Algae Wars

Red1313 · July 14th, 2009

Hi everyone it's been awhile since I was last posting on the site and since there's alot of new names on here now I thought I'd throw some extra background on this post since it's a long story.

~*~

A few months ago (don't even ask me how many it's been along time) I started to have string algae problems in my 5.5 gal betta tank. The main issue was likely due to overlighting. (I was in the basement so there wasn't much ambient lighting.) Nothing I did seemed to fix the problem however.
In april when I moved to my new apartment I re-set the timer on my tank so that the lights were only on for about 4 hours aday and the rest of the time the ambient lighting in the room was all I used. This seemed to be working so I was quite excited. I left the country for 22 days in may and when I returned... that plan had failed quite spectacularly.

That's the back-ground. I'll put a few back to back posts up following this so you can see the latest trials of the algae wars.

Red1313 · July 14th, 2009

Not a real pretty sight is it? That's not the worst it's ever been but that's not great either. I stripped everything out of it, rescued my plants from the string algae handful by handful. The top layer of gravel I stripped as well since the algae had a death grip on it. The amazon sword was my prize plant in the tank and the only one that seemed to be able to at least keep most of the algae of of it's self. I didn't weigh it but I'd garentee that there was 3x the alage was there were plants.
(sorry for the patterned towel makes it hard to see)
*having issues with pictures hang on a moment*

Shawnie · July 14th, 2009

hi red!!!!!!!!! wowsers!!! I had to open it with my prog to get a good look...poor girl...what a thing to come back to! but welcome back

Red1313 · July 18th, 2009

Shawnie: Thanks

It's good to be back, I mostly drifting in and out right now but when classes start Ill be back on more again. I miss all you guys.

Back to that Algae war, things were looking pretty dim for that tank I must say, but then came my salvation, the one thing that I've discovered that cures string alage. My inspiration came from Diana Walstad's book "Ecology of the Planted aquarium. In it she gives a fairly indepth look at how alage absorbs nutirents and how it interacts with plants. The end vote: Alage is better at pulling nutirents from the water then plants are, however plants in soil will be able to out compete the alage.

So armed with this new knowledge I went out and bought what I needed to convert my tanks over to a planted paradise. (More plants however will I survive more plants

)

The end result is now more then 2 weeks later there hasn't been a sign of alage, the tank looks amazing and I sold my soul to petland to pay for the plants.

Pics and how I did it coming soon.

P.S. These pics aren't the newest there's been some growth and the dwarf lilly has really taken off

Red1313 · August 9th, 2009

Hi I just thought I'd finally finish this thread.
The algae war ended up taking over 2 other tanks before I was done but I think that I've finally won it.
Included here are the before and after photo's of the tanks.

I apologies for the before pics of the tanks they were taken with my laptop...
1&2) 10 gal divided betta tank pre battle.
3) 10 gal divided betta tank post battle 1 week later.
4) 5 gal pre battle (sorry for the really bad pic)
5) 5 gal post battle 1 week later

aquarist48 · August 9th, 2009

Looking "good" Red! Thanks for sharing the photos.
Ken

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