very large imbalance in your tank. Lot's of light, little in the way of CO2, and lots of waste. It's a great recipe for algae. I'd start with either some DIY CO2 or flourish excell. I'd also reconsider your stocking. As I said it's too much and part of the problem. Later you could worry about the other ferts like KNO3, PO4, and potassium are the major ones.

The other way you could approach it is that the plants you are keeping don't need that much light, and you could reduce that to one 30w bulb, which is still a lot of light on a small tank. FYI actinic bulbs aren't good for plant growth, so I'd ditch that anyways. Thsy are mainly a SW bulb. If you went this route I'd still get some excell to help clear up the algae and you'll have to worry about ferts less with less light.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Hi,
Personally, with 5+ watts per gallon, I'm not a bit
surprised that you have algae. In a 5 gallon tank
it would be impossible to have enough plants in it
to even scratch the surface of using up the nutrients.

First, I would cut back on the light by removing one
of the tubes, preferably the actinic. That bulb is
designed primarily for saltwater reef tanks and really
has no business on a small, shallow, freshwater tank.

Second, both types of plants that you have in the tank
are low light plants, and don't need any more than 1.5
WPG of light over them to thrive. Their demands
are small and their growth very slow.

You have no fast growing, stem, plants and actually have
no room for them either. In that light, they would
completely take over the tank and eliminate the swimming
room within a week.

Third, I agree with the choice of fish as well,
there simply is not enough room for that tetra in
that tiny tank.
You might consider swapping them for some Cardinal Tetras.
That would also reduce the amount of waste that the fish
produce and allow you to get a handle on cleaning the tank
and beginning to reduce the nutrient levels.

Lastly, take time and vacuum the gravel in the
unplanted sections of the tank.
Clean the filter as well, and do a 50% water change.
While performing the maintenance, you should wipe down
the tank and plants to remove as much of the algae as
you can.

With that small a tank and that fish load, you should be
doing water changes every two or three days.
You don't give us any information on the water quality...
What is its pH, GH, KH, Nitrate readings. If you don't
have a test kit, take a water sample, before changing the
water, to your nearby LFS and ask them to test it.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear, but you
are courting disaster and you need to make some changes
to the tank, the lighting, and the fish in the tank.

Frank




-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Eric,

I have to say "I don't get it"

How do you even manage to hang 60 watts over a 5.5G tank? Or do you have a 55, as in fiftyfive, gallon tank?

Isn't one 30W flourescent bulb like 36 inches long?

Maybe you should clarify this.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

I am with LF on this one. I don't get it either! PC bulbs? Needless to say but it sounds like you are flirting with war with this tank.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

Sorry guys, you're right. I wasn't very clear on the lighting situation. I have bonsai trees and an aquarium in my dorm room. The light hangs from the bottom of my loft and it give light to the aquarium plants and the terrestrial plants. It hangs 10.5 inches above the surface of the water. I know for sure not all of the light is going into the water. Maybe not even half. This makes it hard to calculate if it is low light, medium light, or high light.

I tried removing my actinic bulb yesturday and turning the light on with only one bulb. It doesn't work with just one bulb unfortunately. I don't know what I'll do with that. Maybe cover it with some homemade cover or somthing.

As far as the stocking goes, I've had these fish for a year now. I change the water at least once a week and my water parameters stay at about 7.6 pH, 0ppm NH4, 0ppm NH3, and 0ppm NO2.

The algae is very slow growing and I don't really have much, I just want to make sure I take care of it before it gets out of hand.

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Ah Eric,

Now I remember,

Didn't we touch the exact same topic quite a while ago? I think then we did not come to a conclusion of your light situation. I have to say that I don't remember an actinic light though. Was that always there?

It appears as if your bulbs are wired in line rather than parallel. I guess you would have to replace the bulb with another one in order to keep the light going.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

How bad are actinic lights for plants. What do they do and why are they bad?

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

I don't know if the Actinics are truly bad for plants but I don't think they are going to help them out any in terms of growing. I want to say that they have a really high K value. Where plants need something around 6700K the Actinics are more like 20000K I think.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

Alright, I just bought a dCH testing kit. My CO2 is pretty low. Its between 9 and 3.6. I think its because I just moved back into college and the water in this city is really hard. I will use purified water with my next water change.


-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

The water you use has no effect on the amount of CO2 in the water, it effects the pH and hardness, but not the CO2. You have to physically put CO2 in the water, or use something else, like flourish excel.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Ah, light bulb over head moment. Pardon the pun.

I couldn't get the regular fluorescent tube when I set up the Panda Nursery ... so I got an Aqua-Glo. Lovely bright tube. Only one problem ... rated at 18,000 K. Whereas the Panda Fun Palace, the main aquarium, has a 6,500K Arcadia Fresh Water Tube. And some Otocinclus living in there.

So, the Panda Fun Palace is a nice lush rainforest of the plants I WANT to grow (in fact I'll have to thin out the Amazon Swords during the next water change to give the Cardinal Tetras some swimming space!) while the Panda Nursery suffers from unwanted thread algae. Which I'll probably have to buy a Siamese Algae Eater to exterminate.

However, I finally managed to get a second Arcadia 6,500K tube which is now illuminating the Panda Nursery. So hopefully, once I've dealt with the thread algae, it won't come back.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

So if I lower the hardness of the water it won't increase the solubility of CO2 in the water and vicariously affect the amount of CO2 in the water? The pH of a liquid always affects the solubility of a gas into that liquid, unless I'm mistaken, I think this is why they add acid to coke.

-Eric
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

The CO2 in coke makes it acidic, not the other way around. The only way to get significant amounts of CO2(meaning above normal conditions....say 30ppm) is to put it there. That much co2 won't just hop into the tank if you dump in some HCl. Here's a link that lays it all on the table.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients