i had cleaned out my 80 litre tank and within 2 days the water had gone bright green. it isnt in sunlight, it has an internal shark 600 filter that was (and still is) working fine, new carbon + sponges. my jack dempsey that has to live in this tank is being treatet for wounds with melafix. he chews up his food and spits 1/2 of it out and that is the only thing that i can think of that would have caused this, but this is the first time in 3 years the tank went bright green! any suggestions?
green tank
- Thread starter magnus titus
- Start date
hahahaha yep my tank went green like this . impressive eh!!
sorry ,too silly to add my pictures in
sorry ,too silly to add my pictures in
Your nitrates are too high, or your lighting schedule is too long. Do water changes to slowly remove it. Do not try to kill it off all at once.
Looks like a colony of Euglenia have established themselves in your tank. Too bad you don't have some fry to feed! The problem with these free swimming algae is that everytime you do a water change their population explodes. Your best option isto take them down with a predator like daphnia but that won't be possible with fish in the tank. You might consider a UV sterilizer. A twelve watt unit may be big enough but a twenty four watt unit would definately destroy them.
That is a unicellular alga, which is a sign of high nitrates generally. Killing the colony off all at once, will cause an ammonia spike. Water changes will not cause it to explode unless you have nitrates in your water.
My 75 gallon looked like that about 2 years ago. I bought a diatom filter and couldn't believe that it made the water crystal clear in about 2 hrs. I know it didn't actually fix the cause but it never did come back.
Micron filters are a good method, just make sure you don't leave it running for too long. Wash out the membrane after a few hours.
WyldFya;1167933; said:
Water changes will certainly stimulate Euglena population growth. Nitrates are not the only nutrient that unicelluar algae benefit from. In my experience you can do a 90% water change and within 48 hours, the water is as green as it was prior to the water change. I've noticed this even when changing water with RO water!
http://www.jracademy.com/~mlechner/archive1999/euglena.html
WyldFya;1168838; said:
I would advise caution using this aproach. The filter will quickly clog and unless the flow rate is magnificent, no lasting impact on the flagellates population will be sustained.
Again, predation is the best solution, UV sterilizer the next best. Once they are brought under control, the nutrient web will align itself so that conditions no longer favour their growth: ie, other protists and bacteria will consume the available nutrient more efficiently than the euglenia, preventing massive population growth. The problem is temporary at best!
If you know anyone spawning small egg layers, I'm sure they would love some of your water!