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I myself love algea all except for what is on the glass that is just an eye sore.The main idea of this topic is to see what peoples thoughts on algea are.I like it becuase it helps feed alot of fish and it can add to the biological filtration.In alot of cases algea can be very bad such as floating algea wich by the way has killed 2 of my fish before i could figure out a proper way to treat it and some hair algea.Now im not going to get into all the different kinds of algea Ill leave that up to you guys.Im not an expert on the topic at all.Im making this forum mostly to learn and to read about everyones experiences with algea and how you may have fixed it.thanks

I like algae for one, I have about 50 fish that eat the stuff, but even then I find it a hassle to prune back plants just because some othe the tougher longer term algaes. I like the look of it on bogwood and rocks, it adds a mature an wild look to a tank, I like pristine tanks too, but i think theres something about algae that makes fish comfortable. For me its about finding that happy medium of having a little to make things look natural, but not thick sheets of it that trap detritus and become a hygiene problem. I can be a pain if you used meds too, cos sometimes it all dies off at once causing water pollution, or worse it retains old meds and re-releases them when it dies. Algae is always a mixed blessing. I have to admit in the tank i have blue acaras in, i cant really have algae eaters in there because of the fry and the general level of violence, and it is annoying to clean up.

I like some sorts and really hate others. I have the algae from hell in my main tank. Its black, its fluffy, and its pretty much unkillable. Its not even reducable, the stuff grows faster than I can clean it and I could stick a whole forest of stem plants in there and it wouldn't slow it down. I tried
It is through the wood, the plants, the filter, the lot. The fish won't touch it. On top of that I also have some fluffy green stuff and some spotty green stuff and something that's a sparser green version of the black stuff.

Its a mess.

I intend to cull most of the inhabitants and move the remainder (for another reason, the tank is genuinely in a very bad way and run some sort of bio-nuking chemical through the system for a few days (haven't decided what yet, might rotate a few to make sure everything is dead dead dead), then change the water, and then set it up again with no fish for a month or so, just to see what happens and if I killed it all.

If I have, I'll restock in spring.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Algae is OK and even looks good to a point, at which time you'll wish you had never even heard of the stuff and thats when the begins.

@ Callatya, and any one else who doesn't like their algae problems who has the ability re-house all the tank occupants and time to cycle the tank.

There is hope, seeing as the intention is to remove your fish and nuke the tank, I have an obvious suggestion for you, however it will kill everything, and I do mean everything including all of your plants.
It involves a trip to your local pool shop to get some serious algae killing chemicals, namely pool chlorine, and if that doesn't work use a copper based product, don't worry chlorine will work eventually and a copper product wont be nessary.

As a starting point just go with the chlorine as it is more easily removed later, then seriously nuke the tank you will need to maintain levels at or above (3ppm if I remember correctly) at all times, the pool shop should have various test kits for chlorine, it is the free chlorine that you want to measure however one that also measures the total chlorine will come in handy after this process to be sure you got all of it out of the tank.
The higher the level the better in this situation, just dont go too overboard, it is possible to kill the algae in just a few minutes,
BUT you really dont want the levels anywhere near that high as the chlorine will also be very dangerous to humans at that high a level and will burn your skin/lungs and bleach your clothes instantly.
As a rough guide I would say double or triple the chlorine levels required for an outdoor pool in your area, no more, any higher is just overkill.

Remember to dispose of the chlorinated water appropriatly by either de-chlorination and/or sending it down the drain to the sewerage treatment plant.
DO NOT leave it in your tank even if you have de-chlorinated it, there will still be all sorts of organo-chlorines in the tank.

Now give everything an extra good rinse off in tap water and setup your tank as if it were brand new and you just brought it home.

To those of you who can't just nuke the tank, I wish you luck in your battle with the mighty algae. It is a often a long and difficult path to travel to win the war against algae especially if like me you have that hellish variety of black fuzz that nobody seems willing to eat, even the snails wont touch it, I guess it tickles their feet.....umm foot.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Hi,
Algae can be a blessing or a curse, depending upon the
type of algae you have growing and the quantity of the
stuff.

My first comment is that I would never, ever, do what
was suggested in the last post. While it will work,
it has got to be the most ultimate, last ditch, effort
that I've ever heard of.

Ridding yourself of algae, or controlling it, demands
that you learn your "enemy." You can use all sorts
of chemicals to eliminate algae, BUT, if you don't
resolve the problem (cause) it will come right back.

Here are some sites that might help in learning what
algae is, its causes, and how to eliminate it:

http://www.cam.org/~tomlins/algae.html
http://www.freshwateraquariumplants.com/freshwateraquariumalgae.html

http://www.plantgeek.net/article_viewer.php?id=9
http://www.otocinclus.com/articles/algae.html

http://www.aquariaplants.com/alqaeproblems.htm

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/PlantedTksSubWebIndex/algcontags.htm

In some cases the links are redundant, but they all give
good information, descriptions, and control methods.

