The Puffer Forum

So, I have a huge outbreak in algae in my Abei puffer tank. My guess is that it's a combination of several things, being:

1) The days are getting longer, so there's more/extra light.
2) Upgraded my light fixture about 2 weeks ago to something more powerful, meaning there's more chance for algae growth.
3) Did a recent trimming and had to remove a few almost-dead plants (meaning there are more nutrients for the algae to use).
4) Nothing in there to eat algae (obviously).

So, my question is, could I potentially relocate my Abei for about 4-7 days in a 10 gallon tank, and fill his current tank with my Nerites, Pond Snails, and a few Otos to do a decent clean-up job, then remove the Otos and Nerites (put them back into their original tanks) and put the puffer back in, or am I being extremely cruel?

The main problem is that it's growing ALL over my big mounted drift wood, but it's so big that I can't actually remove it unless I completely tear the tank down. I would tear it down if it got RID of the green algae, but I know that's not how it works, so there's no point in me spending all that time doing it.

PS - I've started to reduce the amount of light in the tank (even though my fixture is a PITA and won't let me only operate with 1 bulb ) and added in a very large Water Sprite in hopes that it's incredibly-quick growing speeds will use up most of the algaes' "food", so to speak.

Anyone have any other suggestions (except for blacking out the tank, as it will likely cause my plants and such to die off)? I was going to pick up some really large Apple snails and see if they could do cleanup without getting completely butchered, but I didn't really want to test out my theories.

I have that trouble in Bubba's tank. Nasty, slimy green hair/slime algae on everything. I pull it out by the handful every few days. I wish I knew what caused it, but when I move, he's getting a completely new tank setup. New substrate, new decor, new plants, even a completely different tank. Whatever this stuff is, it won't go away so its time for drastic measures. Its not BGA, but seems to be almost a combo of BGA and green hair algae.

What you can try with the light is breaking up your lighting schedule. There's a theory that algae can't use light unless it has it for 8 hours straight or so.. but plants can. So you set your lights to come on for 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening, and supposedly that's supposed to help with algae. I have no idea if it works.

The apple snails would probably eat your plants...

Maybe put a divider in the tank and let the otos, nerites, etc work on half the tank, then switch them to the other half? Probably not with your big hunk of driftwood...

The water sprite is a good idea.. I'd try that first, but manually remove as much of the algae as you possibly can.

What type of algae do you have? Different types are handled differently.

Same as you: Thread/Hair algae and the slimy green algae that blankets everything. I have it in my 20 gallon, but my Nerites and Otos happily feast on it, so it's very rarely found now.

The divider thing won't really work, unfortunately. I'll just have to pick up a whole bunch of fast-growing plants (right now it's mostly crypts and ferns, which are USELESS at growing ), so I'll snag some more watersprite and load the tank up with java moss, hehe.

At least I'm not the only one stuck with algae!

Get some Barley Straw Extract. You can add it right into the water and it is safe for the fish and inverts. It's all I use to control hair algae.

Oooh! Thanks for the advice! I'll definitely look for some around here. Do you pick yours up at your store, or is it from some other type of retail outlet?

http://www.macarthurwatergardens.com/mi ... ract.shtml
Here is the product itself. I get it through my store but you may be able to search the internet and try to get the best deal.