algae

wats the best way to get rid as it startin to annoy me as its growing in 2 of my tanks.
currently in the tanks ive got some moss balls that i brought thinkin that would get rid of it but it hasnt.

scraping , shrimps , snails , pitbull plecs (small just over 2" and continuously eat algae unlike BN's that give up as they get older) and increased water flow (which isnt; much good in a betta tank)

a lot of algae occurs in dead spots in the tanks
you could try adding more marimo moss balls as these are made of algae themselves so aborb the nutrients that feed algae

also increasing the number of live plants and decreasing the lighting in the tank - is it in direct sunlight ?
how long are tank lights on

the lights are prob on 10hrs a day

give it a scrape off and resuce the lighting to 8 hours a day for a week and see how it goes
thats plenty enough for most live plants

kk will try that

Do you know what kind of algae it is? what color is it, where is it at..ie..plants, glass, decorations. How old is your setup-new or cycled
How old are your bulbs? sometimes older bulbs will lose their intensity and cause a sudden algae outbreak.

I know the feeling and I wish I knew

I have hard glass algae in one tank and hair algae in another the other tanks are fine. My arm kills after scrubing the 4ft the algae is so stubborn.

i sort of have like green algae on the glass and like a brown algae on a coupel of fake plants in there

A few things that can cause algae:
low oxygen levels, poor water circulation, organic waste buildup, uncycled tank, old bulb, sunlight.
In non-planted tanks-50% water changes weekly vacuuming the substrate and rinsing the filter in the removed tank water, moderate surface agitation for gas exchange and increase in oxygenation, photo period 8-10hours.
New tanks will have diatoms until beneficial bacteria establish and should resolve on there own
Some fish, snail, and shrimp can help with algae clean up, but not every type of algae can or will be eaten, so most of the algae clean up is up to us the keeper.
Hair algae I use a old clean tooth brush to twirl around it and remove by hand
Black beard/red brush type the SAE will eat this, best to remove the plant leaves and discard, excel by seaChem can help, remove decoration and scrub or let sit in sun.
And that green dot algae on the walls that are hard to remove, elbow grease and a razor blade the only thing I found to get it off as no algae eater can eat it because it is to hard.

I got some nerite snails, they live on algae and are brilliant. I had brown algae on a decoration , plants etc and they munched it clean !!! and I do mean clean. Apple snails are rubbish algae eaters(even though I love mine to bits) but these nerites are incredible and fast at clearing it, they eat most kinds of algae apparently, they only eat algae so will leave live plants alone, but will clean the yuck of them. Not so tempting to bettas either as they are not too fleshy and they stay tight inside the shell so are pretty safe, they have tough shells too...

I got some of those Zebra spixi snail for algae control and they look really cool too, but they ate my plants and I mean destroyed them, cut some down like a tree...LOL..... I love snails my MTS, ramshorn, pond type, I like to think that they have a job in my little ecosystems...but the zebra got kicked out and put in my marbled crayfish tank...no plants in there except for the clippings I put in for food....
I have always wanted to get some nerite snail but been afraid to for fear of them eating my plants.....

think im gonna strip the tank down and give it a gd clean and put some new sand and some more real plants in see if that does anything.

Brenda wrote:And that green dot algae on the walls that are hard to remove, elbow grease and a razor blade the only thing I found to get it off as no algae eater can eat it because it is to hard.

Yup thats one kills me and it comes back within a few days

I have the brown algae of death, even with perfect water stats and frequent water changes. I suspect that the problem is just my tap water, something in there chemicaly that feeds it. I live on a farm in a farm comunity so there is potentionaly lots of ferts in the water. I found the only thing I can do is keep ahead of the scraping and take the plants out and clean them when it gets too ugly for my likeing.

I've found the Nerite snails to be good too.....most things have been stripped clean but some types of algae they don't seem to go for eg hair algae.

It is a constant battle to keep on top of it though.....always washing the silk plants and dividers!!!!

Fast growing stem plants can out compete algae but you need to cover at least 60% of the foot print or better, floating plants can help too. Its a balancing act..... that is for sure.
And I don't think anything eats that hair algae either, I get this stuff real bad in my 25g that gets sun and it is a pain. I had a betta get tangled in hornworth and hair algae once and had I not been there she would have drowned, so I don't use hornworth anymore but the hair algae still grows.....laffs....thats some nasty stuff........
I live on a farm too and use well water, its great except for being really hard..liquid rock is what I call it.
Brown algae can be a problem for us Betta folks due to us using smaller tanks that we clean frequently, I know I do, and when you do large water changes it can cause the NB to be out of whack and the diatoms form like mad, one thing about diatoms is most snails, pl*co and ottos love that stuff, but with the small tanks you can't have a good clean up crew because it pushes the bioload.....so we are "between a rock an hard place"...LOL.......

Now you mention it Brenda.....we've noticed that with our babies that are in separate containers. We do 100% water changes on them and the brown stuff appears really quickly!!!

I have one tank that really suffers with hair algae so I may pop some of my duckweed in there to see if it helps.