Algae

[SLIM]

He has diatoms and BBA.
Diatoms = ammonia
BBA = Fluctuating or low co2

 

[Zikofski]

yep im prettuy sure my co2 is fine now hence the lack of of bba now but diatoms has replaced it but its easy to wipe of some stuff, and my continuos routine of cleaning will help it
 
another question, the fact i clean my filters weekly, and i mean cleaning the foam and bio and stuff not just emptying them out, will this help or hinder me, reason i bring this up is the ammonia is to small for both a test kit or to hurt fish, but could it be in fact me cleaning the foam pads and stuff (YES I CLEAN IN TANK WATER) but could this reduce my bac just a tad to have a trace of ammonia in the tank? or is this a load of rubbish

 

[SLIM]

yep im prettuy sure my co2 is fine now hence the lack of of bba now but diatoms has replaced it but its easy to wipe of some stuff, and my continuos routine of cleaning will help it
 
another question, the fact i clean my filters weekly, and i mean cleaning the foam and bio and stuff not just emptying them out, will this help or hinder me, reason i bring this up is the ammonia is to small for both a test kit or to hurt fish, but could it be in fact me cleaning the foam pads and stuff (YES I CLEAN IN TANK WATER) but could this reduce my bac just a tad to have a trace of ammonia in the tank? or is this a load of rubbish

No this is absolutely possible. Cleaning the filter once a week is abit excessive tbh. Like I said I only clean mine once every 6 months!
The way I like to look at it is like this. All the bac is in the filter and will process any ammonia produced by fish/plant waste that is also in the filter pretty much immediately. Plant and fish waste in the tank however also give off ammonia, this ammonia may circulate around the tank afew times before the filter has an opportunity to pick it up and process it, by then the aglae has already been triggered.

 

[SLIM]

Dont get me wrong tho excessive plant matter in the filter is not a good thing either which is why I originally said maybe you should clean your filter out. If you get as much as you say you do in your filter, I would say try to drop back to cleaning out your filter to once a month and see how you get on.

 

[Zikofski]

i would love that monthly cleaning haha il clean it out this weekend, then next weekend check it and see what i get in there them see if i could probably clean it out every 3 months without flow reducing it is just the amount of plant debris in there il try and take a pic next time if i remember to show you what i mean 

 

[SLIM]

Yea perfect do that what is your filter?

 

[snazy]

Once you sort out the tank and the plants are healthier, you won't have that much plant debris in the filter, if any at all.  It's no good to have a blocked filter because the bacteria will suffer but on another hand overcleaning doesn't help either. You need some sort of a balanced solution to this.
As Slim says, maybe you can just clean out the mechanical media, but don't touch the biological. I've noticed numerous times that overcleaning a filter will cause a slight rise in ammonia and it's not by the test, because it keeps showing 0, but my fish flick for like a day afterwards, irritated by the trace levels of ammonia. So I am on the same side, I don't clean the filter very often but then again it doesn't really get that dirty fast and I don't experience noticeable flow drop.
Why not put coarse filter sponges on the intakes, at least while you are fixing the tank? Then all you'll clean for most of the time is the sponges, but leaving the filter media inside alone.
Ammonia triggers algae so one way or another you need to address that.

 

[Zikofski]

@SLIM -  i have two tetratec 1200s one is V1 one is V2 both have identical media in almost

i have customised it slightly
 
@snazy - cheers that ye probably what i am doing, over cleaning and what you suggest is a good idea i guess il can probably if i only clean out the mechanical part not clean my bio media at all ever tbh so il do that but il get pictures anyway of what i collect in my filter over a week so you can see, and ye i think the dead stuff is from fish uprooting or eating my leaf's melting plants' and from plants dying off like old leafs, i noticed my Hygrophila Guanensis has a lot of dying leafs underneath from the original plant i presume because its growing up and up and fanning out as well its blocking the light to the underside they are so dense it actually almost cave like underneath them so dark and its where some of my fish kinda stay the sponge idea is a good idea altho i did this with filter floss and it kind didn't work made it worse for blocking i may try the foam method more maybe buy a block of foam and cut a cylinder shape pout and just stick it around it maybe wont look pretty but until things are good it will work i guess
 
this is my new on the left and old inflow on the right


 
the holes go around 360 rather than just slits on the front so flow pressure is reduced so it wont suck up any fish which was also a problem and i made it slightly longer to
also this back one was more of the problem being so close to plants i find a lot more plant stuff inside this filter than i do the other one
 

 

[snazy]

I got a block of black foam too and just cut it to size. Make sure you get coarse foam because fine one will reduce the flow to nothing.

 

[Zikofski]

okay good tip i shall bare in mind

 

[SLIM]

Looks like your in good hands

 

[Zikofski]

well this has been very interesting, the major grower in my tank other than cabomba is my amazon sword you can see the results so quickly i think it takes 2 days for a leaf to go from just pocking through to fully grown, since i started 2 fully grown leafs and i see another pocking its way through today haha out standing, i have 1 other amazon sword in my tank that well is doing nothing so i can presume that this massive growth is to do with the under sand ferts i have under this plant haha the new leafs are getting redder and redder as this is a red amazon sword but i noticed as the leafs get older say day 3 to 4 days old they start to loose there colour and go green? is this common normal or showing a sign of something wrong in my tank? oh and so far no more ALGAE WOO
 
just to note i am following what EI do with there ferts, had a break from the ferts on saturday and then doing a 50% wc on sunday and dose again after just to reset everything back to normal like on EI seems to be a good habit to get into i will also get some pics up of this growth, and of my filter debris il also show you what is building up around my filter inlet pipes maybe you folks can advise me on why so much what looks to be healthy leafs ending up there such a shame but ye i am happy that algae is not growing any more just a mater of cleaning as much as i can of the algae that already there

 

[frothhelmet]

FYI, you dont need fancy chemicals or equipment to get rid of BBA. If you like inverts they will do the work for you. Ramshorn snails and red-nose shrimp will rapidly eat it to nothing. I wouldn't buy red-nose as they dont survive in freshwater though .  I have also seen very large 'Amanos' eat BBA, but you never really know with shrimp labelled as Amanos quite what they will and wont eat.
 
There are algae types which I have never seen any inverts eat however, spirogyra is one such problem algae.
 
Best of luck!

 

[This Old Spouse]

This would seem the answer to my problem, if only I didn't have assassin snails in my tanks! 

 

[Zikofski]

sadly i have clown loaches to i am not after getting rid of the algae more of finding the cause so it don't grow back it is all good know how to get rid of it thats easy its understanding what caused it in the first place and to prevent it growing back as once its gone it will always grow back unless you find the root of the problem 
 
but thank you for the info frothhelmet