Journal Frank's Dutch Attempt

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Your slime looks kinda like the stuff I had the past months 🤔 If its almost but not quite like a fine green thread algae? Wispy and extremely fine, cant be pulled out very well because it just comes apart to nothing in your hands almost?

It took over after I had used API Algaefix (Busan77) on the tank. The Algaefix had killed the previous thread algae i had struggled with (and almost all of the plants along with it), and this wispy stuff rose out of the substrate like a cursed zombie. Cant say ive had algae like it before.
Its been ruling supreme together with increasing amounts of cyanobacteria, but the tank got neglected, the entire surface got covered in plants, and somehow the entire population of this algae spontaneously disintegrated in the span of about a day. I dont know if it ran out of light, ferts, or a combination of factors but its currently not visible in my tank any more 🤔
Make of that what you will.
Time will tell if it returns for me, but maybe letting your plants cover the entire surface is something to consider?
A wise friend of mine once suggested just such a method for defeating various green thread algaes, perhaps he had the best option all along 😳
 
Hufsa said:
Your slime looks kinda like the stuff I had the past months 🤔 If its almost but not quite like a fine green thread algae? Wispy and extremely fine, cant be pulled out very well because it just comes apart to nothing in your hands almost?
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Hufsa said:
Its been ruling supreme together with increasing amounts of cyanobacteria, but the tank got neglected
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Both of these are 100% accurate descriptions for my situation. Well except for positive ID of Cyanobacteria.

This started to show a few months after I had surgery and was unable to clean my filter. I think it was 2 maybe 3 months late for cleaning based on my schedule.

I did try AlgaeFix early on since it does look like hair algae but it nothing. Extreme doses of glute knocks it back hard but that’s not a sustainable practice.

Before I blow up the tank, I’m going to focus on increasing plant mass with fast growers. Anything that won’t grow or throws a fit (looking at you, helferii) is getting replaced until things settle down.
 
FrankZ said:
Before I blow up the tank, I’m going to focus on increasing plant mass with fast growers. Anything that won’t grow or throws a fit (looking at you, helferii) is getting replaced until things settle down.
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I think this is a good strategy @FrankZ. Please keep us posted as many people have or will be in the same boat at some point.

#savethetank
 
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Look ma!!! No slime! Or haze! I pulled out the helferi and put some small variety of crypt, can’t remember the name, it’s kind of narrow leaved and dark green, grows like a weed in my low tech setups. I have had this crypt for years, it was one of the first plants I bought when I started trying plants in aquariums.

I really started larding on the ferts since @Burr740 suggested it. Always making sure I added the full week of macros between water changes. So if I did an early one Wednesday and knew I was doing another Friday I made sure to add the full week of dosing before Wednesday and the again before Friday. So I have been larding in the macros. Micros I kept at every other day. I think too many water changes and subsequent macro limitations made for unhappy plants and just fueled the slime. The helferii seemed too far gone and needed it out of there because it was clearly fueling the slime.

Sunday night when i was replacing the helferii I noticed aerial roots on the pogo stelata for the first time in a good while. Then I saw most of the other plants are putting them out again. I don’t know when that stopped (probably when the slime started) but when everything was growing the best I had aerial roots all over. Forest for the trees kind of thing here, I missed what was clearly unhappy plants because I was starting at the slime for so long and made things worse by getting water change happy.

Things are looking up I think.
 
Thats more like it! lol Glad its looking up

Good move adding the same weekly total with a more frequent water change. Took me a long time to grasp this too but weekly total really means total between water changes, because thats when things start over. Nothing to do 7 days
 
This is really great to read @FrankZ! Speaks to focusing on plant health as the primary thing. We all lose our focus sometimes but focus on the plants as the key. I’ll give Tom Barr credit as I heard that from him many years ago.

I think you should also preserve some of the alien slime you have. Maybe give it to NASA or we can look at it under the microscope and try to identify.
 
Art said:
This is really great to read @FrankZ! Speaks to focusing on plant health as the primary thing. We all lose our focus sometimes but focus on the plants as the key. I’ll give Tom Barr credit as I heard that from him many years ago.

I think you should also preserve some of the alien slime you have. Maybe give it to NASA or we can look at it under the microscope and try to identify.
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I got my scope rig back so if I can find some slime I’ll get some photos to post. I’m sure there is still some hanging around somewhere. It didn’t hang on this long to just disappear in a few days.
 
FrankZ said:
View attachment 5953

Look ma!!! No slime! Or haze! I pulled out the helferi and put some small variety of crypt, can’t remember the name, it’s kind of narrow leaved and dark green, grows like a weed in my low tech setups. I have had this crypt for years, it was one of the first plants I bought when I started trying plants in aquariums.

