Brown + Green algea on Glass...ARGH

[peettee]

Ok..Sick of cleaning the glass every week or two.

tank = 72 x 18 x 18 been set up for 2 years

1 x Canister (Aqua Nova, Cheap but large with good turn over )
1 x HOB ( AC500 )
2 x OTTO internals ( biggest you can Buy )

Tank houses.....Breeding pair of RD's...Male 11" Female 6"...breed every 3-4 weeks with no doubt...tons of fry, so there healthy and happy.

Tried heaps of different aquarium and standard fluro globes to no avail....tank has a single 3' ballast with one tube...
Water is Hard as a rock...heaps of calcium. When the lights are left of it takes weeks for any algea to grow, but thats no good. So im stuck...what to do ?

I also get heaps of green algea on the terrecotta pots and tube ( which I like ) its just the stuff on the glass that gets my goat


Any suggestions would be great

 

[Onion01]

you are probably feeding too much

 

[tunerX]

Are they diatoms and cyano? Diatoms feed off of silicates. Cyano feeds off of silicates and phoshpates. Switching to HI-S RO/DI for water changes would fix it.

Less feeding and more light is also very beneficial.

 

[Ianab]

I'm assuming if you are keeping RD then the tank isn't planted?

So if there is light and nutrients present the algae will tend to grow, irrespective of how well the tank is filtered. There are no proper plants in there to use up the nutrients - so it's left for the microscopic plants - algae.

As you are breeding the fish and rearing fry it's probably not an option to reduce the feeding much?

You could try reducing the intensity or time that the lights are on, that will slow the algae growth. Thats the reverse of a planted tank, where you would increase the lighting to boost your plant growth and use up the nutrients that way. The fish dont need super bright lights, they just require enough to see what they are doing, and for you to see them. In an unplanted tank, more light generally just means more algae. Put a bare tank on a window ledge for a couple of weeks and see what I mean

Can you re-wire the lights so you have a smaller lamp running most of the time? Switch the whole lot on for short periods when you want to show the tank off

Otherwise you could increase the water changes to remove more nutrients, but that does depend on the quality of your tap water. If it has a lot of dissolved nutrients in it already, then you may just be fertilising the algae even more. In that case the RO water may be the only option.

With the RD breeding setup I guess a little algae eating fish isn't a good option

Cheers

Ian

 

[peettee]

definaitley not overfeeding.....they hardley eat anything....all I feed is pellets...once every couple of days if that. When there sitting on fry they wont eat for a week or so. Sometimes I dont know how they servive, but they stay so healthy looking with out eating, but they must be eating something. More often that not I am fishing the uneaten pellets out,

The light is a single 3' tube on a 6 foot tank wich is only on for 4 hrs a day, no sun light hits the tank either.

there are no plants, infact there is nothing, just piles of gravel and a pot, everything else has been demolished.

I have an RO ( reverse Osmosis system ) which I have never bothered using for any of my tanks. Will do a 50% RO water change mid week....then a further 50% on the weekend and see what comes of it,

The reason i dont use the RO is cause it takes much longer to perform the change.

 

[Ianab]

I wouldn't use pure RO water because it contains NO buffers or trace elements. It may affect your fish and make it dificult to keep the pH stable. You could mix RO water back with 25% tap water and effectively just have 'cleaner' tap water. Or you can buy the correct salts in a pack and just add the recomended amount to your pure water. I think it's called 'RO-Right' or similar.

Otherwise... break out the magnet glass cleaner
I think you are allways going to have some algae growing there

Cheers

Ian