# Spidery threads in my aquarium



## BBradbury

Hello Bell. Your description leads me to believe you have a form of algae. Possibly a form of what is called "Red or Beard" algae. This type is a little hard to get rid of and typically grows on plants. I wouldn't recommend adding any chemicals to your tank other than what you add normally. Try some of these natural remedies used to control algae: Reduce the time your tanks lights are on, reduce the amount you feed and or fertilize, add a couple of fast growing stem plants to the tank, like Water Sprite or Water Wisteria, and perform larger and more frequent water changes over the next few weeks. Any of these will help control the growth of algae. 

Keep me posted if you like,

BBradbury


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## mylittlefish

Physically pull it out of there.

Do all the mentioned above , from Colorado Guy :>)

I can say that, because I was born in Denver.....

It will NOT just go away...... you need to take IT and possibly what it is attached to and trash it.


Ps. I just love a huge thriving tank of Wisteria and Sprite.


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## Bell

I tried to take a pic so that you could have a better idea what I'm describing. It's not very good. I haven't got a fancy macro camera. I hope you can see the web-like threads. Are you sure it's algae?


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## BBradbury

Hello again. Littlefish may be right. You may have to physically remove this stuff. However, if the plant is healthy, which it appears to be, I'd be inclined to observe for a little while and proceed with the remedies I mentioned earlier. 

If after a week or two, you don't see improvement, then trim away the affected parts of the plant. There are more aggressive things you can try, but I'd exhaust all the natural remedies first.

BBradbury


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## Bell

Thanks mylittlefish & bbradbury... I'll keep an eye on it. I saw it a couple of weeks back. I thought it was a hair that fell in when I opened the lid, but when I reached in to take it out there was nothing in my hands. I was puzzled by the delicate threads that seem to break at a touch but then it disappeared after a couple of days as mysteriously as it appeared, and I forgot about it and never asked here on the forum thinking it was gone. 

Now it's back again, and there's more than last time. Wonder if it'll go away on its own? I just did a 10% WC on Friday, so it's not like the water is dirty. I've been thinking about trimming that moss for a while now anyway, so I'll just see what happens until my next WC.


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## gbose

Bell,

That's algae all right. I have some of that in my tank. I just yank it out when I see it.... not sure that's the best way, but it works so far...

I would urge you to change your water much more -- 50% water changes every week are good!

Regards,

GB


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## Bell

Good... another vote for algae  Not that algae is good, but I was beginning to think it was some kind of fungus. I couldn't yank it out as it breaks apart easily and then floats all over the place. Instead I used a net and waved it about in the plants to try and fish them out. I don't see anything in the tank right now, but I didn't see anything in the net after either... mysterious stuff! 

50% water changes? Are you sure it won't affect my shrimps? I only do 20% weekly at the moment, don't really want to force them to molt unnecessarily. 

I'll keep you guys posted if this stuff comes back or not.


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## danakin

Easy way to remove that is to get a toothbrush and twirl it like you're twirling up spaghetti. 

Looks like staghorn to me.


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## magicmagni

It looks like hair Algae to me. There are certain critters you can add to your tank to keep it in check. Amano shrimps can eat it. Fish that will eat it are Siamese Algae Eater (SAE) American Flag fish I hear will eat it too. I used to have this growing in hairgrass. Toothbrush works well too to get it off.

Also make sure your plants are getting enough "food" and your Co2 levels are not too low.


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## Bell

I have I guess what you all here call a low tech tank? A bubble filter with a sponge, heater set at 23°C, a 15W special plant light that claims to inhibit algae that's on for a few hrs in the morning, off most afternoon and on again for a bit in the evening for a total of 11 hrs a day. Critters and feeding as stated in original post. I don't monitor CO2. 

Ages ago before I switched to this light I had what I thought was staghorn but maybe I was wrong. It was yucky to touch, very tough, and black and impossible to yank out. I threw out the infested rocks and gravel, trimmed off half my plant leaves ( they looked so sad after!) and dosed the rest of the tank with flourish excel. I also had a blackish fuzz on my driftwood which after the flourish treatment turned orange then I took it out and scrubbed it and both algaes have not returned since. That plant light must work somehow. 

In any case if I'm getting algae again something mustn't be right...


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## malaybiswas

That is probably thread algae. if you don't address it soon, very soon the spidery web will consume the better part of you tank. Manual removal with tooth brush is good, but it is not possible to get everything out that way and unless you address the root cause, they will (or some other algae) will come back. None of reduced photo period, chemical treatment, fast growing plants, reduced fertilization etc, addresses the root cause (i can sign it) which almost always happens to be an imbalance in lights, co2 and nutrients (and may be not the right spectrum). Since you did not mention the specs in your tank (what kind of lights, how long, do you dose co2, nutrients, do you know the concentrations of co2, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, phosphates, iron etc., how long has this tank been established), it is not easy to suggest some possible corrective measures, but in a very general way if you have just moss in your tank, try to address the lights first. For a 29g tank with just moss in it, a single T5 or T8 should be more than sufficient. Also, start with short photo period...say 5 hours and gradually (weekly) increase it by not more than 15-30 mins at a time till you get an idea what is the tipping point. If you are not dosing co2, there is no need to add any ferts for moss alone. they will grow just fine with the nutrients coming from fish/shrimp food and wastes. If you have co2 that is good but make sure it is injected at a stable rate and not fluctuating often. Even with co2, i would recommend very low dosing of nutrient if at all any, just doing K and micros is fine (once a week), NO3 and P will come from fish food/waste.

