RE:[APD] Variation on green water -- little green threads

["Katherine Yata" <k_yata at hotmail_com>]

I fought this stuff several years ago. It is blue green algae. The filaments 
will catch on the tips of objects and grow there in tufts that turn into 
mats. Disturbing the BGA mats released the filaments.

In my case I had no phosphate. Added phosphate, kept the CO2 high and 
manually removed the mats with an airline tube as a siphon - daily. I ended 
up using tweezers to pull mats from the gravel as well. The stuff that grew 
between the gravel and the glass I would push down with a credit card. 
Covering that area to keep the light out didn't work real well as light 
still gets in. My algae grew in areas of low water flow, probably just 
settled out there so I added water motion at those spots, still doing manual 
removal. Some plants reaching the water surface were also colonized so I 
removed those plants.

You are getting algae plagues in a different order from my experience. First 
I had BGA bad then the green water. I dosed with nitrate very slowly to 
treat the green water, great fun watching the water clear over 3-4 days. 
Plants didn't like the BGA probably due to the nutrient limitation and all 
the siphoning I was doing but green water was fine with them, they grew well 
and green spot algae vanished.

This was several years ago, the epic battle was in my journal but I've lost 
that. I may have blacked out the tank as well for four days.

Kathy

-----------original message-----------------


I'm still fighting the green water fight, but over the last
couple of
days I've noticed something that I didn't see before. When I
look very
closely at the water, I see that there are short strands of
green algae
floating in it everywhere. I would say one cc of aquarium water
probably
has 10-20 strands in it. They appear to be maybe 1/4" long,
straight,
and very thin. They go right through the wet/dry without being
caught.
My Diatom XL catches it, and now the filter turns a slightly
bluish
green color, rather than the brownish color it was before.

I'm seriously considering getting either a UV sterilizer, or an
Eheim
2260 canister filter to supplement (or even replace) my wet/dry.
I don't
really have any way to put a finer filter medium into the
wet/dry to
catch all this stuff, and I'm getting tired of changing out the
Diatom
every day.

I've searched the archives, but I can't find a reference to this
kind of
algae. I assume this is all still related to my general
imbalance
problem, which I have yet to nail down. At least the BGA
outbreak seems
to be waning...

Kurt

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