how can i keep my 55 gallon tank from turning green?

Question

every time i clean it ,i do a complete tear down..it only take 30 days and then its green again..the tank sits near 3 windows in a bay..only has sunlight for12 hrs a day..but abient light most of the other time..what can i do to stop the green slime

Answer 1

You don't need to do a complete tear down to simply clean your tank or control algae. Move the tank away from the windows as it is getting way too much natural light. Also, if you are using tank lighting, use a timer so that your tank receives only 8 - 10 hours of light per day. The amount of light depends upon the type of plants and animal life in your tank. Also, ensure the temperature is correct for the inhabitants of your tank.

EDIT: Bob~ as a follow-up question, will you ask why your goldfish keep disappearing when you put them in a tank with your Oscars? :D

There is much information on this problem at your local library, online, and any reasonably informed pet shop employee can give you good advice, too.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Stop doing complete teardowns of your tank. Change 25% of the water, once a week, instead. Tearing your tank down completely so often is making your water parameters go wild. This contributes to the algae problem when there is a nitrates spike right after a cycle has finished.

Try to reduce the amount of light your tank is getting. 12 hours is still pretty excessive, you want to cut it down to about 8 hours. Throw a towel over the tank if you have to.

Be careful not to overfeed. Feed only what your fish can eat in 2 minutes, and then remove the rest of the food with a net immediately. Any leftover food will rot and eventually produce nutrients that the algae can use to grow.

Keep up with the weekly water changes to keep nitrates under control.

Answer 3

Hi Bob, What concerns me far more than your algae problem is you saying you completely tear down your tank every 30 days-poor fish, they will be constantly going thought the hell of a cycling tank. The attached links tell you about the nitrogen cycle, fishless cycling & setting up & maintaining a new tank. By the way-your tank in a bay window is getting far too much light & needs to be moved to reduce the algae growth.

Answer 4

Look at the lights over a reef tank,they are at least as bright as the light your tank gets.Yet you don't often see algae in a reef system. This is because the water is absent the nutients that you fill your tank with. Stop doing tear downs,that won't work. Stop overfeeding,learn to do regular weekly small water changes. Algae can't grow without nutrients(Nitrite,Nitrate,ammonia,phosphates). Learn to clean your gravel and how to manage the stuff that feed the algae,and consider ways to stop any DIRECT sunlight. Bright indirect light is OK.

Answer 5

thats ALOT of sunlight, thats like saying "well this big mac only has 500 calories, why does it make me fat?" reamove it from near the window and get a pleco or algae eater if it is a tropical aquarium but DO NOT get a pleco/ algae eater if you keep goldfish, it will attack them, live plants will steal the nutrients that algae eats and i like undergravel filters as well, i like to put an undergravel filter with the Penguin Bio-Wheel filter in my tanks, they both do a great job with biological filtration, you could run the undergravel filter off a pump so there is more oxygen in the water and less Co2 so the alage will be less prominent, and a regular old algae scraper will take it off the walls in just a couple min. of scraping once a week between the monthly water change

Answer 6

Yes, the tear downs are doing nothing but interupting your biological filters.
You will need to either move your tank or find a way to block the sunlight. It's getting way way too much. You can try adding some live plants to compete with the algae, but with that much sunlight I doubt it will work.

Answer 7

take the tank away from anywindows
feed your fish 2 a week
leave the light on for only 8 hours a day
i have the same problem whenever i clean it it will turn green withing a month or 2 and i had enough of it and i bough a UV sterilizer now the water is clear

Answer 8

Agree with all above about stopping the tear downs. I have 1 of my aquariums near a large window as well. I covered 3 sides of the outside of the aquarium with black decoration paper. This helped my algae problem allot. 35yr exp.

Answer 9

You may be getting way too much sunlight. No need to do all those teardowns since this stops the natural cycling of the tank.

Answer 10

Well, sunlight produces algae. If your fishtank is near 3 windows, you can't really stop the algae from producing. You could buy a algae eater, but If you really want it to stop i suggest you move the tank away from windows. Hope this helps, and good luck on your tank algae problem.