# Gsa, done all I can think



## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

Is that green dust algae (GDA) or green spot algae (GSA) ?


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Here are some closer photos



























Swipe of the finger


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## StrangeDejavu (Jun 23, 2014)

"Swipe of the finger" picture tells me right away that it's GDA and not GSA. Green Spot Algae can't be wiped away, it requires serious elbow grease and a razor or credit card. For Green Dust Algae, you can eliminate it quick with a UV sterilizer or simply waiting 3-4 weeks until it completes its life cycle.


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

Clean the glass up the ferts.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Ok, then I believe I have a mix of both. The stuff lower on the glass requires the scrub brush, the front and rear glass comes off with a paper towel. I will increase my ferts by a ml or 2 daily and wait it out. Would increased water changes help?


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## StrangeDejavu (Jun 23, 2014)

Nothing will stop the GDA except 1) UV sterilizer or 2) patience. When GDA is wiped, the zoospores that make up the "algae" will remain in the water column for a few hours before returning right back to the glass. Like ich, it has a life-cycle and must be waited out. I believe I waited 3.5 weeks on mine, totally abandoned the tank aside from ferts and feeding. Over the next few days and weeks, it gradually turned from green to gray and started getting carpet-y. It was at this point that I drained the water to about 90% and wiped the exposed glass with paper towels.

Or you can use a UV sterilizer which will correct the problem in days instead of weeks. With the UV on, you just scrape the glass a few times a day to keep the zoospores in the water column, where they will be sucked up and nuked.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

I'm going into my third week, it seems patches have "fallen' off the back glass. I will let it run its course and continue to concentrate on growing the plants. Thanks for the advice.


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## latchdan (Sep 7, 2007)

GDA is tricky to get rid of since if you scrap the glass the spores just float around the water and then re attach to the glass. I would scrap the glass and within 3 days it was just as thick as before.

The way I got rid of my green dust algae was I first lowered the water level to as far as I could, (about 20%) You can remove the fish or leave them in. I then used a mixture of razor blades/ magic eraser sponge to clean the glass as best as I could. Make sure you don't let the algae get in the water or leave as little as possible.

I then reduced my photo period from 8 hours to 6 hours, increase co2, and I dosed EI method.

Every water change I wouldn't scrap the glass until the water was lowered so the algae wouldn't fall back into the water. A couple of weeks of doing this and it went away.

I tried other methods like letting the algae stay on the glass till it turns brown (the life cycle of the algae) but it didn't work for me.


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## NJAquaBarren (Sep 16, 2009)

UV sterilizer can help. Clean as usual, then run the uv for a couple of days to kill waterborne spores. Needs to be a powerful bulb though with good contact time. Spores are bigger than germs.


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## reefcorgi (Mar 2, 2014)

Get some otocinclus catfish. I use to clean my glass every other day due to GDA. Now, maybe once a week.


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## philipraposo1982 (Mar 6, 2014)

Up the WC and the ferts, don't clean the glass!! Let it run and die. 

Gsa can later be scraped. I believe the gsa is due to low phosphates but if they don't improve then is most likely due to poor co2 and too much intense light. Raise the lights and keep photoperiod the same or an hour less.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

I don't have the option to raise the lights at all, I'm looking for the plexiglass risers on here, but I'm afraid if I raise the light I wont' have enough par for my hairgrass.

I have a jbl regulator, and the right side gauge I have sitting at 2, and I'm using a fluval ceramic disk for the diffuser. If I turn the co2 up anymore the fish will be at the surface. I found the sweet spot my raising the bubble count up over time. The drop checker shows yellow by mid photo period. I'm gathering various plans for a reactor type build. That's going to be my winter project. I currently have 1 oto in the tank, I'm just waiting on the lfs to get more in. This is my first time out of 3 years in the hobby dealing with an algae outbreak. I've been pretty fortunate so far.


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## philipraposo1982 (Mar 6, 2014)

I grew dwarf hairgrass with my 48 inch Finnex planted plus and I didn't run any co2 and very light ferts in a low-tech tank. Keep in mind it didn't grow very fast but the growth was healthy and never brown and never melted. With that said raising your light would not affect the dwarf hairgrass that much considering you have double the amount of light + co2 + good ferts.

I honestly think it's because of the intensity of the light. without raising it up I don't think you will be able to get rid of the gsa.

Bump: that's just my opinion though others may vary.


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## Kathyy (Feb 22, 2010)

Is there a ripple on the water surface so there is good oxygen exchange? Fish can tolerate more CO2 if there is plenty of O2 present. Are you sure CO2 level is high throughout the tank? You can take water samples and check the pH all over the tank to see if that is so.

I don't change lighting and GSA goes away if P is 'overdosed'. GSA goes away because of the grazers in the tank though, it doesn't disappear on its own very well. It is tasty though, I had rosy barbs following the razor blade as I scraped it off!


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## philipraposo1982 (Mar 6, 2014)

in my experience that is not true, in my tank I have overdosed phosphates up to 50 parts per million and still had green spot algae present in the tank. The only thing that got rid of it for me was reducing the intensity of the light keeping the photoperiod the same


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Kathyy said:


> Is there a ripple on the water surface so there is good oxygen exchange? Fish can tolerate more CO2 if there is plenty of O2 present. Are you sure CO2 level is high throughout the tank? You can take water samples and check the pH all over the tank to see if that is so.
> 
> I don't change lighting and GSA goes away if P is 'overdosed'. GSA goes away because of the grazers in the tank though, it doesn't disappear on its own very well. It is tasty though, I had rosy barbs following the razor blade as I scraped it off!


