# Algae growing on substrate (won't go)



## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Sounds like you have blue green algae (BGA), which is not really an algae, but cyanobacteria.

However, it is difficult to diagnose without a picture.

How much light do you have over your tank, and how large is your tank? Also, you say that you are fertilizing, but it seems as if you are only dosing micronutrients. Do you dose macronutrients?


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## williamsonaaron (Jan 27, 2010)

Sounds like Blue green Algae. If you can confirm that then I reccomend using Maracyn to knock it out - takes about 5 days -


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Erythromycin (Maracyn) will effectively kill off the BGA, however, if you do not address the underlying problem, the BGA may come back.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

It's a 4ft tank with 2 42" 40w t8 bulbs. Sorry, what are macronutrients?


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Plants require both micronutrients (copper, manganese, boron, etc) as well as macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc). If you are only dosing the former and not the latter, your plants may not be getting enough nutrients.

You have not mentioned how large your tank is (volume wise).


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

It's 240 litres


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

For a tank that size, given your current lighting, you may not even need to dose macronutrients, depending on your bioload. 

Are you sure you have a 40 watt T8 bulbs? The highest I have seen is 32 watts


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

That's what it says on both bulbs. I'll check again tomorrow just in case. I think I might be overdosing something. The gravel that is shaded is untouched but the gravel that's exposed to light is slowly turning green.


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## kcrossley (Feb 22, 2010)

Might want to check your CO2. I had something similar happen to my tank and it was because I wasn't injecting enough CO2. Cranked up the CO2 and the problem went away. Just make sure you have a drop counter so you can monitor your CO2 levels.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I'll check it in the morning. The tops of my ambulia and another similar plant I have are brown but when they grow a new layer of leaf it turns green, could this be related?


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

A picture would be much more helpful. 

What kind of brown is on your Ambulia? Is it like a brown dust (diatom algae)? Or perhaps it is just a uniform brown (i.e. more likely the plant is dying)? There are many possibilities.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I'm sorry I can't take a photo, my threads are usually picture heavy. Anyway, my ambulia looks the same as this but not as messy http://www.aquapage.cz/Obrazky/Rostliny/Limnophila_sessiliflora.jpg

Another thing I should add is my tank is heavily infested with snails, I don't know if it's got anything to do with my problems but just a guess. I don't want to risk upping the dosage of cO2 because it's taken me months to get my plants to grow how I want them to. My ambulia is growing about 2cm a day but my hair grass is covered in brown stringy stuff and the algae on my gravel does look like the pictures I've seen of bga.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

I would take a look at this link here:

http://aquariumalgae.blogspot.com/

For more algae identification. It is hard to guess what algae is on your Hair grass without any picture. 

As for the snails, an explosion in their numbers usually means that you are overfeeding and/or there is an abundant supply of food for them. Cut back on feeding and you should see a reduction in number. Alternatively, you could always try to bait them with some food and then manually remove them. This may take a while, but you will eventually be able to make a dent in their population.

For your CO2, the fact that there is algae present means that either your CO2, lights and/or nutrients are not balanced. As a result, algae forms. While you may think you have enough CO2, you probably do not, as 2 bps on a 240 L tank is not a lot. I would invest in a drop checker with a 4 dkH reference solution to determine when you have actually reached optimal levels of CO2.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I rarely feed, the tank only houses 4 pigmy corydoras, 3 cherry shrimp, 4 otto's and 1 ram. I've been sucking the snails up every time I do a water change but there's always eggs somewhere. I've got a drop checker but I haven't got around to setting it up as I've been busy but I did suck up as much of the bga as I could last night and I'm going to put some fresh gravel in later. What can I use to narrow it down to the root problem?


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

For the BGA problem, it could be many things. It could be that you have a lack of nitrates (i.e. lack of nitrates means the plants are not doing so well, and this bacteria can fix atmospheric nitrogen, giving it an edge against the plants), or it could be low CO2, or even insufficient water flow, etc.


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## kcrossley (Feb 22, 2010)

Bigk said:


> I've got a drop checker but I haven't got around to setting it up as I've been busy but I did suck up as much of the bga as I could last night and I'm going to put some fresh gravel in later.


The drop checker is a necessity when it comes to injected CO2. You need to get that working asap so you know where you are. In my case, most of what you're referring to was caused by lack of CO2.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

Okay, I don't really know what to do at the moment. I've taken all of my hair grass out because it looked like it was slowly dying off. I haven't got money so I can't go out and buy stuff to fix it. I'll give it a clean up later, replant everything but if the algae keeps coming back I'm going to have to shut both tanks down until I get enough money to feed the hobby. Thanks for the help though


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I think I've figured it out. I've had the lights off in the tank for a few days and the blinds in my room closed and it's stopped spreading. I had 10 red cherry shrimp arrive this morning to go with my 3 others so I'm going to take all the other fish out and hope that they get a bit of cleaning done.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

I do not think RCS will eat BGA...

