Paulfm Posted March 11, 2018 Report Share Posted March 11, 2018 Hi everyone, my girlfriend and I have had an ecostyle 21 for about a year with 5 neons and no issues. Recently we upgraded to an ecostyle 61 we bought off trademe. We bought brand new filter material and transferred some of the plants and smaller tanks water to aid with cycling. After a week we added the 5 neons. Within a few days the entire tank became engulfed by cloudy green algae water. Thinking this was just a cycling issue we let it be with twice weekly, 10L water changes. It's now been 6 weeks and we've had no change. Is this normal? We feed the neons a pinch of food every second day, have the lights on for about 8hrs and have no natural sunlight on the tank. (See photo attached). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted March 12, 2018 Report Share Posted March 12, 2018 If you had used the old filter media as well you probably would not have had this problem. The tank is effectively re-cycling and the algae has nothing to compete with it, hence the green bloom. See if you can find some live daphnia (stock ponds are a great place to look if you know anyone with a farm or lifesyle block, or someone with a garden pond). The daphnia will clear it up overnight but you might need to temporarily remove the neons as they will eat the daphnia. Turn the lights off and cover the tank to totally block any light for 3 or 4 days. The fish won't mind but the algae need light to photosynthesise. After 3 or 4 days, siphon the gravel well doing about 50 - 75% water change to get rid of dead algae so it doesn't pollute the tank. Green water looks terrible but rest assured it is harmless to the fish. Colour_genes 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulfm Posted March 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2018 Hi, thanks for the reply Caryl! Unfortunately the tank didn't come with the old media so we had no choice but to buy new media. I've put the fish back in their old, smaller tank, put the smaller tanks filter media into the new tank to help promote the cycling and covered the tank with a doubled over blanket. Will see how it looks in a couple of days and do the 50-75% water change you've recommended. Living in Auckland city we don't know of anyone nearby who would have daphnia, but thanks for the suggestion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted March 19, 2018 Report Share Posted March 19, 2018 6 hours ago, Paulfm said: Hi, thanks for the reply Caryl! Unfortunately the tank didn't come with the old media so we had no choice but to buy new media. But...You had a tank with a filter full of media? I found the most effective thing when I had similar was to rubber band a big wad of filter wool around the filter intake. It will clog up very quickly so you'll need to rinse it out in the sink every few hours but should filter out the algae in a few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulfm Posted March 19, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2018 We had our smaller ecostyle 21 tank with filter media (2 small filter cartridges). The ecostyle 21 cartridges fit width-wise into the ecostyle 61 filter housing and cover about 1/4 of the filter area so I've put those in, with the new ecostyle 61 cartridges and the new ceramic noodle media. But thanks for the wool idea, will definitely give that a go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.