Address those and you should be able to overcome the algae. Just don't get impatient and try to get magic happen over night or it will harm more than just the algae.

Cheers!


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## Bell

Erm... I don't have anything fancy in my tank. Just a bubble filter and a heater set at 23C or 73F (I'm just repeating myself now). No co2 or ferts etc... nada. My tank is small, 54 liters or 14 gallons and it's been running since July last year. I mentioned already it's lit with one 15watt tube for approximately 11 hrs a day. I'm at home now so I can look at it... it's called Trocal Special Plant with a "special spectrum that inhibits algae growth" It is 3000 Kelvin and 950 Lumen, the light is an annoying yellow-ish colour but I've come to terms with that... Oh and I also have a reflector that claims to double the amount of light cos my dwarf baby tears were not doing anything except die before I installed it.

For plants I have:
dwarf baby tears covering about 1/3d of the bottom, 
a bunch of java moss, 
2 bunches of stringy moss (Leptodictyum riparium I think?), 
2x Anubias (nana), 
a couple of bunches of water hyssop(?)
3 cladohora balls. 

Tank critters:
3 otocinclus
approximately 15-20 red cherry shrimps
a small swarm of seed shrimp (not by choice) 

Water Parameters:
NO3 <10
NO2 0
GH 10˚d
KH about 6˚d
pH 7.2
CU 0
I have no test for phosphates, iron or anything else.

what else can I say? Oh water change is 20% once a week.

Phew! That was a lot of work! @[email protected]


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## magicmagni

I was under the impression you had Co2. Well I would look out for any limiting factor. If there is short supply of macro nutrients it could slow down plant growth and give algae the upper hand. Also if non CO2 and too much light then CO2 can be the limiting factor. Contrary to popular belief an excess of nutients will not cause algae in a planted tank, but with excess there is probably a larger potential of algae if one thing gets limited. 

Its possible that you are getting ammonia spikes with just a bubble filter in there. Adding lots of fast growing stem plants will help that.


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## Robert H

Increase your maintenance, do water changes more often, celan your filter once a week, vacum around the substrate. After removing the algae, keeping the tank cleaner will help keep the algae at a minimum


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## Bell

I have a seachem ammonia indicator that should change colour when it detects ammonia in the water. And aside from when the tank was newly set up, the indicator is always at "safe". I don't know if it might be broken but I doubt it. I'll see if vacuuming and squeezing the sponge more often will help. 

I don't vacuum at every water change cos my substrate isn't very fine, and dislodges a lot of my dwarf baby tears... I also only squeeze out my sponge in change water only once a month or so, cos I don't wanna mess up the bacteria in it. But I'll give a few things a go. More frequent (or larger) water changes, vacuuming, filter cleaning, and perhaps reduced light... I hope my plants don't die. 

I'm still quite new to aquarium keeping, so any help is appreciated...  Learning new stuff all the time here! You forumers are awesome!


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## malaybiswas

Since you a low tech simple system, I would just recommend lowering the photo period first (apart from manual clean up). After a while tank chemistries fall apart and need to be re-adjusted. You might also want to check the iron content in your water tested from local LFS if you can. It should be low at around 0.1ppm.


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## Bell

There _shouldn't_ be any iron in the water... I do use water conditioner, like Sera Aquatan in my water changes which eliminates chlorine and supposedly binds heavy metals like copper and iron. Same goes for Sera Toxivec, again treating heavy metals and neutralising ammonia, which I will occasionally add but not every week. I've recently also started adding some filtered water into my change water, trying to lower GH a bit (Previously I stated my GH was at about 10˚d but about 3 weeks ago it was about 14˚d), the filter removes again chlorine and heavy metals as well as lime/calcium among other things. 

Maybe I'm messing around too much do you think? Changing things and upsetting the balance perhaps? I'll definitely tweak my photo period though, and up the water changes. Those are easy to do. Just vacuumed the crud from my gravel. The spot directly under my filter was disgusting! *yucks* bye bye plant nutrients... but I didn't vacuum where the baby tears were growing cos I hate replanting them, they're such a pain! 

I also squeezed out the filter sponge, which I thought was ok since I only removed about half the normal amount of water while vacuuming cos today is not a scheduled WC day, and I normally wouldn't clean the filter and do a full WC at the same time. I "replenished" the bacteria with Sera Bio Nitrivec. (I know I use a lot of Sera products, but they're really the easiest to get here)

I know I don't really have to give a complete account of what I'm doing, cos it's so mundane, but I just really want someone to speak up if I've done something wrong... that's all 


Edited to add:
My unscheduled half of normal water change is turning out to be more like a 50% change. I'd posted a couple of weeks ago in the invertebrates section that I was trying to lower GH by using brita filtered water. At that time I simply dumped a few jug-fulls into the tank and half my shrimps died from shock resulting from rapid parameter change. I may have mixed too large a portion of filtered water again today into my new water and they were exhibiting some similar erratic swimming behaviour so I had to take steps to correct it before I lost another half of my shrimps... I've now got a bucket of "normal" hard water flowing slowly through an air tube into the tank. This Sucks. Oh well... clean water hooray?


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