jri4

I have green algae growing on my rocks, but not neccesarily on the tank glass or any decorations yet. I am not sure what you can do. I am treating with a chemical every three days and will only use my light minimally. Is there anything I can do? Maybe more frequent water changes? Thanks!

angelfish220

jri4 you should already be doing very freqent (daily) and large (40-50%) because you are not cycled.

I find that a little algae makes it look a little more realistic, but if you dont like it you can scrub it off with a clean toothbrush.

I would recommend not using those chemicals, they throw your pH and other readings way out of wack. and make life hard for your fish.

Butterfly

Algae isn't necessarily bad if it's not killing your plants or obscuring the glass. It's a very natural thing on rocks and such.
Algae grows for several reasons- excess nutrients(fish food, fish poo, dieing plants etc), excess light.
Fast growing live plants will suck up the extra nutrients and out compete the algae for its food. Your lights need to be on 8-10 hrs a day. I leave mine on for 10-12 hrs a day but my tanks are stuffed with plants.
One of the ways to get rid of the algae with out chemicals is to reduce feeding (a fishes stomach is the size of one eye), Very thorough gravel vacuum and water changes. but I would stop the chemicals. Even if it is killing the algae the dead algae just makes more food for more algae It's also very hard on your fish.
But if its just on rocks or driftwood I wouldn't worry about it
Carol

wdickey

Hello All-Let me begin by saying that I am not into fish as you'all are, I love them, but never had any. My interest in this, with your help, is to learn how to grow algae for the benefit of producing biodiesel. In that process I will hope to help the enviornment and my pocketbook. I want to develope a small "Algae Farm Kit" if you will, to make available to people that want to help the cause of diminishing our use of foreign oil. A small beginning to a gargantuan situation. Algae is the world's largest producer of lipid oil as a crop. Over 50% of its mass is oil. What I am asking of you is to educate me on the following: 1 What is the best strain or type of algae to produce the most oil? 2 What are the most optimal components for producing the fastest growth? IE: Nutrients, water chemistry, food, etc. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

capekate

There are a lot of links online to refer you to the information you are looking for in regards to Biodiesel. Here is a link to Oilgae.com
http://www.oilgae.com/

capekate

As noted in my post above, you can find more information. If that is not what you are looking for I would advise to start a new thread for any and all responses/advice you may get. Since you are a new member here and may not be aware of the forum rules, we try to advise everyone to start a new thread if they post a question that is unrelated to the ongoing thread it was posted in.
thanks, ~ kate