How to deal with possible blue green algae?

I have a 180L tank that's fully stocked and heavily planted.

Over the last few weeks, there was a single clump of blue/green hair algae that formed on one of the stems in my Brazilian pennywort.

I left it for a while until it was pretty unsightly, then I removed it in one big clump. However, after that, it spread all over the rest of the tank and seems to take a liking to my brazilians as well as some leaves of val

I've been manually removing it now for a week or so, but it's quite time consuming and I somewhat feel like I'm making it worse and just spreading it out more.

I put in a few stems of pothos that have just begun to root in the water and a large portion of red root floaters in the hopes of slowing it down.

The tanks got bladder snails for days, about 8 cherry shrimp (that I do see munching on the hairs frequently) and I just added 3 true SAE. Nitrates constantly sit at 10-15.

I've also reduced lighting intensity to 60% but that doesn't seem to be doing anything Unfortunately, the only place the tank would fit was in my living room that gets indirect light almost all day which I highly suspect is the problem.

Any tips on how to deal with it?

BGA can be tough. Siamese algae eaters won't touch it (I've found them pretty useless as algae eaters in general). I had a terrible outbreak in my 150. A couple doses of Ultralife will knock it back for a while, but like most chemical treatments, it's a temporary fix at best. I only used it because this is a tank I run for a client in a public office space, and I needed to keep it looking decent while I figured things out. In a home tank, I probably wouldn't use chemicals.

What finally did it for me was reducing the light, manual removal, and keeping the substrate clean. I'd reduce the light by an hour, wait a couple weeks, then reduce it again. I got very diligent about keeping mulm off the sand, picking up dead leaves, and such. Eventually my plants got the upper hand and the slime went away. It took a long time.

Good luck!

WhistlingBadger said:

What finally did it for me was reducing the light, manual removal, and keeping the substrate clean. I'd reduce the light by an hour, wait a couple weeks, then reduce it again. I got very diligent about keeping mulm off the sand, picking up dead leaves, and such. Eventually my plants got the upper hand and the slime went away. It took a long time.

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Over the last two or three years I have had it occur on me as well. If you do what @WhistlingBadger suggests and be patient it seems to eventually go away. In my opinion it seems to be part of the cycling after you get the Nitrate cycle established.

Uberhoust said:

Over the last two or three years I have had it occur on me as well. If you do what @WhistlingBadger suggests and be patient it seems to eventually go away. In my opinion it seems to be part of the cycling after you get the Nitrate cycle established.

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Oh I see... The tank is pretty new, it's only about 50 days old now. I didn't know that it was part of the cycling process but it does make sense. I'll reduce the lighting and see how it goes!

WhistlingBadger said:

BGA can be tough. Siamese algae eaters won't touch it (I've found them pretty useless as algae eaters in general). I had a terrible outbreak in my 150. A couple doses of Ultralife will knock it back for a while, but like most chemical treatments, it's a temporary fix at best. I only used it because this is a tank I run for a client in a public office space, and I needed to keep it looking decent while I figured things out. In a home tank, I probably wouldn't use chemicals.

What finally did it for me was reducing the light, manual removal, and keeping the substrate clean. I'd reduce the light by an hour, wait a couple weeks, then reduce it again. I got very diligent about keeping mulm off the sand, picking up dead leaves, and such. Eventually my plants got the upper hand and the slime went away. It took a long time.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thank you! I'll give it a shot with the reduced lighting and see how it goes. I'm not gonna touch any chemicals for now as it is just a home tank and, although unsightly, I'm the only one that has to be unfortunate enough to see it haha

Can we get a picture of the algae?

You meantion blue green hair algae. Blue green algae (bga) (Cyanobacter bacteria) grows as a slimy film smothering things. It doesn't grow in a hair like manor.

If it is blue green algae, it loves red light, lots of nutrients, low oxygen levels and slow water movement.
Having lights with a 6500K rating (K is for Kelvin) can help if you have a lower Kelvin rating (around 3000-4500K).
If you are adding CO2, that can encourage it. As can a lot of plant fertilisers, however your tank is well planted so I doubt the fertiliser is an issue unless you are adding huge amounts every day or two.
Lots of plants can reduce water flow and this can leave dead spots for the bga to grow. Making sure there is good water movement can help.
Big regular water changes and gravel cleaning the stuff out can sometimes help.