I had a 30G tank one time that was nicely planted, and
had a center piece of driftwood. The tank developed a
beautiful growth of hair algae on the driftwood. It was
an absolutely stunning sight with the algae waiving
in the tank currents. But, the ends broke of and
landed among the plants and tubes, and seemingly
overnight I wound up with a tank from Hell!
It took months, but I drove the algae into
submission, naturally.

I hope this helps...

Frank

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

I for one also support having algae...err, in my tank that is!

Means food for my fish. Loricarias or rhineloricarias take care of the black hairy algae and the brown diatoms that form on the glass pane, they also try to get to the hard green algae but they dont like it that much. Farlowella takes care of the one that may grow on the wood. Amano shrimp do off with anything thats left.

Gone_Troppo, try the Whiptail catfish for that dark hairy stuff, it may work for you. My plants came covered with it from the LFS's and the whiptail took care of making them look nice in around 2 weeks time, also the front glass developed a very thick cover of brown guck on about 40% of it, I saw a whiptail stuck to the glass that night at lights out, come next day the glass was clear as day, it was ALL gone. This is in a 50 gallon heavily planted tank that sits next to a window, and the 2, 5 inch loricarias handle its maintanace to the dot.

Algae eating shrimp help a lot as well. Snails do their share of the work too, but I dont like keeping them that much.

Sometimes I feel like I dont have enough algae in my tank!!

I'd never dump chemicals in a tank to kill algae. At that point you should have all your fish and plants out anyway so I just strip the tank down and soak everything in bleach or vinegar. I currently have a 10g with 2g vinegar to 8g of water soaking the spot algae off the front. Works pretty well and rinses completely clean.

That driftwood algae is cool but it sure is tricky. First it went from a nice layer of green to a large bush. Then it spread toward the rocks so I removed most of it. It looked good again but this week it all just died for no obvious reason. I sucked out the last of it yesterday. Now I have this black brush algae trying to take over instead. I'm having better luck with the 55 since the last of the blanketweed appears to be gone. You can't make a sterile tank even if you strip it or dose it with chemicals. Every tank will have some algae and sometimes it's good to encourage certain types so you don't have to deal with even less desireable types.

I think algae isn't very harmful depending on what it is. ALthough the benefit of it is that with a algae eater or a catfish(any), it provides them a supply of them to eat. If your wondering what type of algae it is, here is a website I had received from someone

http://www.otocinclus.com/articles/algae.html

I agree with the others. Algae is beneficial.


McCollum

Sham, I did that already. Not perfectly mind you, but for the way it was done I had expected a better result than what I got. It took HOURS to die, normally plants and algae you can bleach to death within 40 mins, but this stuff was still determined at 5 hours.

I stripped it, drained it, bleached everything but the tank (incl. the filter and piping) and pfft, all back within a week. It gets worse at water changes, I have a hunch the drought water is chokkas full of phosphates.

Within 2 weeks it was back to this. This was December. You really don't want to know what its like now. I figure its like living inside an inverted teddy bear.



A friend of mine has found me a nice pool chemical that states that it kills black algae, so that is looking promising. He's testing it on his tanks first to be sure it can be safely removed. I'm pretty sure it is just copper and chlorine. Failing that I'll try bleach, ammonia, PP, or several bottles of algae killer.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Bet it comes back as soon as you change out the chemical filled water. Unless you find something else to outcompete it or take care of the potential phosphate problem. You can't keep a tank sterile. If it's come back from bleaching everything then I would guess it's not a one time hitchhiker and it will likely be back again no matter how many times you wipe it out. Tried it before including on the blanketweed. The only good it does is to lessen the current amount of algae long enough to get something else to grow or take care of the root cause. Nearly every type of algae I tried to wipe out by killing it with something just returned in full force within a few weeks to a month unless I did something else to stop it's growth.

I don't really mind some algae, just that algae. It could be smothered in the green spotty and and I really wouldn't care at all, but that black stuff is icky and clogs up the filter and smothers the plants . If I nuke it, in theory it should then only return if I put something in there that has that algae or spores (does algae do spores or is that just mould?) on it. It gives me a fighting chance anyway.

I've never had that algae before, its not in any of my other tanks so I'm thinking that it came in on a plant somewhere along the line.

I have phosphate sucker pads ready and its been raining on and off for the last month so in a little while that should settle the water down somewhat. That tank was (before I got the dirts with it and ripped everything up, algae and I don't play nicely ) really pretty heavily planted with stem plants. It didn't seem to make much difference.

