Thread algae in my 3ft tank

[eric_thian]

Thread algae in my 3ft tank. Any algae eater recommand. Thank!
I'm using 182W PL light on for 6 hour. 2bps for CO2. PH Level appro. 7. Try to increase KH Level. Currently 3. NO2 <0.3.

[David]

Hi Eric

How big is this tank in terms of total water volume?

Before starting to recommend any algae eaters, what kind of algae eaters do you have currently. If your KH level is at 3 and your PH is at 7, your tank has insufficient dissolved CO2.

If you want to keep your PH at 7, Your KH perhaps should be around 8 to 10. May I ask why is your lighting duration so short? Is this a newly setup tank? If not the normal lighting period should be around 10 to a maximum of 12 hours.

It will be good to also list the kind of plants you have and what are your fert regime at the moment.

[eric_thian]

It's a new setup tank. Set up on the 6 Jun 2003. I use to on my PL lights for 10 hours daily. Later Thread algae grow rapidly. Someone advise me to reduce it to 6 hours. Increase 2 hours every week till 12 hours. I have approx. 10 to 15 oto & 10 grass shrimp. Will increase 100 grass shrimp next week.I also have 1 ram to help me to eat snails also. If I want to reduce my PH to 6.5. How many degree is my KH. Please advise.

[bigjohnstud]

hi eric, for thread algae to appear so soon after set up, you may have to re-examine where you got your plants from and whether you treated them before introducing into the tank.

[theodore]

Where are you finding your thread algae? You may wish to manually remove some (e.g. by triming down your plants) if the situation gets out of hand.

My experience with otos is that they are only good at softer algae. You may wish to recruit some yamato shrimps and (my favorite) pencilfishes to tackle thread algae. Can't find any 3-line and dwarf pencilfishes recently but the juvenile rocket-tail (aka brown) pencilfishes looks very cute at only 1-2cm long. Don't feed them if you want them to eat up your algae.

Try not to get too many yamatos. I have 6-7 yamatos in my 2ft tank and I'm resorting to feed them Tetra Tabimin every 2-3 days to keep them away from my moss.

You will need to increase CO2 if you wish to reduce pH to 6.5. Higher KH is meant to prevent your pH from crashing.

Btw, what kind of plants are you keeping and how is your fertilization regime like?

[eric_thian]

Thread algae majority grow on my ricca, some on others plant. My CO2 also on for 6 hours, same as PL light will be increase weekly till 12 hours. I also install UV Sterillizer. I can't remember the spieces of my plant in my aquarium. I will upload my aquarium photo later. May I know as compare with yamato, glass shrimp & pencilfishs, which is more efficent? Do you guys know how much are they selling the yamato, glass shrimp & pencilfishs?[:]

[David]

Hi Eric

I have answered the other post that you have done. You need to get your KH and PH right by injecting the correct amount of CO2 into your tank. The tank you have is currently suffering from insufficient CO2 and the low KH is not helping you either even though you have strong lightings.

Reducing lighting to 6hrs is not going to help either....infact you are giving the algae the upperhand as plants need a certain amount of photo period to start photosynthsis.

It would be better to reduce the amount of light to 2.5 to 3watts rather then reducing the duration. Stop all liquid fert dosing for now and get 30 to 40 yamatoes. You are way overloaded on Ottos.

[PeterGwee]

Stopping liquid fert dosing is a bad move....you cannot limit algae before you limit plants. Algae has lower biomass and only require micro amount of it whereas plants require larger amounts. The key now is to correct the CO2, prune off any algae, do large water changes, add algae eaters and finally dosing back fresh nutrients for plants to pick up and grow again.