Green fuzz algae help

[Jon Rupprecht]

I finally got the GDA under control on my 75 gallon tank about a month ago and it hasn't come back but I still can't get the green fuzz on the plant leaves to go away The tank is a 75 AGA with 4x54 watt T5 tubes with tek reflectors. Two bulbs run 8 hours a day and the other two come on for four hours in the middle of the day. Water is tap ro mix to give me a kh 5 and gh10. I dose the standard EI for a 75 gallon tank. Co2 is delivered with a rhinox 5000 on opposite side from filter return plus a in line reactor on outflow of a eheim 2217 filter. PH starts at 7.1 and drops down to 5.8 with co2 which comes on 2 hours before lights and goes off about 30 minutes before the lights. Substrate is SMS charcoal which replaced eco complete about three months ago. All the plants are growing very well and heavy pearling starts as soon as the second bank of lights come on. Here's a pic of the algae on the leaves of some ludwigia cuba

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this? Any suggetions welcome! Thanks,

Jon

 

[shane]

Here is what I did to rid the tank of algae:

1) Did 50%+ water changes 2-3 times a week.
2) Increased CO2 to 30ppm.
3) Reduced lighting to 2 wpg.
4) Reduced light on time from 10 hours to 8 hours.
5) Dosed Seachem Excel, Flourish, Potassium at every water change.
6) Dosed Phosphate.
7) Did this for 4-8 weeks.

 

[VaughnH]

I suggest that you make or buy a drop checker to verify that you have adequate CO2 in the water. Many times we think we have 70-100 ppm of CO2, but find that we really have less than 20 ppm, when we use the pH/KH table to determine the CO2 concentration. I'm not saying low CO2 is a cause of your algae, just that if you eliminate it as a possibility it makes it easier to work on what is left.

I would start fixing the algae by reducing that noon burst to an hour or so. Four hours is a long time for that much light. Also, I felt very strongly when I had GDA that the green fuzz was just GDA on the plants. Most of mine went away each time I allowed the GDA on the glass to grow thru its life cycle, which reinforced my belief. The last, and most effective attack I made on GDA was to do the life cycle thing, followed by a three day blackout, followed by three consecutive days of 70% or so water changes, major glass wipe downs, and 1.5X water change dosing of Excel. So, you might consider trying at least the consecutive cleanings, water changes and overdosing of Excel.

Another green fuzz episode, which I just worked on, was caused by me letting the weeds in the tank grow untrimmed for much too long. The vegetation got so thick it interfered with water circulation in the tank. That led to my Alternathera reinickii becoming green fuzzed, something that particular plant seems inclined to do every time I have it. I just did a major rescaping, greatly reducing the plant load, and using only a couple of A. reinickii cuttings, although they still have some fuzz on them. Now I am doing 1 - 1.5X water change dosages of Excel every three days or so - my continuous water change system makes this almost the same as a 30% water change every 3 days.

 

[Jon Rupprecht]

Thanks for the suggetions. I pretty much have all of that covered right now so I guess I'll just give it some time and hopefully it will go away. I do have some sae's in another tank that I could put in to take care of it but I have alot of moss in this tank and I've had bad experiences with sae's and moss.

 

[Jon Rupprecht]

Thanks for the ideas Vaughn. I do not go by the ph-kh chart for co2, I go by my fish. I have a lot of co2 cranking in this tank between the diffuser and reactor. I have slowly increased it untill my fish started acting distressed and then backed it down a small amount. If I bump the spray bar so I don't get the surface agitation my fish will be at the top gasping. So i think I have the co2 covered.
As for the light, with all four tubes on its only at 2.8 wpg. Do you think just running 1.4 wpg except for one hour would be ok for the plants? Since I replaced the substrate not to long ago maybe the tank is still "new" and still going through a break in period? Just some thoughts Again thanks for your help!

Jon