How do I get rid of this?

[Longtime beginner]

How recent is the whole thing?

How many times a day do you feed your fish, what fish do you have, and what type of food and how much do you give them?

What kind of light do you have, and how long do you keep it on for daily?

Most if not all algae growth (out of the ordinary) occurs due to imbalance in nutrition and light.

Some green algae on the glass is to be expected on established tanks but the brown one on your plants, that mold thing on the wood and the apparent black beard algae all seem to indicate some adjustments need to be made

Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate the concern. I have a Fluval led light. 10 gallon tank. An additional light that I purchased from Home Depot. It’s a general growth light I believe 20 WAtts I added this because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted from the fluval LED. Fluval light is on for seven hours. Additional light is on for five hours. I have had fantastic results up till about one month ago when this bearded algae started. Growing quickly as well. I only have guppies in tank 3 adults approximately 12 babies and they thrive extremely well. I have a covering on the top of water surface which is what I think is called duck weed. And I’ll feed minimally flake food. I try to do a 50% water change once every two weeks. My plants have tripled their size in three months.

 

[Herbibore]

More plants to suck up excess nutrients!

 

[Fishies4Ever]

I want to get some red root floaters dot eh suck up a lot of extra nutrients?

 

[Fishies4Ever]

I just tested my parameters!
Ammonia - I think it is 0 but it might be .25 which is really worrisome
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 40 - 80 super concerning
Ph - 7.6 but not sure
High pH - little lighter than 7.4 so I am assuming it would lower

I know these results are terrible and everything should be at 0 other than the pH’s
Could it just be from yesterdays water change and sand clean?? Should I do another water change?? The fish seem ok at the moment I also got rid of the snail eggs and snails because I know they produce more waste than they eat algae. These results defiantly explain all the algae. I am not sure what to do!! Could some of it be from the fluval plant substrate because I feel like I’ve read that they can produce ammonia or something and after vacuuming it out yesterday maybe it just stirred some of it up from underneath the sand?? Any help would be great!! I was expecting the levels to be good. All the pictures are below.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Your Nitrates are high because you don't do enough water changes. Ammonia converts to nitrite, nitrite converts to Nitrate. Nitrate will just sit there until you remove it. Plants may utilise a little bit but it's your job to dilute the rest. I recommend you do another water change now

 

[Fishies4Ever]

Your Nitrates are high because you don't do enough water changes. Ammonia converts to nitrite, nitrite converts to Nitrate. Nitrate will just sit there until you remove it. Plants may utilise a little bit but it's your job to dilute the rest. I recommend you do another water change now

Ok thank you! I’ll do a water change now. Would red root floaters take out some of the nitrates as well because I have been thinking about getting some so the light isn’t so bright anyway. This is kind of a dump question but when you say water change do I just change the water or do I also vacuum the sand with the siphon? How big of a water change should I do? I will also test the water for nitrates after the water change to see if they got any better.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Just change the water, take out 70-80% then do another big (50%) one tomorrow. By then you should be good, do another test to see where you're at. To stop the Nitrates getting so high in future, pick a day you can commit to doing your tank maintenance and do a 50% water change every week. Floaters will help but they won't do your job for you, you must still do your water changes

 

[Essjay]

Most aquarium plants take up ammonia not nitrate. They stop nitrate being made in the tank.
Nitrate can also come from tap water. Have you tested that?

If tap nitrate is low, the nitrate in the tank is being made by bacteria from ammonia. The way to stop this is by using live plants to take up this ammonia, and by not overfeeding the fish so less ammonia is made. If there are no live plants, water changes with low-nitrate tap water reduces nitrate.
But if tap water nitrate is high, even doing water changes won't help as the new water contains nitrate. There are ways to remove nitrate from tap water before to goes in the tank ranging from nitrate filters to using RO water.

 

[Fishies4Ever]

Just did about a 80% water change and test the nitrate.
Nitrate - 5.0 - 20 but 10 and 20 look pretty exact on the color chart so it might be more like 5.0 - 10

 

[Fishies4Ever]

I decided to test the tap water just in case it looks pretty good at about 0
I will still do a 50% water change again tomorrow

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

It won't hurt to do another tomorrow, then you can easily keep on top of things by doing one on a weekly basis

 

[outofwater]

That water does need changing. Glad you caught it, your troubles with algae and fungus also should be diminished with that, and of course the fish will be happier.

 

[Byron]

I've been following this thread, and I may have some suggestions.

On the ammonia, I would not worry about this. But I would definitely get some serious floating plants. Red root floaters I have never had, I think this is more recent fad, lol, but it looks comparable to Salvinia. Better than nothing, but you really need some serious plants like Water Sprite, Water Lettuce, Amazon Frogbit, or a stem plant like Pennywort. I know, I always mention the same plants but they do such a great job here.

