fishbum

I have a 20 gallon running right now with a single green terror in it.I plan on moving him to my 120 when he is big enough.The problem is,there is BRIGHT green algae starting to grow on the rocks in his tanks.I do not know why.I do not over feed him,and the light is on for 10 hours a day.The room he is in gets no sunlight at all.I have had algae in all my tanks from time to time but have never seen it like this.I just cleaned the tank,I should have taken a pic.But it is almost flourescent green,and only grows on the gravel substrate.The only way right now I can find to get rid of it is to vacum the gravel.Water is 0ppm ammonia,0ppm nitrite,20ppm nitrate.I set this tank up in the begining of March,and it went through the typical problem with diatoms,and the green algae began growing 2 or 3 weeks ago.I thought because it is a 20 gallon long,maybe it had something to do with the light,since it is such a low tank.I have a 24 inch bulb on it.I changed the bulb from a 20 watt that came with the light fixture,to a 17 watt this week,but it did not seem to help.I have a API master test kit,so I do not have a phosphate test,but I will go get one if someone thinks knowing the phosphate level would help.Any suggestion would be taken and gratefully tried!

angelfish220

maybe you could try to lower your nitrate with more water changes, and introducing some live plants. a floating plant would be best, Hornwart or Watersprite, and then he wont dig them up (which I'm pretty sure a terror would do )

fishbum

I have some Seachem nitrate remover,which works,I have had the nitrate below 5ppm,and the algae still grows.The nitrate at 20ppm,that I had mentioned,is as high as it usually gets.My experience and research with live plants is that you have to have your tank stuffed with them to really have a noticeable difference.And as far as more water changes goes,I am already doing 2 water changes a week.I don't have a problem doing more,but I am not sure that will actually help the problem.

angelfish220

The live plants might not noticably lower nitrates, but it will also lower phosphate levels, iron levels, and a whole list of others. Those 'others' is probably what is making your algae problem.

fishbum

OK thanks,I am going to get a phosphate test today,I think that those are probably the culprit.I still do not understand with all of the tanks I have,why the algae is in just one tank.I have had algae in tanks before,but it has always been on the glass or decorations.I have never had it covering the gravel like this.

fishbum

The stuff I have growing is not even algae and has nothing to do with nitrate,phosphate,lighting or anything else commonly used to deal with algae.
This stuff is called blue-green algae,and many other things.It is a bacteria that will take over your tank,and is a pain to get rid of.
http://www.myfishtank.net/articles/b...algae-article/
Here is one article I found on it.Someone in another forum said the best way to get rid of it is to remove the fish and filters,and to either add hydrogen peroxide,or to clean everything with bleach.I am going to try the peroxide,seems like the safest way to me.I learned that this bacteria has a strain that is resistant to erythromycin,so I figured why waste my money and time on something that might not work.I hope if someone else has this problem,they will run across this thread,it took me ALL DAY yesterday to get this figure out,and how to fix it.