Clear water with mustard color algae

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
G

gedavidj

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 19, 2010
37
0
0
Beautiful Sunny Walterboro SC
One of my tanks has crystal clear water, but the decorations and some sides keep getting some brownish/yellowish algae of some type. i clean it off and then it comes back. anyone have any idea what or why this is?

I already used algae destroyer advanced as recommended but no luck.
 
What are your nitrates?

What is your stocking for this tank?

How often do you feed them?

How often and clean is the water you are putting back into the tank when you are doing water changes?


It's harmless algae grows in every tank but when it explodes and is "visible" that is an indicator that something is wrong...

9 times out of 10 is because of overfeeding.
 
well lets see

nitrates came out to 0

i have 4 large comet goldfish in there about 5-7 inches including their tails.

I feed them twice a day small amounts which they devour to keep the overflow box from sucking in the food.

i do a 30% water change on a weekly basis.

The only thing not normal last time i did a water change i believe was the hardness which was 150 ppm. I have had them for a few years now and i never had this problem, so i don't think its my city water.

The truth is my water has never looked so clean since the algae showed up. But it kinda contradicts itself because the water is clean and the glass gets to be a rust color with the algae.

Overfeeding might be it since family tends to want to feed them when i'm at work. Although i do try to hide the food from them.
 
if your nitrates are 0 you have a serious problem on your hands..... it means your tank is not cycled and the algae is growing off of the ammonia secreted by your fish. algae and plants actualy prefer ammonia as a nitrogen source as opposed to nitrate.



test your ammonia if it's above 0 ppm do water changes to bring it down to atleast 0.25 ppm



or you may be testing for the wrong thing be sure you are testing for nitrAte(NO3) and not nitrIte(NO2)

Nitrite and Ammonia will always be at 0ppm in a cycled tank. Nitrate can only be removed by water changes (and plants but these usualy don't remove enough to bring it to 0) and can be anywhere from 0-20 ppm
 
If you didn't already know, 80 ppm is a bit high but a little algae growth isn't a bad thing.

I prefer large water changes. A 50% water change is equal to around 7-8 10% water changes. The more frequent and smaller the water changes, the worse the ratio of water used to water quality because the old and new water are allowed to mix and you throw away "clean" water along with the dirty. Doing a 50% water change isn't that much more work than a 10% water change. If you're going to put in the time and effort, you might as well remove more water.

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article54.html

I actually do 50% per week in my 125 gal cichlid tank and replace it with water from my 75 gal loach tank. The loaches get new water and something like a 90% water change.

Of course, you have to be careful and do big water changes gradually.
 
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