The Puffer Forum

ok, so i finally solved my BGA problem (switched out all my sand becuase that's where it was growing and put new fresh sand in and haven't' seen it since) and now have a hair/green algae problem. I do weekly water changes of 25% and the water parims are normal (0-0-0, the last zero is because it is heavily planted) and ph of 7.6. i am not dosing with any ferts or co2 as when ever i do either it seems to just make the algae problems worse. i'm looking at possibly a biological way to take care of it. i've tried otos and they have never done anything for my algae before, and shrimp are out of the question due it it being a puffer tank. i have two ideas in mind and am open to any ideas. currently i am thinking of either trying otos again (this time in a larger group, i only got them in 3's in the past and i'm thinking a larger group might encourage more natural behavior) or getting a single panda garra. i've been researching the panda garra but have found little consistent information and was hoping some of you might be able to help me out regarding them. any help with the algae problem would be great. my other problem is my water seems to turn yellowish a day or two after water changes. i believe it has to do with the new drift wood i added, but i boiled it before adding it in and have never had this problem with the drift wood in my 20gal tank. any help as to fixing this problem would be great too. anyway my puffer is doing great and is fat and happy. and the 20gal tank is doing fine. i'm currently searching to a 55 to upgrade them too but got jipped out of a sale at petco becuase they never restocked the 55's before it ended and refused to give me a rain check. anyway any help would be great. thanks

Otocinclus cats doe not eat hair algae. They prefer diatoms and will eat soft green algae, but not hard green spot algae.

If you have an algae problem, you have too much light, too few, too many, or unbalanced nutrients, too few plants, incorrect spectrum,or some combo of those. Plants do need a positive nitrate reading, plus multiple other nutrients.

Do any of the new fw shrimps eat hair algae? That might be worth looking into

EDIT: Sorry - puffs about. Just leaving that the above for anyone who might like to look into it for a trop tank...

Would more plants, not less help? It does in my pond and did in past marine seahorse tanks I've had full of macro algae. Sort of lots of plants and lots of time for the system to find an equilibrium?

Blue green algae - I hate that stuff too I've had it in trop fw, cold fw and in my old 'reef tank'. It seemed to come and go under some quite odd circumstrances. Once it starts due to a missed water change or overfeeding (this all on my part, nothing to do with your own tanks), it's difficult to discourage.

I know: a European 'grass carp' - aka the lawnmower!

I saw some 3" grass carp in a tiny pet shop also selling leather carp maybe 2" in a tank next to the goldfish near here. Very tempting but I like my lillies and reeds which my koi, goldies and other outdoor fish have not so far managed to destroy. I also think I'm not allowed to keep grass carp in the UK without a DEFRA license!

Some Gourami's might pick at hair algae but maybe only for bubble nest bulding material?

Phosphate reduction might help, but mabe it's just in your tapwater along with all of those nitrates which you cannot economically do anything about...

Your home tapwater is probably the root cause, not anything you are doing in terms of over feeding, overstocking etc which you as one fishkeeper would not do...

If it were me, I'd use carbon for a few days to remove the tannin from the bogwood... I had this prob with 'Mopani Wood' for several months in one tank. I didn't use carbon - I just used the colour to remind me when to change water

Panda Garra - Garra flavatra - it seems these like to pick over biofilms on rocks in streams for inverts and worms rather than being in any way a 'veggie'. Need high 02 content but the temp requirement remians open to argument. Maybe trop maybe not. Needs very high water quality just as puffers do...

Garras seem a bit like Malawi Cichlids in this respect - are they veggies or not? Or are they omnivores needing both?

One point - if you had a Garra 'chomping' on your rocks in that particular aquarium - would any new hair algae get a chance to grow?

