[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Algae getting out of hand.




Hello everyone,

     My aquarium is having a pretty bad algae outbreak, and I can't
figure out what is wrong. There is a powdery scum algae on the
surface of the water, giving everything a greenish-yellow cast.
There is a thin film of dark green algae covering the tops of my
R. macrandra (which stunted at the same time as the algae outbreak and looks 
miserable). Spot algae covers all of my plants - even the
fast growing species - to the growth tips, giving everything a
dirty appearance. Lastly, there is the persistant glass algae which
regrows in 24 hours - by the second day after cleaning, I can't see into my 
aquarium anymore (I scrape it off every weekend before water
changes). I changed 25% of the water, refreshed the CO2, and cleaned
the aquarium glass on Sunday. I also let the NO3 levels to fall back
to 10 ppm from 20 ppm to see if it would help. The algae only
got worse after Sunday.

Specifics:

55 gallon, running for about a year now.
3.75 watts/gallon
Two 2 liter bottles for CO2, connected into a CO2 reactor. Bottles
refreshed every two weeks on alternate weeks.
10 ppm NO3 (20 ppm on Thursday, when it started)
GH: 7. KH: 4.
Moderate fish bioload fed sparingly once a day.
5 mL Kent Plant Supplement added every 2 days.

    If I need to give any more information, I will be glad to give
it. Bringing the nutrients back into their target range and
manual removal don't seem to have worked. As a side note, would
a diatom filter help with all of these types of algae? I could borrow
(perhaps even keep) an old one from someone I know who is no longer
in the hobby.

Thank you for your attention,

Carlos



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.