What Is Growing On My Aquarium?

[Gus K]

I bough the java fern a couple of months ago and I tied it to this drift wood. a couple of months later there was this growing on top of it, just a tiny bit. so I removed it, or at least I thought I did. Now it is growing in the whole tank, including the substrate and I don't know what to do. It is actually way more difficult to remove that I though, it is attaching firmly to the driftwood. Any indications?

 

[DutchAquarium]

This is a type of algae. I would suggest decreasing your aquarium light exposure to only 7 hrs a day with 8hrs max to prevent algae blooms in the future. You could also do a siesta period during the day to limit algae. For now, the best way to get rid of your algae is to do a three day black out. Java fern and java moss won't be greatly hurt from this black out, but the algae will be.

 

[aussieJJDude]

Slightly irrelevant, but that's java moss..

IMO, that looks like clado. Some have had great success with H2O2 spot dosing, I haven't... in fact, haven't had ant success in removing it from one of my tanks... others have had great success with algae eaters (like nerites), black outs (which don't have a good success rate, as they very similar to plants and survive those blackouts) anf manual removal.

 

[Gus K]

I looked up "clado" online and it looks just like what I have. I have nerites and ramshorn snails in the tank. As the tank is very low tech, I have other common plants too. The lightning is 8 hours / day. I have been trying to remove it manually, but without success. I will do some water changes to reduce nutrients and perform the blackout, as suggested.

For the blackout, should I only turn of the lights for 3 days or should I also cover the tank? There's not direct sunlight reaching the tank, it's far away from any possible source of sunlight.

 

[aussieJJDude]

When removing it manually, turn off all filters and consider having a small siphon - like of airline tubing - to suck up the waste. I noticed that when I remove it, little buts go everywhere and that can lead to the spread. So pulling it off and then sucking up the area with some airline tubing has been great... as is turing off filtration to stop the chance of water pushing it around.

Waterchanges probably won't help much, its a very stubborn algae to get rid of... Blackout basically involve leaving the light off (many do a week) and if in a well lit area, or want it to be extremely effective covering the tank with cardboard...