I'll edit this again to avoid another post:

There were some Garra flavetra in my lfs the last time I went in - maybe in with my fancy goldies at 20C

The max size I see is about 3.3 inches...

how much lighting do you have (watts per gallon), what type of lighting (cfl, t5no, t5ho)

plants NEED to have nitrate, phosphate, potassium (n-p-k are the macro nutrients) and they need trace elements too. they are essential. if you bottom out on a nutrient you WILL have an algae problem. algae does best in conditions that plants do not.

now, a lot of fertilizers have a number like this on the front 1-0-0 (n-p-k), this means that the solution you are using has 1% nitrate - 0 phosphate - 0 potassium. see the problem is that you arent giving the plant EVERYTHING that it needs.

plants need co2 to photosynthesize, the more light you have the more the plants will photosynthesis... if you have co2. if not the plant will suffer and algae can take over. if the plants are photosynthesizing and do have co2, the plant will take up more nutrients, which need to be available. if they are not available plants suffer and algae takes over.

it really kind of boils down to good plant growth equals poor algae growth.

if you have algae, you have an imbalance somewhere. you can add all the animals that you want, if you dont fix the problem it will keep growing.

i have 2 watts per gallon using compact florescent lights right now. thanks for you reply on my other thread. and yeah those are teh numbers listed on my ferts. ok. so i still need p and k added to the tank, i have some left over seachem liquid ferts (the entire line), do you think those could have gone bad by now or can i still use them? they're from the beginning of the year. i'm not sure if those chemicals would go bad or not but i want to make sure before adding them to the tank.

Those fertiliser ingredients are probably inorganic salts dissolved in water including nitrate as the anion and the metals as cations. Potassium nitrate, Potassium phosphate etc - should be fine apart from loss of water so they may be more concentrated than intended...

I'd only be worried about bugs growing in there but the metals won't dissapear. That said, I'd definately use the fertiliser if I were in your position. Doubtful anything biological could live in the fertiliser and then survive the transfer to an aquarium.

We're adding phosphates, now?

The plants will sort things out. Oddly my 12 ins deep 'tetra' tank is the only tank that has trop fw plants in and it recieves the least maintenance. They like to be disturbed as little as possible. I change 20% per two weeks, just water in and out, top up and basically leave well alone.

No ferts, one 15W T8 tube and it's a jungle with amazon swords, elodea and moss on bogwood. Low light plants...

The ferts must get in in the (flake and frozen) fish food...

No algae probs in this one and very little nitrate maybe 10ppm max after 2 weeks with only top ups - that nitrate produced by the tetras is hoovered up by the plants

HTH

As well as the imbalance of ferts/light/CO2 that have been discussed, is the flow to all parts of the tanks sufficient? Ever since I added a divider to my mudskipper tank the algae growth in the section without the filter is massive compared to the section with the filter.

Now there's a very good point, Iliveinazoo - my 'tetra' tank only has the very low flow 'box' (Juwel Reckord 60) with a maybe 200lph powerhead in the bottom and a tiny internal. Very little flow at all. To me.

But that's compared with my 20x per hour marine and puffer tanks. The flow rate in the tetra tank is low, maybe once per hour turn over given filter media and gunge etc slowing the advertised pump rates down but may be high enough to discourage algal films. The whiptail cat in there may help also

Again, a very good point, Iliveinazoo: I have a large glass jar (50l) that I've been trying to cultivete cyclops in. It works but you should see the algae! Just an airstone in that, so not much flow at all.

It must all be an equilibrium that takes months to establish, or at least that's what I think.

there is plenty of flow in the tank. i have an aquaclear 20 set up running at full power and is producing a strong enough current to move the food around one the sand so that my gobies will think its alive. so far one day after adding new carbon and doing a 25% partial there seems to be no improvement with the yellow color, and ill start dosing with ferts right after i do another 25% partial as soon as i finish posting this.

everything should be just fine, i would check the bottle of flourish comprehensive though, trace can get moldy.

yeah we need phosphate in planted tanks. in my 55 gallon (heavily planted, with extremely high lights and pressurized co2) i dose about 15ppm of phosphate per week.

and you should be able to see all of your plants gently swaying in the currents.