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NEVER in my years of planted tanks have i had algae, and now, NOW i have some hideous light browny fuzzy stuff on my plants!

WHAT DO I DO!???

*runs around in a tizz*


I didn't quarrantine the fish Its all my fault.

must have come in on the fish

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

Hi Callatya,

Don't worry, stay calm, breath in and out. Now IME that kind of algae is the easiest to get rid of, just get as much of it out with your hand, then with only the hose of the syphone vacum it all off from the plants. I just had a bloom same reasson as yours, and it got huge in a matter of days, i did that and a 50% wather change and now it's gone. That was 2 weeks ago, so i think i'm safe for now.

Good luck

maybe i'm muddled. its not really the stuff that comes off easily its the rather well stuck on variety.

I'll try keeping on top of it manually, but what other methods can I use?

My 2 large SAE recently passed away (at 5 years of age) maybe they were just keeping it down? I really have never noticed it before, in that tank, or in the betta tanks where i put the daughter java ferns... spose that means the SAE didn't have much to do with it.

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

Cally,

Do a water change to knock down the minerals in your water, suspend ferts and do a three day blackout.

__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

I did some heavy haircuts today after a small bleach bath.

I left two of the plants (out of 12-15) in the bleach for about 40 mins... the algae did not come off or disintergrate, it just turned ghostly white... Reckon its completely dead?


Before the blitzing today... exactly what is it?



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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

40 minutes in the bleach might be too long for the plants, you'll have to see if they recover -- depends what plants and how strong the bleach solution was. Anyway, the algae first turns white and in a couple of days it will disintegrate and disappear.

Yeah, they were the sacrificial lamb-ferns... I'm not expecting the new shoots to come through, but the leaves might... We'll see i guess.

Do you know what it is?

Would this have been a new introduction or were my ex-SAE just keeping it in check?

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

Hi Callatya,

Check out this site:
http://www.otocinclus.com/articles/algae.html

It addresses the various types of algae, its causes, and
"cures."

Frank


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

I don't know what it is because I was never able to find a picture of anything that looks like it on one of those algae pages, not even the one that Frank just gave you. It looks mostly like the black brush algae from that page, but not exactly.

Your SAEs might have eaten that, I'm not sure because I've only had it before I bought my SAEs. From my experience with it, it only grew on slow low-light plants when they were in my tank with high lights. It mainly affected my anubias -- I bleached it several times and it always came back until I moved it to another tank with low lights and since then I have not seen it again. When I had it, it was the only algae I had and only on the anubias, so that's why I concluded that it has to with the lights, but I might be wrong.

Hi Callatya

I actually had the same thing happen to me a while back. I'm still kind of fighting the hair/ thread algae outbreak kind of , but it's not nearly as bad as it was. I'll attach a pic at the end of this post - I think it looks pretty much the same.

Anyway, water changes to dilute any excess nutrients in the water, coupled with upping the CO2 helped get rid of the outbreak. At the same time, remove any affected leaves - they'll grow back, plus it's darn near impossible to get it off, since it'll keep growing back. Now I'm just cleaning up the mess. I should think the same would apply to your situation.





NowherMan6 attached this image:


Last edited by nowherman6 at 05-May-2005 15:10[/font]

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