# Cyanobacteria and water cloudness help



## Plague (Nov 22, 2010)

Tank: 55g 
Tank has been running for 6 months
Filters: 2 Aquaclear 70's
Light: 2 54 T5 HO (running 6 hours now)
Plants: Yes (I use Flourish, excel, and an iron supplement)
Water conditioner: Prime
Water type: Tap water

Parameters
PH: 7.2
Nitrate: 20-40ppm
GH: 75ppm
KH: 120ppm
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: 0

Fishes
7 neon tetra
5 peppered cory
1 three line cory
6 zebra danio
1 marbled sailfin molly
1 king betta male
2 otto's
6 dwarf neon rainbow
2 mystery snails 
6 cherry barbs
7 kuhli loaches

So I had a problem with cyanobacteria as you can see in the photo. It completely covered my plants green. I had a blackout for 2 days and lowered the time I had the lights on from 8 to 6 hours. Its been a week of me running the lights for 6 hours and increasing the excel dosage to daily. I still have cyanobacteria covering the plants, though no where near as bad as it was in the photo. 

I have also always had a water clarity issue. The last two pictures were taking today with the lights off. I had stopped doing weekly water changes last month due to parents, but this month I have been back on track and doing weekly changes. I have also neglected changing carbon because of some money issues I had but am now back on track also. The carbon issue was recent though, the tank has always been like this. 

Was wondering what I could do to fix both problems? It is annoying to see my plants have cyanobacteria on them and the fact that my water is cloudy.
Btw my fish are not bothered by any of this and show no signs of stress. I also have a tendency to over feed.


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## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

Pretty sure that your tendency to overfeed is at the root of your problem. How often do you do partial water changes and what percentage of your water do you change? If I were you I would add a plecostomus or two, possibly some Pomacea bridgessi (apple snails - I know I know but bridgesii will starve to death in a healthy planted tank, they only eat stuff that's dead, so if you see a brig eating a leaf, it is a dead or dying leaf. In order to get them to eat lettuce you have to boil it first. They do a great job on extra and rotting fish food though.) to help with the clean up & to help stay ahead of your overfeeding problem and algae bloom. I would lay off the plant food supplements, especially anything with phosphate in it, that's going to just feed your algae problem. I would work to get your nitrate and phosphate way down down down. Nice slow growing aquarium plants do fine on low nitrate and phosphate but algae does not. Algae loves nitrate and phosphate like a drug. Those plants that are covered are not thriving, you need to go through with a bent wire or something and see if you can lift as much of that stuff off as you can, just pull it off or pick it off and throw it away. Don't be surprised if the plants underneath are not happy, they've been shut away from the sunlight. Just remove as much algae as you can by hand, and leave the rest for the algae eaters (and no, those ottos will not be able to keep up with the size problem you have right now. They're like toothbrushes and you need a drill or two) 

I have been where you are, I know your troubles well. Please be patient with my tone, it is not grouchiness or judgement it is sort of a textual sigh for the work ahead of you, but don't worry, your tank will be beautiful when you are done. Look at my tank pics and you'll see, I battle algae but I am successful.


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## Plague (Nov 22, 2010)

That is gonna be A LOT of leaves to clean -_- and I rather not add more fish since I'm well stocked. Do I do another black out? How about feeding? Should I feed every other day instead of daily? I only add flourish twice so should I do it only once? Do I continue with daily excel? Many many questions I have  The cyanobacteria wasn't even in my tank it was introduced! -_- bought a plant home with a green spot and at the time I didn't know about cyano.

I'm doing water changes weekly now. I remove what I guess is 25% of the water? I have never measured and go by what the tank looks like =P Like I divide the tank into ten horizontal rectangles and remove 2 and a half. It sometimes looks like half the tank is empty when I do the water change. But I have a 4 inch layer of carribsea black gravel.


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## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

algae spores can be found in regular house dust, so no matter what we do to keep our tanks algae free, there will always be spores and the potential for algae blooms. The only thing we can do is limit the algae's potential for growth (oh, and the fish will tend to have algae spores in their guts when we bring them home, as well as any algae spores on the plants we bring home) so if you're not going to do any mechanical cleaning (scraping, picking, etc.) and you're not going to add any animals to the tank, and you only have two very small algae eaters, I would recommend cutting your total amount that you feed to about 10% of what you have been feeding and not doing any plant supplementation at all. none. No flourish, no excel, no iron. Look at the labels. Do they have any phosphorus, phosphate or nitrate? Those are all algae foods. Phosphate also comes from fish food and fish waste. It doesn't matter if you shut off the lights, you're going to do as much damage to your plants as you do to your algae. You leave lights off long enough you could end up with a tank full of dead algae and plants, which will leave your fish in distress (can we say massive ammonia spike?)

