what are the different forms of algae in freshwater fish tank?

Question

i have something attached to the inside of my tank that is white and kind of fans out at the end. looks like a bunch of small pieces of lint ( no better description ) no bigger than 1/8 inch. upon further inspection, my plants are covered with it also. it is a 185 gal. tank with a jack dempsey and i had an albino oscar until 1 day ago when it passed away. now trying to figure out what killed the oscar. tank is about 5 months old. these fish were in a 55 gal. together with a green terror that i left in the 55.the dempsey seems to be fine. the oscar stayed at the surface for a couple days and acted as if he was struggling to breathe. water tests are fine, tested three times now with new test kit.i cycled water for 30 days before putting fish in and used some water out of the 55. i didnt have a light for the 185 but it sits under the ceiling light so i left it on during the day. now that i have a tank light, i can see growth of some sort inside tank, but you really have to look for it.

the plants in my tank are not live, they are plastic. didnt see any pictures that resemble what im seeing in my tank. fuzz is a better description. what is hydra?

Answer 1

The word algae represents a large group of different organisms from different phylogenetic groups, representing many taxonomic divisions. In general algae can be referred to as plant-like organisms that are usually photosynthetic and aguatic, but do not have true roots, stems, leaves, vascular tissue and have simple reproductive structures. They are distributed worldwide in the sea, in freshwater and in moist situations on land. Most are microscopic, but some are quite large, e.g. some marine seaweeds that can exceed 50 m in length.

This site will give you an indepth info about algaes:
http://www.lenntech.com/eutrophication-water-bodies/algae.htm

Answer 2

It's hard to say without seeing them, but these might be the beginning of a brush (beard) algae - see photo in article: http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/red-algae.html . Usually this grows on plants, but can spread to other items in the tank, and it's a harder algae than most to eliminate.

I don't know how big your Dempsey is, or how well he'd tolerate other fish, but one of the best controls is a Siamese (not Chinese) algae eater - it's the only critter that will touch the stuff.

If this is your algae it's in the red algae family, so it's tolerant of low light conditions. You can do some control by removing all light (not good for your plants), doing lots of water changes to keep the nutrients in the tank as low as you can, and adding a phosphate removing pad to your filter. If you add any fertilizers containing iron for your tank plants, stop - it also needs iron as a nutrient. The algae likes lower pH levels, so if you can add a mesh bag of coral or limestone to your filter to raise the pH, this will help.

I'd also suggest clipping any infected leaves on your plants (you can't remove the algae without doing a lot of damage to the leaves). Any rocks or ornaments you ccan take out and soak in a 10% bleach solution for 15 minutes and rinse well. I'd keep them out of the tank until you get the algae under control.

If this still doesn't look like what you're seeing, you can add a comment to this question using the pencil icon under the question. I'll check back later.

Here's a page with other algae types for comparison: http://www.floridadriftwood.com/algae_identification.html

ADDITION: This is what a hydra looks like, they're around 1/2 inch or so: http://home.comcast.net/~gorpli/pics/hydra.jpg

Is there anyway you can post a photo through one of the image-sharing websites? You can add the link to the photo as a comment to this question. If you don't know how, but you have a photo, email it to me at [e-mail]. I can get it posted.

Answer 3

I can't really say with out seeing it, but it sounds more like a mold/fungus problem.

Take a sample into a good Aquarium store. they should be able to help you out.

In the meantime...can you move your fish to another tank?