The only side of this tank that's not covered is the front, would hit help if I take the paper off the sides of the tank to allow more light to escape? 

I have an AC20 that provides a ripple to about 50% of the tank, the other 50% is where my betta tends to hang out and he didn't like the amount of flow. I have my eheim ecco pointed towards the front glass, so the front side of the tank gets lots of flow. The back of the tank has some flow from the ac20 but not a lot. Enough to see the plants swaying back and forth and keeps stuff from settling on the leaves. 

Something else I just thought about, I had a big outbreak of diatoms and bba about a month after I restarted this tank. So back in Sept/early october. Shortly after that cycle ended, this GDA/GSA showed up. 99% of the bba has gone away from me increasing the co2 levels. I get about 4 inches of growth every 2 weeks out of my l. repens, the blyxa has trippled in size in the last 2 months. I have good growth of the plants. 

I did some spot ph testing using various depth and areas of the tank. The average with co2 off was 7.2, with co2 on 6.9ish

i'm working on bringing my P levels up. As of last night they are still sitting around 1ppm, I don't know what it's going to take to bring it up to the 3ppm range. I feel like I'm already dosing a lot. I've done 5ml of P daily for the last week. 

this tank has 1 male betta, 6 emerald cory, 1 female bolivian ram, 5 white clouds and 1 oto. I spot some ramhorn snails from time to time and a few pond snails that I try and remove when I see them. 

Last night the wife said "what is going on with your tank" It looks really green. I told her what was going on with it, and she said "get whatever you need to fix it and make it pretty again" 

eheim ecco 2232, what inline UV would you go with?


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## PortalMasteryRy (Oct 16, 2012)

I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Scrape off the alage or try to get rid what you can and do a 50% water change.
2. Get rid of or trim the plants that is covering your tank. High light + good C02 + good ferts = hindered algae growth and good plant growth.
3. Increase your nitrate to above 10 or closer to 20 ppm and get phosphate up to 3 ppm. You can even go a little above 20 ppm. I've tried lean nitrates and all it does is make me worry if I have enough. 
4. Increase you micro nutrients and iron. You want to spike the water to get the plants growing. You are only dosing

Element	ppm/degree
B	0.02
Cu	0.00
Fe	0.18
Mg	0.04
Mn	0.05
Mo	0.00
Zn	0.01
dGH	0.01 

EI recommends .09 boron every other day or you can do 0.05 every day which is 5 ml of your micros. You can dose more iron as long as it is not the Seachem one. I dose extra .4 ppm iron on top of what comes from CSM+B because of my plant mass. 

You then need to reset the parameters after your water change and make sure you keep the right levels. 

Watch your C02. You might need to tweak it once the plants start growing properly.

Remember we are about growing plants not fighting algae. Every time I see algae trying to grow I focus on my plants and check what they are lacking. I never focus on the algae and try to change the water parameters to hinder algae growth because it usually makes it worse.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

This morning I did a 50% water change, cleaned the glass using a paper towel. I made sure not to touch the water. 

Here are my nitrate and phosphate numbers 2 hours after adding the dose.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Its been 5 days since I used the paper towel. My line seems to be holding. Sunday I will take it down further. I've increased my nitrates to 20ppm and phosphate to 3ppm. I pushed the lights further back and moved the plants into better location.


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## dzega (Apr 22, 2013)

BN plecos dude. get some. ottos are no good for this stuff


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

I feel like the tank is already stocked to the limit as it is. I've avoided adding a pleco due to the bio load and how clumsy they are around plants. There are not a lot of areas for a pleco to hide in this tank. Oto's are all over the glass, and I can see spots where they have cleaned up. I think between the manual removal of it, increase the ferts to get the plants growing and the oto, I should be able to over come it. I will keep tracking this thread if it helps others.


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## devilduck (May 9, 2012)

Looks like your making good headway. I lost patience and got a cheap uv unit.


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## Solcielo lawrencia (Dec 30, 2013)

philipraposo1982 said:


> in my experience that is not true, in my tank I have overdosed phosphates up to 50 parts per million and still had green spot algae present in the tank. The only thing that got rid of it for me was reducing the intensity of the light keeping the photoperiod the same


It takes some weeks for the GSA to disappear. It doesn't occur immediately.

Bump:


Italionstallion888 said:


> Its been 5 days since I used the paper towel. My line seems to be holding. Sunday I will take it down further. I've increased my nitrates to 20ppm and phosphate to 3ppm. I pushed the lights further back and moved the plants into better location.


You may have low CO2 considering how much light you have over the tank. This may be one contributing factor.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Not much else I can do for the co2 until I figure out a better diffusion method. I have fluval ceramic disc (small black one) currently at the back right just under the output nozzle. I'm looking into other methods as we speak. I have the jbl regulator. The right gauge which I believe is the working pressure is sitting at 2 currently. If I move it anymore below that with the needle valve it's overload on the tank and I can see the left hand gauge slowly drain down. I believe I have the sweet spot figured out for the needle valve, 5lb co2 tank lasted just shy of 3 months before I refilled it. just need a better way of getting the co2 into the tank. I can see micro bubbles floating around the tank, but 60% of the bubbles make it to the surface.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

So it's been another 7 days

Noticeable reduction in gsa. Now I have hair algae every where. I just reduced the photo period by an hour tonight. We will see if that helps.


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## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Another 6 days









Almost completely gone.


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