How often do you do your water changes? 25% is fine, but you shouldn't include your gravel in your volume. If your tank is 55 gallon, 10% is 5.5 gallons, so you want around 2.5 5 gallon pails. If you do a python, you want to decrease the water volume by 1/4 but just the water volume, from the top of the water line to the top of the gravel line, not more than that is really necessary. Do you use a gravel vaccum? Might want to consider one, especially with the overfeeding. You need to do your 25% change once a week at least. Got to get the phosphates and nitrates down as far as your water source will let you. 

Here's another piece of bad news: if we get the food in the water (the nitrate, the phosphate) down to low levels that is only going to slow down/stop the growth of the algae, the only way you are going to get rid of this algae is to remove it somehow. You can go the way of chemical algaecides, but if you do, all that dead algae is going to die and rot and you are going to have an ammonia spike you won't believe. We're talking toxic waste dump. The only safe way to use algaecides in your aquarium is to remove most of the algae first and then use the algaecide to clean up what you can't remove. So one way or another, the only way to get the algae out of there is somebody (you, a snail, a fish) is going to have to remove it. There is no way around it.


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

Well I 've certainly seen a lot worse tanks then that.

What I do is kill the lights and stop adding food until the water clears.

then resume with less lighting and feeding until it stays clear.

But that's just my .02


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## Plague (Nov 22, 2010)

I am gonna clean the tank, I never said I wasn't. I was told not to use a gravel vacuum because I use eco complete and I would end up losing most of the substrate. I probably do 10 gallons of water per each water change. I think I'm gonna end up measuring it this weekend. 

Btw why are we talking about algae? I thought cyano was not algae.


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## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

cyanobacteria is also known as blue green algae and is photosynthetic. You can refer to it as bacteria I suppose, but that always sounds misleading to me as well. I suppose you could attack this from the point of view that you have a gram negative bacterial problem, but it all comes back to: you kill it, it rots. You feed it, it grows. 

But yeah, if you're using a substrate that is going to go up the gravel vaccuum, I guess you can't use that. Sounds like I misunderstood the reluctance about going in after the monsters. It seems like the best choice under the circumstances to just pare down the population as much as possible, then follow up with whatever method you choose.


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## Plague (Nov 22, 2010)

I will scrub down the tank, including the plants this time. Keep the light at 6 hours and try to not allow sunlight into my room. Will feed every other day and cut off plant supplements. 

Hopefully this works I'm running out of ideas


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## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

I suspect this is going to help a bunch, but you might still want to look at the amount you're feeding. Fish always look hungry, they're in a constant state of seeking food, that's their major driving program, is search for food, even when their needs have been met. If the fish leave flakes lying around anywhere, if there's visible food around 3 minutes after you feed, think about cutting back the amount, even on feeding days. I have no idea if this is actually the case, but if it is, this is another good place to crop back. Sometimes the form of food is a problem, if the food doesn't stay in the feeding zone long enough - if you have food that goes pretty quickly to the bottom and you have all top and mid level feeders, for instance, it might be worth looking into food that floats longer. ? 

If you feel like it, you might want to invest in a phosphate test. Once this problem is licked, and you're back to plant supplements and all, you may want to keep an eye on phosphates just so you know you're not over supplementing, you don't want to give the plants more than they can use and set yourself up for the next spore that drifts in with the house dust turning into an invading force. Currently I have a population of hair algae that is hanging in the background in my tank, but I pull it out, scrape it off, and prune off infested leaves I can't clean, and keep the nitrate and phosphate levels low, along with the efforts of my cleaning crew. Even though the problem isn't completely gone, its at a very low, very manageable level, even with 12 hours of light. You will get to a manageable place, it may take some tweaking, but you'll get the tank you want.


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

Plague said:


> I will scrub down the tank, including the plants this time. Keep the light at 6 hours and try to not allow sunlight into my room. Will feed every other day and cut off plant supplements.
> 
> Hopefully this works I'm running out of ideas


IME kill the lights completely for a few days. then use the reduced lighting.

my .02


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## Skybox (Nov 13, 2010)

I just got a UV sterilizer, and it seem to help with the "Green water, Disease, others. Give that a try. :fish-in-a-bag:


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