I suspect the substrate is part of the issue. Everyone here knows how opposed I am to these money-grabbers, I just do not think they have that much benefit. But unless you want to change it out--you said this is a 10g tank?--we can work with it. Aside from ammonia, these can be nitrate factories depending what is in them. If you tap water is zero nitrate as you say, your aim is to get the nitrates as close to this as possible. But the nitrates must also remain low between water changes. Depending upon the fish load, they may go up a tad, but if say you get them down to 1-5 ppm, they should remain 1-5 ppm, or just into 5-10 ppm.

Several members have commented on various aspects, and I saw nothing I disagree with. provided the parameters--being GH, pH and temperature here--are reasonably the same between tank water and tap water, you just cannot do too many water changes, and big pones. There is sometimes a thinking that slowly reducing nitrate is better--no it is not. Nitrate is toxic, as are ammonia and nitrite, it just takes longer to harm the fish, but they are being weakened the longer it continues, so as low as possible and as soon as possible.

Feed minimally, don't be afraid of a fast day here and there.

A word on testing...always read the colour under diffused natural daylight. Never direct sunlight, and certainly never artificial light of any kind. White light is composed of colour wavelengths, and every light source can be very different and distort these colours. I use the window which is in shade but still bright.

Coming to light, do you have any data on the LED or the added one? I'm wondering about spectrum. Also wondering about intensity, depending what the second light is. The so-called "plant" lights are actually not that good, and prone to cause algae while not providing the best light for plants because they are red and blue without green in the mix. The Kelvin or CRI number for each would help here.

 

[Fishies4Ever]

I've been following this thread, and I may have some suggestions.

On the ammonia, I would not worry about this. But I would definitely get some serious floating plants. Red root floaters I have never had, I think this is more recent fad, lol, but it looks comparable to Salvinia. Better than nothing, but you really need some serious plants like Water Sprite, Water Lettuce, Amazon Frogbit, or a stem plant like Pennywort. I know, I always mention the same plants but they do such a great job here.

I suspect the substrate is part of the issue. Everyone here knows how opposed I am to these money-grabbers, I just do not think they have that much benefit. But unless you want to change it out--you said this is a 10g tank?--we can work with it. Aside from ammonia, these can be nitrate factories depending what is in them. If you tap water is zero nitrate as you say, your aim is to get the nitrates as close to this as possible. But the nitrates must also remain low between water changes. Depending upon the fish load, they may go up a tad, but if say you get them down to 1-5 ppm, they should remain 1-5 ppm, or just into 5-10 ppm.

Several members have commented on various aspects, and I saw nothing I disagree with. provided the parameters--being GH, pH and temperature here--are reasonably the same between tank water and tap water, you just cannot do too many water changes, and big pones. There is sometimes a thinking that slowly reducing nitrate is better--no it is not. Nitrate is toxic, as are ammonia and nitrite, it just takes longer to harm the fish, but they are being weakened the longer it continues, so as low as possible and as soon as possible.

Feed minimally, don't be afraid of a fast day here and there.

A word on testing...always read the colour under diffused natural daylight. Never direct sunlight, and certainly never artificial light of any kind. White light is composed of colour wavelengths, and every light source can be very different and distort these colours. I use the window which is in shade but still bright.

Coming to light, do you have any data on the LED or the added one? I'm wondering about spectrum. Also wondering about intensity, depending what the second light is. The so-called "plant" lights are actually not that good, and prone to cause algae while not providing the best light for plants because they are red and blue without green in the mix. The Kelvin or CRI number for each would help here.

Ok thank you so much! I hope my fish will still be doing good tomorrow I will do a 50% water change and test for nitrate again. I will do a fast day tomorrow as well. I just fed them and I had the lights off for a few hours. I think I scared them really bad because they were really pale and it looked like one of them died but they’re all looking a bit better now ( including the dead one he isn’t actually dead) but just hoping everything is good tomorrow
I just found the light I got off of Amazon a while ago. It is a AQQA aquarium light, full spectrum LED fish tank lights, 12” - 54” adjustable multi-color white, blue, red, green LED’s with extendable brackets, 14watts for freshwater plants. Kind of a mouth full not really sure if that helps but that is what it’s called I guess. It also says kelvin is 6500K white leds. I got the tank about 6 or 7 years ago as a kit so it just had the few lights that were attached to the inside of the lid, I think water got in and so they stopped working. More recently I ripped those out and got the new light, I just cut a hole in the top of the lid. I’ve been using the tank on and off more the last few years and I’ve had to replace the filter because I let the water get to low and it burned out, oops. The heater had burned out so I started using an old one which I think is now burned out as well but the temperature is in the safe zone, so I have had to replace pretty much all the parts of the tank, just as a little background on the tank.

 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

@Fish384 , black beard algae is easy to deal with via either peroxide or more effectively with reverse respiration. Good luck!