Dangerous Algae to all who consume????

[Yworry]

Hey

Every pleco & catfish I have owned hasn't lasted more than 6 months in my tank. I have a Juwel Vision 260L and put those cool 3D rock backgrounds on it. Started growing some really yuk reddy/brown hairy type algae and all my other fish seem to be amune to it except all my algae eaters have died. Our water comes direct from the river (farm water). So I thought those backgrounds were harbouring disease or something so I threw them out and the water seems much clearer. Is there a type of alage that is poisonous to catfish etc??

thanks alot

[darkfur]

Farm river water contains loads of fertilizer runoffs - did you check the nitrate and phosphate levels? It's probably fertilizing that yucky algae. The algae could be robbing the water of O2 as well.

[whetu]

Hmmm... that seems a bit of a puzzle. I would also agree that water coming from a river on a farm is quite likely to have a lot of nutrients in it, which might be causing the algae problem. Do you drink the water straight from the river or does it go through some kind of filtering system first?

I'm not aware of any algae that's poisonous to catfish...

What kind of catfish have you had? And what kind of other fish are living in the tank? Do you have any test kits to test the water? If not, the shop where you bought the fish will most likely do a water test for free and tell you what levels of ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphates are present in your water - this should help with a diagnosis.