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I have a 30 gallon planted tank with 4 wpg lighting and I've recently had a huge breakout of some kind of strand algae. I'd say that it was staghorn algae due to the greyish color and individual strands, but it's all over the plants (mostly the stem plants like rotala indica and pennywort and all of my java ferns) and not touching the equipment in the tank which makes me think it's probably beard algae. I've stopped my fertilizers for the time being and shortened the time that the lights are on to 9 hours a day. The only fish right now are a plecostomus and a few otos. I can get my hands on some SAEs if they'll help at all (I plan to get some anyway). Is there anything else I can do to get rid of and prevent this type of algae?

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

Grow the plants and give them what they need.
At 4wpg, you need good CO2, NO3, K+, PO4, GH and trace dosing.

If you are not doing this, then you will run into trouble.
Focus on the needs of the plants and algae is not an issue, neglect the needs of the plants and algae will grow.

Manual removal is the best thing combined with pruning and re setting the environmental conditions(water changes followed by dosing of KNO3, KH2PO4, GH(if needed), consistent CO2 at 25-30ppm while the lights are on, and traces.

4 things really.

Regards,
Tom Barr

3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005!
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Hmm... I thought maybe the problem was my ferts (Iron, Potassium, and Seachem's Flourish dosed 3 times per week). I'll bet the problem is CO2. I have a DIY system with 2 bottles diffused through a Hagen ladder, and I think I changed the wrong one last week, so one bottle isn't putting out any CO2, and the other took some time to start up and is probably near the end of it's cycle now, so the CO2 levels have probably seen some major fluctuations in the past two weeks.
So, tonight I'll do some more pruning and trying to snip or pull off as much algae as I can, and start re-dosing my ferts. Should I re-fill both CO2 bottles at once, or just change one and keep with the one-per-week regimen trying to do a better job of keeping track of which bottle needs to be changed?

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

If the plants really needed that much fertilizer to grow and you stop giving it then you are going to see more algae not less. Algae uses whatever the plants don't. If you have algae it means there is an excess of something or the plants are lacking something and so restricted in growth. If there isn't co2 the plants don't use the ferts the algae does. If there isn't enough nutrients(ferts) the plants can't grow and you get more algae. You have to find the balance where the plants are using everything you give them and nothing is left for the algae. It takes alot of experimenting.

CO2 is the issue.
DIY is a challenge to maintain stable CO2 levels.

If you change the brew often, this will stabilize the CO2 more. You can also build a reactor that conserves and dissolves the CO2 well when low and waste it when you had enough.

These cost roughly 2-3$ and the cost of a small powerhead(5-9$).

I have the designs on my site(these designs are free BTW, you do not have to subscribe etc to see them).

These are much better than the Hagen ladders.Hagen design is passive, the reactor is active.

Test your CO2=> pH/KH, especially near the end of the day.

Regards,
Tom Barr

3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005!
subscribe@BarrReport.com Get connected
www.BarrReport.com Get the information