Question of the Day What's your worst algae war story??

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9cf92cf95360affc116ec4ce3580af59.jpg We've all been there. Tell us about your worst algae war story and how you finally beat it. I'll start with mine.

My last tank. About 3-4 weeks after start began to show cyanobacteria on the substrate. Within two days, it exploded and my plants were covered. I think my fish were swimming around with some on.

I tried every natural thing I could think of but it didn't work. Finally brought out the antibiotic and it never came back. I thought I was clear. Nope.

As things matured, hair algae started. Tweaked CO2, lights. Vacuumed. It held strong. It wasn't until I did a three day blackout that it yielded and receded.

All in all, my tank battled wave after wave for the first year of its existence. Once is matured and the ecosystem balanced, it was algae-unseen for the rest of the time.

So, can you relate?
 
Mine, was a war that I lost 😭
I surrendered very early to the algae as I was disappointed with how the tank looked and decided to take it down and start over
  • I made a low tech tank, that consists mainly of low tech plants and dragon stones
  • The tank was doing great during the first 4 weeks, no traces of algae and I am doing the weekly maintenance and water changes
  • This was back in August and I decided to take my summer vacation and travel with my family
  • It was a vacation for a couple of weeks; so:
    • I configured the timer so that the light is on for 8 hours per day
    • And I configured an automatic fish feeder and I was under the impression that I configured it to feed the fish once per day
    • The huge mistake was that I configured it without knowing to feed the fish twice per day, the 1st was 2 pm and the 2nd was 2 am while the fish is probably sleeping plus it is completely dark in the room
  • This mis-configuration of the fish feeder caused the food to accumulate in the tank very fast, increasing the nutrients levels
  • The plants was in a very good shape when I left for my vacation, on returning the plants growth was very bad, a lot of the leaves were yellow and some of them melt down as well
  • Tried to salvage some of the plants and remove the algae manually, stopped feeding the fish for a couple of days, and made several water changes, but at the end almost all of the plants died and it didn't make any sense to keep fighting the algae
Conclusion:
  • Auto fish feeders can be very risky; if you plan to leave your home for a couple of days then the fish can live without food, or ask a friend or relative to feed the fish for you
  • This was a low tech tank and the room had already some ambient light from a nearby window so powering off the light would have been probably a better choice
  • I was under the impression that the plants were doing great during the first few weeks, but this was a wrong observation/assumption, probably during this period and since it was a new tank the plants still didn't establish a root system, so leaving them on their own to fight the algae during my vacation was a lost battle for them
Didn't take photos of the disaster that happened, but it was really bad that everything was covered with green hair algae plus green spotted algae, the only thing that was not covered with algae were the fish, but the plants, the stones, the gravel, the tank glass panels, the filter ... etc. literally everything
 
Sad to hear, @ayman.roshdy. Sorry you went through that.

I think you will learn, if you haven't already, that there are few disasters that you can't come back from. I'm not a huge fan of a complete restart. With patience and persistence, most tank situations can be overcome. I know @GreggZ came back from a mishap (not algae related) not too long ago.

On a separate point, I'm not too surprised this topic hasn't received much traction. We are fortunate to have started with some very experienced folks. I think with experience, algae becomes an occasional nuisance but not quite the enemy it was at the beginning.

I think as more new people find us, the algae forum with "help" prefixes will become more popular.
 
I think you will learn, if you haven't already, that there are few disasters that you can't come back from. I'm not a huge fan of a complete restart. With patience and persistence, most tank situations can be overcome. I know @GreggZ came back from a mishap (not algae related) not too long ago.ad to hear, @ayman.roshdy. Sorry you went through that.
Yeah Art that was when I was using the wrong type of pump in my RO tank. It leaked toxic oil into my system and darn near killed everything, both fish and plants. But if anyone has been in the hobby long enough, they most likely will encounter some disaster along the way.

On a separate point, I'm not too surprised this topic hasn't received much traction. We are fortunate to have started with some very experienced folks. I think with experience, algae becomes an occasional nuisance but not quite the enemy it was at the beginning.
Agree with this. There isn't a tank in the world that hasn't had some algae somewhere.

I think the biggest difference you will find with experienced folks is that they don't think about defeating algae. Instead they concentrate on providing plants everything they need to be healthy. The right amount of light for the type of plants, good levels of CO2 and O2, an uber clean environment. Healthy happy growing plants are easily the best defense against all algae.

And then there are nutrients. There are a lot old wives tales about things like too much ferts causing algae, PO4 is the devil, etc. But in my experience I have seen far more problems from people dosing too little, not too much.
 
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Well what had happened was, I pulled a bunch on fissadens moss and did not do a waterchange right after, then overtime at work compounded by 2 toddlers, made me forget to check and maintain my tank. I still did 60% waterchanges, but one day I noticed my plants not pearling, and BBA in all the high flow areas and slow growers, well after checking what’s wrong my co2 ran out! It had to be for a while because I was at like 200 psi, lucky for me I have a Matheson regulator so no EOTD, but that co2 missing sprouted BBA. I am still fighting it but slowly it’s going away.
 
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