Colin_T said:

Can we get a picture of the algae?

You meant blue green hair algae. Blue green algae (bga) (Cyanobacter bacteria) grows as a slimy film smothering things. It doesn't grow in a hair like manor.

If it is blue green algae, it loves red light, lots of nutrients, low oxygen levels and slow water movement.
Having lights with a 6500K rating (K is for Kelvin) can help if you have a lower Kelvin rating (around 3000-4500K).
If you are adding CO2, that can encourage it. As can a lot of plant fertilisers, however your tank is well planted so I doubt the fertiliser is an issue unless you are adding huge amounts every day or two.
Lots of plants can reduce water flow and this can leave dead spots for the bga to grow. Making sure there is good water movement can help.
Big regular water changes and gravel cleaning the stuff out can sometimes help.

Click to expand...

Good catch. I’m not sure what blue green hair algae is. Might be something different.

That's an awesome tank you have there. You should enter it in our February Tank of the Month contest which will feature tanks sized at 31 gallons and larger.

Colin_T said:

Can we get a picture of the algae?

You meantion blue green hair algae. Blue green algae (bga) (Cyanobacter bacteria) grows as a slimy film smothering things. It doesn't grow in a hair like manor.

If it is blue green algae, it loves red light, lots of nutrients, low oxygen levels and slow water movement.
Having lights with a 6500K rating (K is for Kelvin) can help if you have a lower Kelvin rating (around 3000-4500K).
If you are adding CO2, that can encourage it. As can a lot of plant fertilisers, however your tank is well planted so I doubt the fertiliser is an issue unless you are adding huge amounts every day or two.
Lots of plants can reduce water flow and this can leave dead spots for the bga to grow. Making sure there is good water movement can help.
Big regular water changes and gravel cleaning the stuff out can sometimes help.

Click to expand...

WhistlingBadger said:

Good catch. I’m not sure what blue green hair algae is. Might be something different.

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Thanks guys... I was mistaken - definitely not cyanobacteria!

Here are some photos:

Fishmanic said:

That's an awesome tank you have there. You should enter it in our February Tank of the Month contest which will feature tanks sized at 31 gallons and larger.

Click to expand...

Thank you! I'll check it out

There is some black beard algae, green filamentous algae and some white filamentous algae, which is odd because normally when algae goes white, it is dead. If the white stuff is growing, then that is cool.

Excess nutrients tend to be the main reason for these types of algae.

Colin_T said:

There is some black beard algae, green filamentous algae and some white filamentous algae, which is odd because normally when algae goes white, it is dead. If the white stuff is growing, then that is cool.

Excess nutrients tend to be the main reason for these types of algae.

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Looks like I have a whole algae party going on haha

Anything I can do to lower the nutrients and deal with the pesky stuff? I am using an active substrate (Master Soil) but no ferts or root tabs.

Cyanobacter isn't algae, which is why you are sort of lucky not to have it. It was probably the first life on the planet and it has survived, tough stuff.

What you have is an algae smorgasbord, and may reflect overfeeding the fish, too much light, too few water changes - or just new plants that still haven't established themselves. It's almost always there, in the background in a tank, but you will have to experiment to see why it's established in your set up. There are no quick fixes...

GaryE said:

Cyanobacter isn't algae, which is why you are sort of lucky not to have it. It was probably the first life on the planet and it has survived, tough stuff.

What you have is an algae smorgasbord, and may reflect overfeeding the fish, too much light, too few water changes - or just new plants that still haven't established themselves. It's almost always there, in the background in a tank, but you will have to experiment to see why it's established in your set up. There are no quick fixes...

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That's at least a little bit of a relief!

Thinking about it, it might be overfeeding... I usually feed 1x a day but I'll switch to every other day.

Water change wise, it's a bit of a pain as I live in an apartment but I do about 10-15% changes every 4-5 days. Seeing that the nitrates sit around 10-15ppm, I don't do major water changes that frequently as I still want some nitrates for the plants - maybe it's not a bad idea to increase the water changes and "starve out" the algae.

I've lowered the lights yesterday to 6 hours/day vs 8... Do you recommend just waiting and seeing how that goes or to attack it from all sides at once?

I just kind of live with algae. I reduce it, but how is experimentation, since we all have different water, set ups, etc.