How to remove this algae on the plant leaf?

[chansh]

What's the best advise to remove this alage 20151202_221452.jpg or could it be Phosphate deficiency?

[Urban Aquaria]

Thats green spot algae in the leaves... appears quite often on slower growing plants like anubias that are placed directly under too much light.

You can try to manually scrub off the algae with a tooth brush on regular basis (will require abit of effort though), but i've found that keeping a population of nerite snails in the tank will do a much better job, they will munch on the algae 24/7 and help keep the leaves clean.

Get the horned nerite snails as they are the smallest ones and can climb on plant leaves easily.

Here is a good example video of a horned nerite snail in action cleaning an anubias leaf:



Video from Youtube.

[chansh]

Nice video.

I have used a few zebra nerites before on my smaller tank that have a green algae on the tank glass, no doubt, it cleared them nice and clean within days.
But, they seems to lay eggs relentlessly. It's all over the place and difficult to remove as it stick rather firmly.

Will these horn nerite also lay such eggs?

[Orky108]

Thats green spot algae in the leaves... appears quite often on slower growing plants like anubias that are placed directly under too much light.

You can try to manually scrub off the algae with a tooth brush on regular basis (will require abit of effort though), but i've found that keeping a population of nerite snails in the tank will do a much better job, they will munch on the algae 24/7 and help keep the leaves clean.

Get the horned nerite snails as they are the smallest ones and can climb on plant leaves easily.

Here is a good example video of a horned nerite snail in action cleaning an anubias leaf:



Video from Youtube.

How to get male netrite snail as female tends to lay unsightly white eggs?

Just buy a bunch and observe which one doesnt lay eggs?

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[Urban Aquaria]

Yeah, nerite snails are excellent algae eaters, the only disadvantage is the propensity for female ones to lay those pesky white eggs everywhere.

In my case, what i do is buy a batch of horned nerite snails (usually 10-12 at a time), and put them in a spare quarantine/holding tank with lots of algae on the glass so that they can graze.

Then i observe 3 points to ID their gender:

- Which ones keep climbing on other snails all the time (possible male on top).

- Which ones are seen producing a white stringy goo when on top of another snail (confirm male).

- Which ones are seen actually laying eggs (confirmed female).

I'll then use a fine tipped permanent marker to label the shells on the males and females (black dot for males, black stripe for females). The males i transfer to my display tank, the females i transfer to grow-out and outdoor tanks.

It can take a few days (sometimes longer) to ID the males and females... some will be ambiguous too. So its just a matter of observation and time.

[jermseah]

will the nerites eat the plants?

[Urban Aquaria]

will the nerites eat the plants?

Nerite snails don't eat live healthy plants... their main diet is algae.

[jermseah]

Nerite snails don't eat live healthy plants... their main diet is algae.

thanks bro, will look for them, recently put in a snail and my fern plants started to have holes lol so i took it out

[happydanio123]

Actually, I find the easiest way to remove algae like this would be to dose seachem flourish excel at an overdose to stun and perhaps kill any algae that is present on your leaves. Another way is to introduce algae-eating snails into your aquarium but then when dosing other medications for other diseases or sicknesses, you have to take into consideration your snails and that may restrict and limit your medicating capabilities.