I'm also looking into UV, it probably won't help anything already established, but it should cut down on new things that spread through the water.

And I'll be getting SAE too, they tend to be pretty good at all things algae

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

As Frank mentioned earlier using pool chlorine is an Extreme measure that will only provide a tempoary fix if the cause of the problem is not also addressed.

Using bleach is even more extreme the active ingredient is the same as pool chlorine (sodium hypochlorite) only bleach is about 3% or 3 parts per hundred rather than the 3ppm that I suggested,

Using copper is probably the most extreme method I could have suggested and it will take much longer than bleach.

Frank, thanks for those links, they're really informative.
sorry if I gave you a heart attack, I figured people would realize that it was an extreme method only to be used as a last resort by the word nuke, as in nuclear bombing of the tank, thanks for adding that as I should have done.

Callatya, if bleach didn't work for you then neither will the pool chlorine, save your money for something that works on a more permanant basis, bleach is probably cheaper anyway.

Redphantom, thanks for the suggestion for the whiptail, I have seen them at one of my LFS even if it is a bit pricey, I am going to explore that option, I am fairly sure I can fit one in the 6 foot long 180G where this stubborn stuff grows. What sort of price range would be reasonable to expect for a fair sized one of these little critters.

I'll take green algae any day over this stuff even if it has slowed somewhat for the moment, it will be interesting to see what happens after my next WC and cleanout.
I may even get really lazy and add some greenwater culture to the tank, I know it sounds crazy, but if i can't see it it can't annoy me anymore, even if it doesn't address the problem, I have relatively easy access to zooplankton cultures for when the tank starts to look like pea soup.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Callatya, what you describe - and illustrate - looks more to me like a species of Cyanobacterium than a true alga.

A true alga will be utterly destroyed by bleach. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, can be tough as old boots. Remember several species survive in soda lakes in Africa where the pH is 10.5, the ambient temperature is 50 degrees C and the carbonate hardness is a whopping 7,000 degrees KH. Others survive in Antactica growing on ice covered rocks, and still others survive in deep sea hydrothermal vents at 300 degrees C and 1,000 atmospheres ambient pressure. Some of them can survive levels of ultraviolet light that would kill many other organisms in a matter of a few hours, and some species have even demonstrated a tolerance to radioactive fallout. Remember that cyanobacteria were the first cellular organisms on the planet, 3.5 billion years ago in the Hadean era, and were responsible for oxygenating the atmosphere of the early Earth so that most of the rest of the biosphere as we know it could come into being. Organisms that have been around for 3.5 billion years are not going to be that easy to kill off, given that they've survived the multiple deep freezes of the Neoproterozoic Era, the mass extinctions of the Ordovician, Permian and Cretaceous eras (along with that whopping big meteorite that saw off the dinosaurs) and experienced just about everything that can be thrown at them short of the Earth being engulfed by the Sun. If you think you're going to blow them away with a bottle of ordinary household bleach, think again.

Me, I'd try something a little stronger. Can you get fuming nitric acid?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I'm pretty sure the bleach killed it on the things that I bleached, but I didn't do the substrate or the tank itself, I just rinsed those very thoroughly, stupidly assuming that if I could make a big dent in it and stuff it full of stem plants that it'd give me the upper hand. I haven't tried a total nuke, I don't think its the fact that the bleach won't kill it more that I didn't kill all of it.

Why isn't killing it thought of as permanent?
Surely the process would wipe that species out nicely, assuming that the cause of it being there was hitch-hiking (which seems most likely considering the other tanks on the same substrate/water source are unaffected)? It won't stop the nutrient source or the conditions which make it suitable, but it should stop that one growing unless it is re-introduced. The other ones i can cope with, they behave the way I expect them to and they don't mess with the mechanics of the thing, its just that black one that is causing problems.

You may have a point with the cyano Cali, but its an odd looking variety if it is the case. It does look like your average algae, but it sure doesn't die like it!

This is where the other half of the reason for nuking comes in, the fish have some sort of unidentified and incredibly resistant something, I think parasitic. That tank has been hit with almost all of the Waterlife range, multicure, TC, metro, and still nada. No change in the algal growth either. I have isolated individual fish and treated them separately (with the above and a few other odds and ends) and still no improvement. Broad spectrum and targetted, whatever it is just will not go away. Its coming up on about 6 months of this, and its seriously sapping the fun out of the whole thing. I've lost 4 or 5 really good breeders to it and I can't afford to be doing that I can't add anything and I can't move anything and I detest having a contaminated tank in the same room as clean ones as its almost guaranteed to spread. The fish are slowly falling off the perch and I'm becoming a wreck trying to keep it separate.

