Gross 75 gallon tank! Help!

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Fire Eel
MFK Member
Jul 18, 2005
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Michigan's UP
My 75 gallon has been up and running since this summer, but I still get gross diatoms on everything, and in the past month I'm also getting hair and beard algae! :eek:

Since I got rid of my Oscar, I do one 50% and one 75% water change a week. Last month I started running 2 bags of Chemi-Pure in my HOB and 15 oz (whole trays worth) of Coralife Silicate Remover in my XP3 to try to get rid of this algae.

The tank has Java Ferns on driftwood, and 6 other plants in pots. I have 160 watts of 6500K flourestent lighting over the tank on for 12 hours per day.

The 75% water change is usually on Sunday. But, by Wendsday everything in the tank is covered with brown diatoms and I have the hair and beard algea growing on my java ferns and potted amazon swords. :swear:

I have not had any diatoms in any of my other tanks, only the 75.

What is going on here? :confused:
 
is the tank near a window? that's all i can think of. dont some shrimp eat the beard algae? sorry i dont have much more than that.
 
Nope, not near a window, matter of fact this tank happens to be the farthest away from a window of all my tanks!

No shrimp, the eel loves shrimp and doesn't care if it is a 25 cent ghost or $3 amanno.

I was thinking of a few BN plecos, or some SAE, but I can't find any. Well, I did order 6 SAE, but they came in frozen!

I have both ramshorm and regular (golf ball size) apple snails in the tank, along with some MTS, but the snails can't keep up with the algae!

Any other ideas for algae control, as far as fish for my 75?
 
That's pretty odd. I can't really think of what might be causing this. Do you add any salt to your tank? I've found that a tablespoon per 5 gallons has helped cut the algea growth in my 125 by leaps and bounds.
 
try leaving the light off a little longer each day.....other than that I really dont know lol
 
Have you checked your nitrates? What are they?
 
Have you tested your nitrates? What are they?
 
i agree with rallysman, that's quite a bit of light wattage for a 75
 
Nitrates are currently less than 20, not even reading on my test (from the Chemi-Pure?).

I'm going to cut the lights to 10 hours, I don't want to cut them too much, or the plants may suffer. I stoped using all trace and macro ferts for the plants months ago, except for substate tablets deeeeep in pots.

I figured things would get better with the Chemi-Pure and Silicate Remover, but so far things haven't really changed. I don't use chemical media in any of my other tanks, this is the first one I felt I had to.

I'll try adding some salt to the tank tomorrow when I do a water change.

This is driving me nuts! I just can't figure out what is so wrong with this tank!

Edited to add:

Stoping the ferts for the plants seemed to help a little bit. It's not a heavly planted tank.
 
Oops, I didn't know it was a planted tank. You might want to only add a tablespoon per every 10 gallons in that case. I don't want to end up killing off your plants with some bad advice.
 
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