The Puffer Forum

I have two young figure 8 puffers, that get along peacefully, in a 30 gallon tank.... But my tank always looks nasty and green. I do small water changes every week and I scrub the glass real well. I was told not to use the algae drops because they can do more harm than good. Thoughts? Are there any algae eating fish, like Plecos, that can go in the tank with the F8s? I can't find much information on tankmates that will keep the algae under control.... Thank you

How long has the tank been set up? It is natural for a new system to go through an algae bloom. Is your water change schedule like? Do you think perhaps you're overfeeding?

Bought the tank (new) in May. Then cycled the tank through June and July. The nitrogen cycle completed and we didn't have any ammonia/nitrites the whole month of August. We added the F8 puffers at the end of August. All levels are doing good. Puffers seem happy. I read it's really easy to over feed them and they don't have any limits and will just keep eating if it's available, so I've been doing my best not to over feed them. We've been doing about 25% weekly water changes.

How exactly did you cycle those two months?
No, you cannot add any algae eating animals. Green water should clear up after a while. Do you have any solid algae growing on surfaces?

I've been having a lot of problems with algae in my freshwater dwarf puffer tank, so I've been doing research for ways to get rid of it. In my case the algae is a blue-green colour, which means it's a mix of bacteria and algae. Now it's under control though I still have some algae hanging around. Here's what I've tried and other things you can do:

1. Live plants are helpful because they compete with the algae for nutrients. There are live plant species which are ok for brackish, including java fern. Since my tank is freshwater I have java fern, duckweed and water lettuce so far. I'm gradually replacing the fake plants with real ones. Bonus is that live plants clean the water and provide oxygen to the fish. I have found that the plants made the most difference.

2. Less light in the tank. You can use real or fake floating plants to reduce light, or if you have adjustable LEDs you can lower the light intensity. Another trick is to attach the lights to a timer and reduce the time the lights are on to 8 - 10 hours a day.

3. Reduce the amount of phosphorus which the algae feeds on. I found filter pads (Seapora Phos Pads) at my LFS which can be cut to size and used in the filter to absorb extra phosphorus. Also, don't overfeed, and for a while it might be an idea to siphon out any leftover food each day until the algae is under control.

4. UV light - UV will kill "bad" bacteria and algae spores in the water and gets rid of cloudy or green water. It does not harm beneficial tank bacteria. However, it cannot be directly exposed to the fish or it will kill them. UV lights are used in canister filters, some power filters or in sumps. I use a canister filter with a UV light for my high brackish GSP tank.