Green dust algae and herbivores

VaughnH

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Jan 24, 2005
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

After two weeks I did my tank maintenance again, and found some green algae on the glass again, not real thick, but spotty. Is this more green dust or is it green spot algae?
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Tom Barr

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Jan 23, 2005
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

Looks like spot and you should bump the CO2 and dose routinely and clean the glass good for the next 2-3 weeks each week before the water change.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

rrkss

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May 7, 2006
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

Tom you said you would tell us what the cause of GDA when you came back from Florida. I would love to hear what you found out.
 

mfbonfante

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Apr 29, 2005
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

Thanks for your response, here are my comments:


The problem I see is that your "degassed" water has about 20 ppm of CO2, using Chuck Gadd's calculator

Yeap, you are right. 24 hours later I measure 7.4 PH in the degassed sample. That gives me 4.7 ppm CO2, which is the usual. Daily PH is 5.7, lowering this shows gasping and shrink losses.


Did you do anything at all in the tank during those time? Could you have dislodged some of the GDA during those times? Did the GDA attacks get any less dense after the first try? One more question: did you have green fuzz algae on the plants during the GDA attacks, and did you do anything about that?

During the maturing process I did nothing but feeding and fertilizing. After cleaning and getting back these algae, I tried some variants, such us limiting Fe, o macros. But the result was the same in the short term.

The GDA attack with the same intensity every time

Yesterday a have cleaned the tanks, I am not following any maturing process. It was a little thinner, but this could not be defined as a tendency yet.

No further algae. Just some BBA in old leaves, but not in new ones.

Regards,


Mariano
 

VaughnH

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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

Mariano, I am out of ideas! It seems you have plenty of CO2 and did everything right while trying to let the GDA live out its cycle. Given that there are countless varieties of algae, it does seem possible that more than one species could cause GDA, so you may have been right when you asked if it could be a different species from what the rest of us have had success with.

Another question for Tom: You found that GDA was in the zoospore form. Do you know if any other of our algae are in that form when they annoy us? For, example is green spot algae in the zoospore form?
 

PaulB

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Jan 24, 2005
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

Hi,
is this GDA? It is soft to the touch and can be rubbed off easily. I cleaned the glass and changed 50% of the water a week ago and it started to reappear within 24 hrs. These images were taken yesterday. I did a water change yesterday but didn't clean the glass. How long should it take for the algae to complete its cycle?

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Tom Barr

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Jan 23, 2005
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Re: Green dust algae and herbivores

That is GDA.

I found 14 to 18 days did the trick.
Till it starts dying off and changing appearances.
Clean well afterwards and use paper towels to wipe of all the GDA you can without it getting back into the tank, if you have a UV, use it.

Do a large 50-80% water change cleaning day and perhaps do a double water change a few hours later/next day if you see much GDA forming on the glass again.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

Professor Myers

Guru Class Expert
Aug 24, 2006
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Easy Cheesy Appraoch...

Throw a couple small Farlowellas in the tank. Religious cleaning and a U.V. at no less than 3X power will also allow it to be mechanically filtered out, but you have to have both the U.V. ,and fine particulate filter in line to really take advantage of it. A weak U.V. or no mechanical filtration is fairly useless. I always thought it was induced by excessive ammonia W/ ample light, but it still comes down to an imbalance in nutrients.

Mi Dos Centavos, Prof M