However, as you have found out, using a blackout method (or semi-blackout method) was slightly effective. More effective to kill off the algae would be to employ a full 3 day blackout. This means covering the tank with blankets/black garbage bags (or the like) so that no light can enter. This should kill off the BGA (try to remove as much as you can manually before the blackout, and also, after the blackout).


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I'll try it, I didn't buy them for the bga, I've been wanting to breed them for a while and 3 of my females have got saddles so they'll have the 120 litre all to themselves when I drain it and clean it. Thanks for the suggestions


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

Well today's the second day and I couldn't help but take a peak in the tank so I turned the lights on and there's nothing on the gravel, not even dead algae. It looks like new fresh gravel. I think the rcs had a big roll in it, they've all got dark green stomachs. There's still a lot of algae on the glass though. Thank you so much for the black out suggestion, I thought that it was too much light from the tank and the light that bounces in to my room and illuminates the tank, especially after the 2 weeks we just had of sun. What are the chances of it coming back?


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## MarkMc (Apr 27, 2007)

Chances are good unless you prevent the sun light from hitting the tank. If you have a CO2 system going then you probably should be dosing nitrate and phosphate. Is the substrate loaded with organics? That can contribute to BGA.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

It's an under layer of nutrient packed soil and then gravel. I'm not too worried about it happening now because the blackout and rcs have completely cleared it from what I can see, I just need to find out if light is the definite cause before I go moving the tank about.


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## FSM (Jan 13, 2009)

You don't have enough light. Pressurized CO2 isn't going to do much without more light.



Darkblade48 said:


> For a tank that size, given your current lighting, you may not even need to dose macronutrients, depending on your bioload.
> 
> Are you sure you have a 40 watt T8 bulbs? The highest I have seen is 32 watts


aquarium manufacturers package 4 foot T8 bulbs as 40 watt. Maybe they don't want people to think they are weaker than T12s, I don't know.


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## MarkMc (Apr 27, 2007)

Bigk said:


> It's an under layer of nutrient packed soil and then gravel. I'm not too worried about it happening now because the blackout and rcs have completely cleared it from what I can see, I just need to find out if light is the definite cause before I go moving the tank about.


Did you mineralize the top soil? I've read posts that you can have ammonia issues from un-mineralized top soil. That might possibly cause BGA outbreaks.
As for light it would seem if you have enough to grow BGA that you should also be able to grow plants as well. Are you dosing any macro nutrients? Are you sure that you are dosing enough CO2?


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## MarkMc (Apr 27, 2007)

FSM said:


> You don't have enough light. Pressurized CO2 isn't going to do much without more light.


Bigk said "My ambulia is growing about 2cm a day but my hair grass is covered in brown stringy stuff and the algae on my gravel does look like the pictures I've seen of bga."
How can there not be enough light? There are plants in his tank growing an inch a day!


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

Isn't ambulia a weed in fish tanks though? I know my other plants do quite well but I haven't really mixed to see if I can grow more. No I didn't mineralize the soil, I only found out about that a couple of days ago. I think it's too much sun hitting the tank along with the tank light. I had plants floating at the top for a week or so while I was trimming other plants and in that shaded spot there wasn't algae at all but in the other half of the tank it was everywhere. My lights have been back on the 11 to 11 cycle for two days and I can't see any coming back but I've stopped dosing CO2 and ferts at the moment because my plants are pretty beat up.


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## MarkMc (Apr 27, 2007)

Bigk said:


> Isn't ambulia a weed in fish tanks though? I know my other plants do quite well but I haven't really mixed to see if I can grow more. No I didn't mineralize the soil, I only found out about that a couple of days ago. I think it's too much sun hitting the tank along with the tank light. I had plants floating at the top for a week or so while I was trimming other plants and in that shaded spot there wasn't algae at all but in the other half of the tank it was everywhere. My lights have been back on the 11 to 11 cycle for two days and I can't see any coming back but I've stopped dosing CO2 and ferts at the moment because my plants are pretty beat up.


Why would depriving the plants of CO2 and ferts help them? That's like depriving an intensive care unit patient of fluids and oxygen. Are your lights on 12 hours? Get ready for a return of your algae...


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

It's a temporary thing, I want to trim everything before I start adding ferts and co2 again. I was meant to say 1 until 11. Not 11 to 11.


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

Right, everything's trimmed, the co2 is back up and I've added some ferts. I've changed the light cycle and made my room as dark as I can so I'll post if it comes back. Thanks

Kyle


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## The Plantman (May 5, 2010)

Bigk said:


> Right, everything's trimmed, the co2 is back up and I've added some ferts. I've changed the light cycle and made my room as dark as I can so I'll post if it comes back. Thanks
> 
> Kyle


I would say just do the water changes without adding firts and keep your co2 up.


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## MarkMc (Apr 27, 2007)

The Plantman said:


> I would say just do the water changes without adding firts and keep your co2 up.


Why?


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## Bigk (Jan 31, 2010)

I had my new phone back so I thought I'd take some pictures. 

Fish & Shrimp

















































Some of the plants


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