Help! Algae Bloom!?

Question

I have a pretty bad algae bloom. I've tried covering the tank up, keeping out the sun light and it's still bad. Any other ideas?

Answer 1

Definitely increase water changes to remove nutrients. The nitrates eventually act as fertilizer. Use a gravel vacuum to remove any organic material that may have built up in your gravel.

Check your water source so you can eliminate this as a source of nutrients - nitrates can get into the tank this way, some water companies add phosphate as a way to prevent pipes from corroding. Phosphate is a good plant fertilizer as well. You can get phosphate pads in your pet/fish store's filter media section for a few bucks and cut them to fit in your filter. If you find your tap water has nitrates, you can switch to bottled water or use a reverse-osmosis filter to remove it.

Also, be sure what you have is algae. Cyanobacteria looks like a dark blue-green algae, but it's actually bacteria - see photo: http://www.aquamax.de/Shop/Artikelbilder/Zusatzbilder/Algen%20im%20Aquarium_Blaualgen%20-%20Cyanobacteria_STUG_cyano1.jpg This also requires nutrients and a water change would still be needed. But rather than turn off the lights, add aquarium plants and turn lights on for longer - true plants can out-compete cyanobacteria for food (as long as lights are on) and starve it out.

A good first step for either is to scrape and siphon as much of it out of the tank as possible.

Answer 2

algae blooms are caused by lots of nutrients in the water (fish wastes) as well as extreme lighting. Since the sun hits it, thats an intense lighting source that can cause a all out bloom of algae. What type of algae is it? like is it algae growing on surfaces or the water turning just straight green?

One factor of huge algae growths could be the concentration of nitrates or ammonia in your aquarium. These chemicals act like fertilizers. If you have live plants in your tank, then you have a limiting nutrient that is preventing the plants from using the excess nutrients. Usually the limiting nutrient is CO2. Just do water changes to keep the levels down.

Another way is to get algae eaters, they get rid of most types of algae, but not all (they struggle in eating spot algae and never eats black beard algae).

Answer 3

What size tank? My solution won't be cost-effective for a tank under 20 gallons... We recently had a HORRIBLE problem with an algae bloom (email me if you want to see some scary pictures! Ugh!!) and we tried everything you can think of except chemicals which I refuse to add to my tank. Nothing helped. Finally we broke down and bought a 9watt UV sterilizer. By day 4 we have a crystal clear tank. And our tank was BAD. I mean pea soup bad. The water tested perfect though strangely enough. I had fish experts telling me it was impossible (I sent them the pictures and they responded "oh..wow" LOL). The uv sterilizer was THE best purchase I have ever made. www.drsfosterandsmith.com has it for $111 including shipping. I can't recommend this enough! Please let me know how it goes! I feel your pain more than you know!

Answer 4

how long did you try the black out ?? it may take upto 2 weeks for the algae to die off from blacking out the tank. the problem with doin it this way is , the dead algae will foul water quicker then you can blink your eyes, so you have to keep up wth good water changes while your doing the black out , and vacumms as well , change the filter media , or rinse it daily . 10% water changes daily with blacking out the tank .. wich means no light whatsoever.. once you get it knocked down , you need to plant live plants in there.. alot of them , to outgrow the algae wich is going to compete for nutrients in the water.

Answer 5

Get some PLecos in pet shop. They will eat and control the Algae

Answer 6

Use the algae cleaner or bring an algae eater.

Answer 7

do you have live plants in there? I notice they cause alot of algae. Do you have an algae eater? That could assist in keeping it somewhat under control. Otherwise, do partial water changes weekly.