# Green water with wonder grow tablets



## CAN_chic (Jan 21, 2008)

Could have been the root tabs, not too sure though.

Have you tried a blackout on the tank yet?


----------



## medicineman (Sep 28, 2005)

As in most substrate additive and base fertilizer use, care should be taken when doing major uprooting of plants.

A good practice is to do a vacuum cleaning of any fertilizer part/gunk/debris that are unearthed while doing a large WC.

Major rescaping an existing setup could also trigger a great unbalance, especially when you have quite much light over a tank.

If the tabs are reasonably some time away ever since you placed them, it is very likely that most of the water soluble parts are long gone/worn out, leaving mostly the solid minerals, much less soluble part and the carrier - which do not induce much of the green water precursors (hence you can notice this from the slowing down of growth rate).

Several series of frequent water changes, and better still if you have UV system would quickly clear up the problem.


----------



## mrkookm (Apr 4, 2007)

Dr. T I think you have some other factor causing the green water because I use the WG + others heavily and experience no such issues when uprooting plants. I use 2 per plant as well.

Back in my earlier noob stage I got GW due to lack of Co2 + young bio filter and *high* lighting


----------



## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

A Gnarly uprooting and rescaping can easily lead to green water if you do not immediately follow up with large water changes, if you redo more than say 30-50% of the sediment, even here you should always do a large water change.

New tanks sometimes get it.
ADA As can easily cause GW blooms, which is why in new tanks, GW is common(especially if you do not do water changes or you use Fishless cycling with NH4). 

I recently decided to see if I just did 1x week 70% water changes, what a newly set up, well run ADA tank would do with a high light situation: GW came after 3 weeks.

Generally right at the point where the bacterial colony is established also.

WG tablets may, may.....have caused the GW indirectly..........by adding nutrients from the sediment to the water column which could have driven the rates of plant growth faster if things where pretty lean in the water column.

The increase nutrient availability under limiting conditions is a classic cause for algae, however, it's not due to limiting nutrients, we can test and clearly show that cannot be the reason, but rather.......now the plants have a higher demand and faster rate of uptake for CO2.

Which if you fiddle with and raise up /down after redoing an established tank after a large uprooting, or a new tank, you can get GW fairly consistently.

So CO2 was not scaled up to meet the nutrient demands, you went from limiting PO4 say, to now limiting CO2.But that's *your/our fault as hobbyists* when that happens, PO4 or water column nutrients are not to blame. 

GW is the least destructive algae there is.
And it's easy to get rid of with a UV/micron filter etc.
You can induce it and test it readily. So it makes an ideal test subject for algae study.

I still do not know what species it is without using a SEM.
They are in the 2-5 micron size ranges(like many bacteria) and faster as heck.
Some day I'll get around to it.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


----------



## Church (Sep 14, 2004)

Really, a submersible UV filter would be worth the $50 investment. It's something that I think EVERYONE should have around, just for the few times when they're needed.

Green water happens. There are several reasons for it, and usually, more often than not, it's the kind of thing that will stay gone once you get rid of it. But it's the getting rid of it part that can be tricky... unless you just use UV!


----------



## dr.tran (Oct 8, 2007)

Hey medicineman, I'm not trying to down play ur product but I thought it might be nessary to include the brand of the tablet incase if it did matter.

Yeah I've been pumping the co2 and keeping a consistant fert routine and pretty much banished all algae in my tank. The only thing left was some GSP that I didn't get a chance to clean from the back tank.

I know that the wonder grow tablets may not have been the primary reason, but before when I have uprooted with this super high light, it never had green water. I think with the combination of 2-3 month old tabs it caused it. 

Actually on that day, there was about a 60% water change.

Well I know the UV route is the best but I figured I'm only masking the problem. Is is possible that if I crank my Co2 or increase my EI dosing, that I can get the plants to out compete the green water? I'm gonna try to fish out my endlers and replace them with daphina in the mean time but I can't do black outs at all. Last time I did that to combate my algae problems, half of my single eriocaulon thialand died. This time I'm not gonna risk it with all the new eriocaulons I got.

Hey Tom, I'm currently doing reseach for St. Francis college, I might be able to get a chance to use the Floresent or just plant old simple light microscope to id the green water. I believe its Chlamydomonadales since I found that before around my area. But I'll check later.


----------



## dr.tran (Oct 8, 2007)

ashappar said:


> well maybe :hihi:
> my tanks are clean, I dont see algae in them -- but I know its there, just waiting for me to screw up. I cant prove it, but I think every kind of algae thats ever been in my tanks is still there.


 
lol. Yeah I think there should be the algae spores that will potentially start algae all over again if I screw up. But lately, its a giant improvement. I use to have GSA, GDA, Blue green algae, hair algae, and some staghorn. So I increased my co2 and made sure I never skiped a day of my EI routine and I started to win. For 3 weeks I've been beating it down and the final blow was the excel treatment. 

