Algae bloom!

[N2QLT]

Hello,

I'm new here and would like to know if anyone else has had this problem. I have a many years old 29 gallon tetra tank. In the past few weeks the water has been turning to pea soup. There also is very little algae forming on the walls. I have actually been having to feed the bristlenose pleco whose job it is to keep the tank clean. I'm using LED full spectrum light, only keeping it on for maybe two hours a day. That doesn't help. Marineland bio-wheel filter. Ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates almost 0. 1/3 water change every week. I was suspecting the well water (we live near large farms), but this has not been happening in our two large goldfish tanks. The fish appear to be in no distress. I had a white skirt tetra die in the past week, but he was probably almost 7 years old. Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks!

Scott

 

[Uberhoust]

Hi:

I had an algae bloom about 3 months ago in my 60 gallon tank. The lighting was on for 10 hours a day which was a little much with the slightly increasing morning sun that would shine in the window.

I handled it by doing two things:
1) Reduced the time the light was on from 10 hours to 8 hours
2) Became more consistent about a weekly water change, and upped the amount I changed
3) OK three things, reduced the amount of food I was feeding my fish (I had a slow eater who did not compete well for the food, so I overfeed the fish, I moved him)

It took about 3 weeks for the bloom to go away primarily because I made the changes slowly. The fish were not affected by the bloom and some like the bristle nosed pleco seemed to prefer it.

If you don't have your light on a timer you should put in on a timer so that at least the lighting is consistent. There is the possibility that your light is too bright or you are getting sunlight on the tank, another possibility is that your nitrate values are not being correctly assessed but with only two hours of light that seems a bit of a remote possibility. The nitrate test reagents need to agitated quite a bit, rumor has it if you don't agitate them enough you can reduce the effectiveness of the kit on the future tests.