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I've been getting a lot of algae in my planted 10-gallon tanks at home lately. Part of that is my fault - I was a couple months late changing the flourescent bulbs, and I haven't had time to do any extra cleaning as that took care of the algae blooms I had last time I had algae problems. I had a couple kinds of algae in the tank my female guppies are in - green algae on the plants, glass, and rocks, and planktonic algae making the water green. In the other tank I have blue-green all over the gravel, and many of the plants and hardscape. That's not hard to scrape off, but it's just going to take a while. Plus that tank's getting some of the surface-dwelling green algae now also.

So basically, my question is, I've seen the phosphate removing filter media at the LFS for marine aquaria... has anyone tried it in freshwater to starve out algae? With plants? I think I'm going to get a pad next time I'm at the LFS, and cut pieces to put in my filters on these tanks, and see what happens.

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Hi,
Boy, what a mess! I've been there once before and
did water changes and manually kept removing all the
algae I could find with each daily water change.
Don't forget to vacuum the gravel as well.

If you do try the pads, I'd be curious as to how it
goes.

Frank


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

Thought about it, got as far as getting the pads, but then borrowed a test kit and found that the phosphate levels were fine and it was my nitrate that was excessive. That was pretty much the same deal, I was late on the tubes and I was being a bit slack with maintenance, and add to that the local water supply was going through an algae-on-tap phase. That one cleared up with big water changes and copious amounts of Stability.

I'd test that it is your problem before you go for the pads, just in case it turns out to be something else



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

Have you tested the phosphate levels in the aquarium? Ring your LFS and see if they can test the water for you if you don't have the test kit. Because buying the phosphate pads won't starve the algae if you have low phosphate levels already and using them for an extended period of time won't help the plants either.

Well, not wanting to spend money (LFS charges for their water tests and I haven't asked if they include phosphate), I'm first going to try activated carbon media (which I had, but haven't used in a long time) in the worst tank, and see how that goes after a week or two.

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The carbon has definitely helped. It hasn't killed all the algae, but the algal growth has slowed to an easily manageable pace (I have a few inches of growth on my stem plants that's more or less unaffected). My plants are fine, except the anubias has lost a few leaves thanks to being choked by algae (but the new leaves look good). Soon I'm going to trim off the algae-covered parts of my stem plants (I think they're two kinds of Rotala), and replant those. I'll probably want to keep using (and replacing as needed) the carbon, since I haven't seen any detrimental effects on my plants. I've added activated carbon to my other 10-gallon also. We'll see how the green algae in there responds.

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Thought about them also, but ended up not, they were pricey at my LFS. Think I did test for phosphates and it wasn't that even though it's what I suspected.

Good luck, it's always a mess to clean up when you havent' the time, hopefully you'll get it under control quick. maybe a few bits of floating hornwort or other floating plant to help soak up excess nutrients?


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