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I woke up this morning to find my whole tank green. (10 gal) I went to see if it had just grown algae along the sides, but no it was the actual water! It's not close the sun anyway. No live plants...Just a few platies and guppies. (and there fry! They breed like crazy.) My filter is just a Whisper for a 5-15 gal. Anyone know what might have caused this? Oh plus, I did a water change and it still refilled green....

Its probably an algae bloom.. probably caused by all the excess nutrients all those prolific fishes are making. Perhaps adding some fast growing plants would suck up the nutrients and outcompete the algae?

okay, a couple of questions first... have you tested your water? if so, what are your water param? how many guppies, platies, & fry do you have? how often and how much do you feed them?

We just got over green water, we went out of town and my mother fed the fish... including 14 fry in a 10g. So, the combination of too much food, too much bioload (as the fry had gotten much bigger), too much light (hubby set the timer before we left) caused tons of nitrate in our tank.

After much research, this is what we did because of our ultra high nitrate: water change daily (20%), turned light off, and tossed in a ton of hornwort... we continued to test the water every other day (it was so high it was bright pink at first) and kept up with water changes until nitrates were in a safe range. By the way, hornwort is great for sucking up that excess nitrate.

Let me know the answers to above questions and I'll see if there's anything else you should know.

-Beth

I think it's probably an algae bloom...commonly caused by high nitrAte levels...

I agree, Hornwort and large daily waterchanges will definately bring your nitrAte levels down quite a bit. Hornwort is a fast growing floating plant that doesn't require any special conditions...it can even grow okay in normal room lighting without any big lights. It grows like a weed It's really cheap too...my LFS sells bunches of 10 large pieces of it for $3

Hi,
As you have read by now, you have "green water" which
is an algae bloom. The way to treat that is to reduce
the light, do large frequent water changes, and add
some plants. A UV sterilizer is a very expensive but
also very effective way to eliminate the bloom as well.

The live-bearers in the tank are producing a tremendous
amount of waste products, as is the left over fish food.
And, you have nothing to use up the end result, the high
nitrates. Plants use the nitrates in the process of
growing and floating plants take their nutrients directly
from the water. Hornwart, riccia, water sprite,
anacharis, etc. all are great at this and will quickly
use up quite a lot of the nutrients.

However that is just a temporary fix.

You need a filter such as one with a "biowheel" on it,
or lots of plants to control the waste products of that
many of that kind of fish. Simply dumping floating
plants into the tank will require that you regularly
throw them away by the handfull as they take over the
top of the tank and restrict the swimming space of
the fish.

Frank



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

Awesome, thanks guys. I'll let you know if your suggestions don't work!