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My very first 'green pea soup' algae?



Hello,
recently I dismantled my 1st crappy homemade hood with four 30 watt
fluorescent tubes in the hopes of rewiring them in a new and more
practical hood for my 33 gallon tank.

In the meantime I popped a 400 watt Son-T-Agro HPS bulb and fixture 2ft
above the tank. Due to difficulties with wiring and the cost of tubes (I
found 24 watt, 6400K, 1260 Lm bulbs for $8.00 each) I ended up
installing six incandescent lamp fixtures and 24 watt electronic compact
fluorescent bulbs in rain gutter hoods.

All of that maybe took a week and guess what happened to my beautiful
and healthy planted tank in that week?

Despite lovely pearling all the plants and some glass became covered in
a icky green slimy algae- even the duckweed I hadn't gotten around to
scooping out became one clump, bonded by the algae; obviously my diy Co2
(five 2litre bottles, gravel vac reactor with powerhead) couldn't keep
up with the light and I tried adding pottasium nitrate (my tank is
usually about 2ppm of nitrate) and extra sulfate of potash, iron and
trace elements but that didn't help none.

Thankfully the algae  did come off and there's not too much of it left
now. What I do have now is something I've never seen before. Small
-perhaps 4 mm-  'hairs' floating everywhere in the tank gently moving
with currents.

While I have to get up close to the glass to see them and the water
isn't murky looking yet I'm wondering is this the beginnings of the
infamous 'green pea soup' algae I have heard so much about?

What exactly is that I'm seeing?

How long is it (if you don't take any action) before you can't see
'through' the water?

Hopefully resetting the tank, rotating in some new Co2 generators and
adding some new, vibrant trimmings from my super-fast luxuriant growth
15 gal tank (with 28 watts fluor., pea gravel and no Co2) will get rid
ot it before I have to take more serious measures.

If not I suppose I'll be digging the through them archives :  )
Regards
Damian.