Even if (heaven forbid) the chemicals don't kill all of the algae, they do kill whatever is affecting the fish, I checked That'd be well and truly worth it IMO. (Sadly it does mean tossing absolutely everything organic and culling the remaining fish, but at this point it is seeming to be the kinder option regardless, seems like every week something else either swells or wastes and drops dead Tis a very sick tank)

I have tested the phosphates etc just to be sure they weren't off the charts and they were hardly even on the charts Well within normal and really not enough to be the primary cause of the problem for either the fish or the algae, though I am trying to sort out if there are any other ways the two could be related.

It is the biggest tank I will have ever done, but I'm pretty good with general nuking so it shouldn't really be that big of a deal

It really is a last resort, I have gone through and tried everything I can think of for both problems within my budget with no success.


Oh, and on the topic of nuking, its around $200 to get a 2' tank gamma irradiated That pretty much guarantees death to all things living Too pricey for me, but an interesting option all the same

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

It would be worth scraping a sample of that into a container (one of those plastic ones that are used for 35mm camera films is ideal), along with a sample of water, tape the lid shut and send it to an academic institution to be identified.

Remember that not all cyanobacteria materialise in the form of slimy deep green sheets that cover surfaces. The ones that build stromatolites in Western Australia secrete a calcareous home for themselves (though whether their manufacturing the calcareous pillars that make them interesting biological curiosities is something other than an accident remains to be determined).

You might want to bookmark this place]http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/index.html[/link]. Not least because your persistent fish losses also make me ask if your problem is a cyanobacterial one ... that site lists numerous species of cyanobacteria (some of which are a cause of human health problems if they enter the drinking water system) that produce a range of fairly nasty toxins. The exposure of your fishes to a toxin from one of the dangerous cyanobacteria species would explain why [1] you've been experiencing persistent fish losses over time, and [2] no medication seems to be halting the losses. Which is why it would be a very good idea to have your "alga" professionally identified, not least because some of the toxins that are manufactured by some cyanobacterial species are dangerous to humans too - [link=this page]http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/cyanotox/toxiccyanos.html[/link] lists the genera known to produce medically important toxins and the toxins in question, and [link=this page takes you to a detailed discussion of each of the important toxins in turn. If, for example, you have any of the Anabaena or Microcystis cyanobacteria resident in your aquarium, your fishes are in deep trouble, and you are also advised not to immerse bare skin in the water for too long because the toxins those organisms produce are powerful enough to have invited research into their use as battlefield chemical weapons ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Do you know of anywhere in Australia that would do that sort of identification?

I'll do the email rounds tonight, but if I can't find anyone to ID it for me within a reasonable period of time (and for a reasonable price) is the method of destruction I am thinking about going to be suitable? I'm not going to create some you-beaut killer gas from mixing the two, am I?

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

If you have something akin to the system of Public Analysts we have here in the UK (these people have the job of checking things like food safety, and if you have a potentially serious concern, they do the analysis here for free) then here's what you do. You pack your "algae" as described, take it to the people who perform the same service where you live, and mention the magic word Microcystis. Given the trouble one of the Microcystis species caused Brisbane a few years back when it was thought that it had contaminated the city's drinking water supplies, I suspect you won't have to wait long for an answer. Because if there is any suspicion that your organism is one of the Microcystis species, and furthermore, that there is even a tiny chance it came through your tap, the local authorities should - if they have any sense - be falling over themeselves to give you your answer FAST.

For that matter, if there is any chance that you DO have something of this ilk, chances are that if the authorities in your area are reasonably savvy, they'll pass your sample on to the experts and pay for the analysis themselves, because shelling out about AU$ 30 for an analysis that lets them nip a possible disaster in the bud is going to be cheap compared to the cost of ferrying in tankers full of drinking water for a whole city and trying to cleanse the entire city's pipework.

I know for a fact that if I took a sample to the public analyst here in the UK and mentioned Microcystis as a possibility, he'd claw the sample out of my hands and run every test he could on it to make sure it WASN'T Microcystis. What with BSE, the recent Foot & Mouth epidemic, and an even more recent scare over bird flu infecting farm turkeys, last thing the UK government wants is a panic over drinking water containing something nasty.

I wouldn't worry about killing these organisms off with something corrosive. The toxins in quesiton are organic molecules (the microcystins are small amino acid chains) and will be destroyed along with the cyanobacteria if you hit them with something powerful enough. If your organisms ARE cyanobacteria, and what's more they're one of the toxic ones, I'd watch for strange skin lesions if you come into prolonged contact with the water. The principal nasties (microcystins, nodularin etc) are mainly liver toxins but can also have effects on other organs (in the case of some people, skin is definitely included here as a potential site of sensitivity). Saxitoxin on the other hand is a nerve agent, but you'd have to eat the bacteria to be at risk from that.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002