more lighting = green water?

[Daz]

doing the blackout at the moment.

This green water came AFTER I remove some plants. Do you guys think that I should put back some plants to prevent this from happening again?

[PeterGwee]

Yup, more plants is good.

[voodoo]

yeah!! 50% water change and 4 days blackout > no more green water probs. strangly the plant looks greener or maybe water is clearer hahaha.
what i do:
day 01 = 50% water change and black out. filtor and air
pump running.stop all fert.
day 02 = open a tiny gap to feed fish, feed load reduce
by half. plant? didnt notice, too dark.
day 03 = same feed fish.
day 04 = tear away the black paper and uo oh no greeny
water.
hope they dun come back :P

[Daz]

Sad sad. What happen after blackout is that the green water still better but still bad. so did a 70% water change. Much better but still a tad green. 2 days later, GW is back, think I will do as Vinz recommend, keep changing about 50% until GW is gone.

Qn: After water change need to dose Fertilizer?

[PeterGwee]

You cannot remove green water through water changes.... What you can remove is the excess ammonia that is triggering the effect of green water.

Do you have lots of fast growing plants in there? Folks tend to plant sparsely which is no good. Pack the tank with plants and make sure the CO2 is good! If the critters are too much for your tank size, you would need to remove them as well. You are not going to make any head wave until you deal with this problems. A blackout of 3-5 days should work unless you let in some light during the cycle.....I sure hope you did not.

Finally, take a sample of your tank water with a glass and view it directly under some light source...is it green?

[Daz]

*pant pant*

Introduce more plants now. My tank is kind of dense only at the back, the front are ricca and just planted glosso.

Just did a 50% water change and reduce my light to 36W from 72W. My water volume is about 80L, 2'x1'x1.5'

Oh peter, yes confirm it is green water not cloudy water.

alamak, this GW is getting on my nerve. didn't know know that by removing palnts can cause me so much headache.

Qn - If the balance is struck. Will the GW clear up by itself or it just remain as green until water change?

[PeterGwee]

Green water will not disappear by itself...you will need to remove it either through blackout (you tried but fail?..longer period maybe needed and ensure no light gets in during that period!) or UV sterilizer. After removing the green water, you will need to look at your CO2 real good or else adding nutrients will not do much to your plants.

[Daz]

thanks peter. Let's see if it get worst now or will stablize. if worse, then another blackout!!!!

[Plantbrain]

Once GW is present, it's tough to get rid of.
Folks with less light have an easier time using Blackouts/water changes etc. But if you have high light/good reflectors/powercompact lighting etc, then it's tougher.

Diatom filters, UV, Daphnia(but fish will eat them) work well. Once the GW is gone for awhile(1-2 days), try adding a bit more bio media to the filter etc. Check over the CO2 and the levels, make sure when you do large uprooting/pruning to do a water change afterwards.

Blackout can/will work, but.....you may need to go 5 days etc.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[Daz]

suddenly i start to feel a bit stupid.

GW can be cause by ammonia spike, thus if I change water 20% everyday and Anti-cholorine/chloramine. chloramine will break down into chlorine and ammonia correct?

Thus is it that i am still contributing to ammonia spike in my tank despict water change?

[Plantbrain]

Naw
The NH4 simply induces/starts the GW, after it's inoculated etc, you can't get rid of it.

Once it has a foot hold, the NH4 levels don't matter.

The goal is to prevent any/much/enough NH4 from starting a batch of GW from occuring/reoccuring.

A water change right after a big prune/hack is wise for this reason. Pulling all that mulm up from the gravel reduces O2 levels and increases NH4.

This doesn't last but for a day or two, but long enough for GW to get a foot hold.

After you have GW, then you need to use the UV/Diatom filter/micron cartiage/Daphnia/blackout/ etc.

Adding more biomedia can help reoccuring problems(bacteria are good at conversion of NH4=>NO3)
should the plants be in less than optimal condition(s).

Upping CO2, making sure PO4/NO3 are good also help tto stop reoccurances.

GW drives folks batty.
They try for months to beat it. It keeps coming back

I find it very useful for identification(SEM is needed. They are 2-4 microns across and very fast- flaggelated) and testing bloom in planted tanks. It's quick and easy to kill with a UV, responds well to NH4 additions and does no harm to the plants.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[Daz]

Tom, thanks for the wonderful lesson no GW, bring back memories of my school going days

Doing daily 20% water change right now and seems to be getting better.

Thanks to everyone for their help to solve my GW problem..... thanks!!!!