I really started larding on the ferts since @Burr740 suggested it. Always making sure I added the full week of macros between water changes. So if I did an early one Wednesday and knew I was doing another Friday I made sure to add the full week of dosing before Wednesday and the again before Friday. So I have been larding in the macros. Micros I kept at every other day. I think too many water changes and subsequent macro limitations made for unhappy plants and just fueled the slime. The helferii seemed too far gone and needed it out of there because it was clearly fueling the slime.

Sunday night when i was replacing the helferii I noticed aerial roots on the pogo stelata for the first time in a good while. Then I saw most of the other plants are putting them out again. I don’t know when that stopped (probably when the slime started) but when everything was growing the best I had aerial roots all over. Forest for the trees kind of thing here, I missed what was clearly unhappy plants because I was starting at the slime for so long and made things worse by getting water change happy.

Things are looking up I think.
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I've found your post quite helpful, I've been in a similar position as you, sort of.
Your post, and @Burr740's input has helped tremendously, hopefully I'll come out in a better position soon too.
 
Joel Armstrong said:
I've found your post quite helpful, I've been in a similar position as you, sort of.
Your post, and @Burr740's input has helped tremendously, hopefully I'll come out in a better position soon too.
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Thank you buddy! I’m glad sharing my experience with this slime is helping someone.
 
Glad to see the tank turning the corner Frank! We've all been through stretches where we scratch out heads trying to figure out what is going on.

I am not surprised adding more nutrients and also keeping them stable has helped. I have seen more issues in tanks from underdosing not overdosing.

Tank is looking much better. I hope things continue to go well and keep the updates coming.
 
FrankZ said:
Thank you buddy! I’m glad sharing my experience with this slime is helping someone.
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We learn most from our mistakes, so even though you suffered it has had some value as well. As the root cause seems to have been nutrients, in combination with lots of water changes that diluted them, could you help with a 'post mortem' and describe the conditions that likely cause all the trouble?
 
Yugang said:
As the root cause seems to have been nutrients, in combination with lots of water changes that diluted them,
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This is true but if I may nitpick the semantics just a little bit. The root cause was unhappy plants. Nutrients just happened to be what caused them to be unhappy in this case

Now I know you know this. Its just one of my peeves and I think itd help every hobbyist to grasp it better. Rather than saying poor co2 caused algae, too much/too little nutrients caused algae, etc. The root cause is always unhappy plants. The why can be a mystery but it always starts from that
 
04 Slime.jpg
40X magnification of the slime. Google Lens search says Cladophora or cyano bacteria plus a bunch of other obivousily wrong answers. Those seem the most plausible for an ID.
 
Yugang said:
We learn most from our mistakes, so even though you suffered it has had some value as well. As the root cause seems to have been nutrients, in combination with lots of water changes that diluted them, could you help with a 'post mortem' and describe the conditions that likely cause all the trouble?
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I think it started with helferii getting slowly unhappy when i reduced the lights to slow down growth and maintenance right before my surgery. I shut off 2 of the 4 bulbs right before my surgery and ran that way for 2 months. I am not sure if the 50% reduction is PAR is what started it but not being able to clean the filter didn't help anything either.

Then I really kicked things into high gear in the wrong direction by getting water change happy and not adding back as many nutrients I was taking out, macros specifically. There has been a dramatic improvement in the last few weeks since I started larding on the macros as I previously mentioned and the slime is barely present. I see some stray strands here or there, only where the helferii was planted and now where else. This little ordeal has taught me that macro dosing should be viewed as in between water changes and not weekly, at least for my tank.

Dosing as of now (C and Mg are based on water changed volume, the rest are based on total tank volume of 75 gallons) is 35/7 Ca/Mg with 15/5/15 NPK at water change, followed by two additional NPK of 4.5/1.5/6 for a total NPK of 24/8/27 between water changes. Micros are 0.15 Burr Aqua every other day no matter what. Things are looking good now, so I am not looking to rock the boat, so I am going to roll with this for a while. This is the first full week of only on 50% water change and things are still looking better each day.
 
Joel Armstrong said:
How's your tank going now, still good?
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Driving Ace Ventura GIF
 
Joel Armstrong said:
How's your tank going now, still good?
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Thanks for asking.

Everything growing in the substrate looks good and is growing well. I’ll get pic tomorrow.

However, the slime made a come back in the fern wall. I noticed it Wednesday evening with some long strands that I hoped were just thread/hair algae. By Thursday morning, there were visible sheets of slime again coming up out of it. So I yanked the fern wall and put it in my shrimp tank. They ate it all off over night and it hasn’t come back there as of yet. Not sure why other than maybe I suck at vacuuming the fern to get all the dirt out of it with every water change. Wish I could keep shrimp in here, first the diamond tetras ate them all, then after I removed the diamonds the emperor tetras took over the shrimp eating role when I tried to add shrimp back in.

So I’m rolling with no plant walls for a while and just maintenance trims. No major moves or uprooting for a while.
 
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