But now green water with avengence and this time its personal. I don't know if pumping more co2 would help but I did so and introduced alot of daphina. *crosses fingers*

I probally will get a UV sterilizer but man I am pretty much broke right now with school eating up so much of my money along with the hobby. So job hunting starts now until I can buy another item for the hobby.


----------



## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

dr.tran said:


> Hey Tom, I'm currently doing reseach for St. Francis college, I might be able to get a chance to use the Floresent or just plant old simple light microscope to id the green water. I believe its Chlamydomonadales since I found that before around my area. But I'll check later.


It's not Chlamy, that's easy to ID.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


----------



## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

Dr Tran, you cannot out wit GW with nutrients, limiting or cranking it up either.........it needs killing.......

The critical thing here for folks to understand with algae, it's the induction of germination that's key, you stop that, you stop new algae from growing.
Once it's there however, the adults will hang on for dear life.........literally.

So if you kill what's there. often times it will never come back unless you do a large uprooting etc.

Even without the root tabs(plain sand), if you uproot or remove a large sword etc, and then do not do the water change after, you can get GW.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


----------



## DiscusIt'sWhats4DinneR (Apr 25, 2008)

i have green water right now  

i pulled up some plants and moved some stuff around, did a little water change..... about 20%.

It wasnt enough....

ive had it a few times.
what ive done in the past was 50% wc's EVERY DAY until it cleared.... took a a little more than a week. this is what im trying now :/


----------



## dr.tran (Oct 8, 2007)

It seems some people have sovled there green water problems with a dapnina cage. Essentially its a breeder trap full of daphina that will get green water and water current still flows through it. 

I don't have a breeder trap but instead I just put some daphina in it. Do real change yet but I'm waiting for that sudden huge daphina population burst to happen.


----------



## DiscusIt'sWhats4DinneR (Apr 25, 2008)

DiscusIt'sWhats4DinneR said:


> i have green water right now
> 
> i pulled up some plants and moved some stuff around, did a little water change..... about 20%.
> 
> ...


 
i kept doing the water changes and got tired of fighting green water.

yesterday i went to petsmart and bought a 24 watt uv sterilizer...55 dollars!
set it up and did a big water change, and then another big one.

this thing is the green water algae grim reaper.


----------



## dr.tran (Oct 8, 2007)

Alright!!! I love daphnia!!! 

I was putting alot of daphnia in before but they kept on dieing because I still had co2 and ferts. So I did a water change and I didn't add any ferts or co2. Getting scared that my plants will die though. Then after one day my tank was incredibley green.

All hope was almost gone so I decided to go for broke and went ouside to my super daphnia factory, AKA green water trash can. So I grabed as much as I possibley can and just dumped them in my tank. Over night and and OMG!! I can finally see the back of my tank again!!! Amazing! its about 50% clearer!

I'm just gonna leave on the lights a little bit today just so my plants don't die and just leave it and hope everything will be alright tommrow. 

For now Daphnia = Green water killing machine.


----------



## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

There are many very old post on other sites about Daphnia and rotifers doing this. As long as your fish do not eat them..............and you reduce the light/have less light etc.

Folks with higher light will have more trouble getting rid of GW without Micron filtration or UV.

UV is nice and simple, flip a switch to kill, flip it off to not kill.
Then you test again to see what caused the GW(repeating this pattern 6-8 X is wise- then you can be far more sure than once that what you see is cause, not mere correlation once- which you really cannot say too much about)
And GW does no real harm to plants or fish etc.

So it's an ideal model alga.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


----------



## A Hill (Jul 25, 2005)

Green water... Its great stuff. It usually will keep the other algae at bay for me when I set up a new tank and the show goldfish breeders actually try to enduce the stuff! Its crazy.

Right now I've got it in my 55g after adding some more mulm from my 10g.

I've decided to try the clam/mussel route since they're neat, and I've only got sand and some moss and floating stems so they won't really mess up my tank.

I haven't turned the light down. I have no CO2 at the moment (yeah yeah yeah I'm weird) 

There are 20 freshwater mussels and they're all about the size of a dollar bill and one freshwater clam, and even as of yesterday the water was a bit hazy. 

I'm going to see if they can take it all out within a few days, then I want to try Daphinia. 

All I really need to do is a day or two black out and a water change or two, but thats the easy way 

-Andrew


----------



## dr.tran (Oct 8, 2007)

I just cancelled my order for a UV sterilizer. I already know about the methods on getting rid of green water. All the gadgets or filters that can be used for it but I want to hit the root of the issue and not just get rid of them. Thats why I made this thread, perhaps there was some way to balance out my tank and get rid of the algae. I've read about it before where some people where low in co2 and after they pumped it up, it disapeared soon. 

However, I choosed to go with daphnia. There was no fish in this tank. Last night it was clear and I confirmed it today but running 130w over my 29 gal tank to see if I could induce it to bloom again. There was absolutly no change. In 3 days the daphnia cleared my tank. I am just forever grateful to daphnia. Now that theres thousands of them in my tank, I will put my fishes back in and maybe the over abundence of food could get them to spawn.


----------

