what type of algae

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Gambusia
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Jul 26, 2005
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what type of algae is this??? its in my friends tank i tell him to clean it up he says its fine.... i think its nasty...btw it looks worst in person

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Damn! That's a bad case of slime algae. It's actually not algae but cyanobacteria. Your friend needs to do some serious waterchanges to clear it up. It feeds off overabundant proteins.
 
i thought it was blue green algae.... theres no fish in there but he wants to add in some with that type of water cause he checked the parameters and all nitrates nitrites and ammonia is at zero... i tell him no cause the fish looks like its going to die in there.... do you guys think its safe for fish?

and how is this type of algae caused? he has some live plants in there that look dead...
the tank was filled half way with water and never got light or oxygen cause the filter was turned off and the light as well... the only light this tank got for 6 months was the light that was in his kitchen and his house when he turn the lights on... i filled it up cause i wanted to see what i looked like... he said now that i filled it up he should put a fish in it... i was like eww
 
It doesn't need light, as it's not actual algae. Cyanobacteria need no light, only food. It most likely didn't help for the substrate to go untouched and unmoved for 6 months. This causes buildups. It's not harmful to fish, but it is to live plants as it sucks all the nutrients from the water. I had this stuff come up in my salt tank, and it was actually the reason I tore it down and went back to fresh, because I just couldn't keep up with it. (I actually wanted to go back to fresh but needed a good reason lol) Plecos and other algae eaters won't eat this by the way.
 
so how would he get rid of it?? so the no light idea isnt going to work and the snails wont work.... water changes?? or a complete break down of the system?
 
Completely demo the tank and re-build it again. It would be much easier to spend an hour or two doing this then waiting weeks for the problem to cure itself.
 
thats what i thought but i was thinking about using hot water to destroy the stuff.... good idea or should i use a very light bleach solution?
 
I agree with Mystix. This stuff sucks, and is much easier to just demo and start over. I'd just use the hot water and clean it out real good.
 
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