[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: My very first 'green pea soup' algae?
Bad news Damien,
You don't have green water. You have blue green algae. The mostly removed
filaments are finding new places to land and grow. Tommorrow you will find
new slime somewhere in the tank. Remove that, I used an airline tube as a
siphon, and you will see filaments that came loose during the siphoning
floating about again. If you don't get a handle on it, the whole tank gets
covered with the nasty stuff.
Green water makes the tank look hazy. Sometimes you don't know you have it
as it isn't green looking. Put the water in a bucket and you can tell if
there is a green tint. I don't mind a tint but cloudiness gets me looking
for the problem. Green water can come on quickly or gradually. Look for a
haze that is stronger at night.
I killed the plague of BGA with antibiotics. Hydrogen perioxide and
blackouts are other ways to deal with it. THEN I got green water. It had
been there, pictures of my tank show a haze. Maybe the antibiotic knocked
out just enough of my filter bacteria to cause a bit of ammonia? Such a case
I couldn't see an inch into the tank. Cool thing, the green spot algae that
started up during the last part of the BGA infestation disappeared during
the green water. Once it started clearing up it was fun watching the tank
furnishings reappear.
I never saw BGA or green water until I had CO2. There was plenty of light
over my 50 gallon tank [160 watts] and I had green fuzzy, green spot and
hair algae. Put on the CO2 [same lighting, same tank], green water and BGA,
no green fuzzy or hair algae. Still get the green spot but not as bad. Have
a bad feeling the black edges on older leaves are BBA kept at bay by my two
SAE.
Hit those archives!
Kathy in southern California
<<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.>>
_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com