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Algae removal products & your experience


whetu

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I was just reading in another thread where someone used an algae removal product and lost a tank full of fish! :o This seems like an important issue as these products are available over the counter in a lot of places, and pet shop staff seem pretty keen to offer them as a first line of action for a tank that has an algae problem.

Here's my experience with AlgaeFix.

Manufacturer: Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc

Active ingredient: 45g/L poly (oxyethylene (dimethyliminio) ethylene dichloride) :-? [Or something like that]

I got a free bottle of AlgaeFix with something else I bought (can't remember what... the bottle has an expiry date of 2007 so it must have been a while ago...) Anyway I got green water and decided to try this stuff out.

It had two results:

1) The water was clear within minutes

2) The fish were suffering!

As soon as I put it in I noticed all the fish went and hid away under plants and in dark corners of the tank. The only ones I could catch a glimse of were the gold barbs who were under the plants 'flashing' against the gravel - a sign that there is something irritating their gills (the fish equivalent of coughing).

Needless to say I did a quick water change.

The water stayed clear after that, even though it had been cloudy for days before, so you could say the remedy worked. On the other hand it seemed to be a pretty drastic remedy and the fish seemed pretty unhappy with it.

My advice would be to try every kind of non-chemical intervention you can, before you try this product. If you do decide to use AlgaeFix or another algae-removal product, do it at a time when you know you will be right there in the room and able to keep an eye on your tank. Be ready to do a big water change at the first sign of problems.

What algae removal products have you tried and what happened?

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Am I good at getting a reaction or what? :lol:

What algae removal products have you tried and what happened?

phoszorb and all the other "zorbs". nothing bad happens. fish are fine.

UV- sterilizers - fish dont die. CL's in particular love it- dunno why, they play with it. - by far the most effective.

Plants - my favourite method - suck up all the extra nutrient.

block out light - i don't like doing this. it agitates me when i cannot look into the tank :o :lol:

green X - works well with no side effect too.

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Never tried anything myself but have had my water a bit green tinged at times.

Lights are on 11 hours a day, no direct sun light, plants grown like wildfire and require weekly pruning when I do my weekly 20% water change.

Might cut back lights to 10 hours

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I've tried algae fix on green water as well. I had green water for about a week with daily 50% water changes and still couldn't get rid of it, so after another water change i put in about 3/4 of the recommended dose for my tank and by the next day all the green water had disappeared. I then left it like that for about 3 days before doing a 50% water change. I did not notice any stress on the fish at all. :bounce: However it didn't seem to have any effect on hair algae....does anyone know if UV sterilizers work for hair algae?

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Never touched any algae chemicals, I don't even use water conditioner. The only method I've used is cutting the lights and blacking out the tank. No light what so ever for several days, just remember to remove the CO2 line so your fish don't suffocate.

HTH

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Yes tackling the stem of the problem is the best way to be rid of algae.

Are you dosing liquid ferts? Liquid ferts go into the water column (most plants dont tend to like water column absorbsion) and hence you would be feeding the algae too.

Id say give it a good scrub, and change to root tabs or something.

Also look at changing your foods, any that make the water a bit cloudy are also feeding algae via the water column.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Our fish tank turned into pea soup last winter and we couldn't work out why - turned out the sun was hitting the tank early morning through the high (curtainless) windows. We fixed it completely with several large water changes and blacking out the tank for 3 days. We now throw an old navy towel over the tank every night, which also helps keep the temperature stable overnight (stupid heater).

HOWEVER, we now have algae growing on all our plants and I'd love to know how to deal with this without getting rid of the plants - is there any way? We have tried an algae product (algol?), but it doesn't seem to do much.

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Our fish tank turned into pea soup last winter and we couldn't work out why - turned out the sun was hitting the tank early morning through the high (curtainless) windows. We fixed it completely with several large water changes and blacking out the tank for 3 days. We now throw an old navy towel over the tank every night, which also helps keep the temperature stable overnight (stupid heater).

HOWEVER, we now have algae growing on all our plants and I'd love to know how to deal with this without getting rid of the plants - is there any way? We have tried an algae product (algol?), but it doesn't seem to do much.

The algae you get on plants is brown beard algae I think, and is apparently quite difficult to eradicate. I have it on my javaferns. I just leave it...

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