[Plantbrain]

Try doing the water changes + the blackout. Also, you might try adding the Dechlorinator a few minutes after to let the chlorine kill some algae but not so much as to harm the fish/critters. A few minutes should not be a problem for most fish/plants.
Also, add aeration/surface turbulance during the blackout.
Water changes might appear to work and then when you stop, it keeps coming back.
Less light can help.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[voodoo]

yeah 2 weeks liao! no sight of any GW. water still crystal clear. fish feeding resumed to normal since day 4th, think the bacteria/s colonised well enough to clear the water, but lost all male guppies.. y? >>> transfer to fish keeping section!!cya!

[Daz]

??? - Any one can tell me what happen?

History - During the 2 weeks after I did black out, water is still a tad cloudy and a bit greenish. Thus i believe my GW not fully solved. thus every 2 or 3 days, i change 30% water keep the water reasonably clear. after every water change, i dose nutrafin water conditioner.

Today - did a 50% change cause doing something else and forgot about it. fill up with water, took wrong bottle and dose Ocean Free anti chlorine instead. once done, water as per normal for me, a tad cloudy and greenish (of course better then before water change). the surprise came an hour later - the entire tank of water is now crystal clear!!!!!!!

Qn - What did i do? Ocean free anti-chlorine not working well? thus the chlorine kill all the algae??? anyone can advice? harmful to my plants???

[vinz]

Assuming you didn't use anti-chlorine previously... then I would guess that the anti-chlorine is doing very well... it removed the chlorine and the chlorine didn't kill the bacteria in your filter.

I had a frequent bouts of cloudy water a few months ago, each appearing after a water change. For the first one, I did major water changes every few days to clear the water.

Then I got lazy and stop the water changes... the water cleared by itself in a few days.

For subsequent bouts, I left the tank alone and each time the water cleared in about 3 days.

I suspected chlorine/chloramine as it was the SARs period and there was talk of increased usage of these chems in our tap water. Since then I've been dosing anti-chlorine/chloramine with each water change/top-up. No bouts of cloudy water since.

[theodore]

Or it could be due to how ammonia (that is released when chloramine is broken down) is handled by different water conditioners.

Nutrafin (AquaPlus) doesn't remove ammonia from chloramine chemically. Instead, it induces the fishes to form a stress coat in bid to 'protect' themselves from the ammonia. Works fine in a planted tank because plants like the extra ammonia and will consume it readily. My guess is that for tanks with GW, plants are unable to consume the ammonia because of poorer light penetration. GW algae on the other hand has no problems taking everything up.

Not that AquaPlus is bad. I use it because the company gave me a satisfactory answer when I asked them on the availability of nutrients (e.g. Fe) after the product binds them along with other metals.

[Plantbrain]

No, we'd see this occur(green water) all the time if this were the case.

I do 50-70% weekly water changes. Someone doign less, say 10% weekly water change would suffer less than I with GW. I never had Green water ever till I started adding NH4 and urea to the water column.

I've added everything else, water changes included.
Only the NH4/urea will induce it.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[Daz]

Vinz, my guess it that you are wrong in the anti-chorine.

After many tries and error, found out that it is the chlorine that is killing the algae that cause GW. Come to think of it, out tap water is so clear, thus the chlorine must have kill all the algae.

Me still battling with GW, but now is getting much better.

Currently doing 30% water change every 2 to 3 days. Switch off f caninster filter, didn't add anti-chlorine immediatly, let the chlorine kill the algae. add it after 1/2 hrs later or so.

Then I switch on the filter. This is done in view of protecting the BB from dying.

So far, pretty good, except after 4 days, GW start to creep if I forget to do water change. Water still a tad cloudy, but much better then it used to be.

Am I doing things right here? or should I change something to clear off the GW completely. Notice that the GW will creep back then the plants start to bubbles a lot. But when I locate the light to the background, GW effect is much slower to occur. Is this because a lack for foreground plants?

Now still doing more tries and error to get it right completely, I hope. still waiting for the foregrounds plants to grow completely.... GGGRRRR!!!!!!

[theodore]

Greenwater (algae) is different from cloudy water (bacteria). Chlorine and chloramine from our tapwater may be able to kill off some of the GW algae but would I would be a bit more cautious in my approach. Some fishes can be very sensitive to chlorine and chloramine. That is why we add such water conditioners in the 1st place. A large water change every 2-3 days may mean that you are stressing them out too much, too often.

Water conditioners tend to unbind chloramine into chlorine and ammonia. Ammonia is used by both plants and algae as a source of Nitrogen. I'm suspecting that your tank in N-deficient if your GW creeps back 4 days after a water change.