Help with algea

[FrontosaurusRex]

i have noticed in the past couple of days that i'm having a fairly large algea outbreak in my tank. at first i thought it would look cool on my rocks but now its spreading to my glass, sand and glass tops. i usually do about a 50% water change every week and i'm using Prime to condition the water. i'm using a coralife light with a 10K bulb and a 50/50 bulb. i turn the lights on around noon everyday and then i turn em off around 7pm. i tried leaving the lights off for about 3 days and the algea spread worse. what can i do to make it go away?

[mark razmandi]

is it a planted tank?

[FrontosaurusRex]

is it a planted tank?

it is not a planted tank. i have about 150lbs of PFS and about 10 large rocks.

[mark razmandi]

hmmm. nothing ive ever heard of...im sure someone else knows whats going on...have you done something different right before the algae started growing? i know there are algae control products but i dont know how effective they are

[Sea-agg09]

You're probably overfeeding. Algae grows when there is an abundance of nutrients without anyone to use it. The lighting seems more than right. Plants will out-compete algae when they are around. If you don't want to add plants, then feed a bit less.

[FrontosaurusRex]

that makes sense. i used to have 3 Syn Cats but i got rid of them. They used to clean up all the excess food. i'll give that a try and see what happens.

any other suggestions?

[fshfrk]

yea Baby. Thats it!

[Darbex]

Agree lower the food and WC like a mother until it goes away this will help you remove the "food" from the water faster and starve them out

[FrontosaurusRex]

sounds good. i'll WC that mother right now. thanks for the help everyone.

[newb]

yeah when this happened to my 75gallon tank...I had to do 50% water changes for about 3-4 days straight to get things back in line.

[FrontosaurusRex]

i did a 50% WC tonight and i'm not feeding the tank tonight. i'll do the same for tomorrow and only feed em once.

does anybody have any small syn cats they wanna get rid of????

[fshfrk]

I know that with this algea scrubber you will never have algea problems again no matter how much you over feed. But most people do not have the room under their stand to set one up.

[Complexity]

Do you know which algae it is? Different types of algae require different types of treatments.

As far as finding Syno cats, Fish Ranch II had a lot of small dwarf S. petricola a few weeks ago. I got a bunch to keep the food cleaned out of the rock caves. They do a great job.

I also have 3 bristlenose plecos to keep the rocks clean. And I've just added eartheaters to keep the sand stirred up. This is helping quite a bit. Together, the cats, plecos and eartheaters are keeping the diatoms cleaned out very nicely.

But to be sure to know how to clean out and continue to keep out the algae, it's important to identify which algae you have.

[FrontosaurusRex]

it starts out like an orange/brown color and then some of it has turned dark green. most of it stays brown

[Complexity]

Sounds like diatoms. How long has the tank been running? Does the algae look like a thin coating on everything (brownish mostly), kind of slimy to touch, and easy to remove from things like the glass?

If it's diatoms (it's not a true algae), then it's common for fairly new aquariums. I'm dealing with them myself. High levels of silica and phosphates can encourage it. Lighting does not affect it (as you have already noticed). The left over food can be aggravating the problem so definitely get some fish to eat it if it's getting trapped inside caves. Otos love to eat diatoms as do some plecos. But most likely you're doing nothing to cause the diatoms. It is a natural process of a new tank. Diatoms will die out on their own. Just keep things cleaned up in the meantime.

Read this and see if this fits:

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/algae.htm#brown