Algae Scrapers

[Litespeed]

Since we are fairly new to this aquarium thing (only a year into it). We had tried just about everything to remove the hard algae build up on the back of the tank with very little success. My husband saw an algae scraper (Kent Pro-Scraper) on line and decided to try it. I really thought it would be a waste of good money. Well this morning he tried it and to my amazement it did a fantastic job. I really didn't think anything could get off the hard algae build up. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this but I sure wish we had known about it a lot soon. It would have saved us a bunch of money buying all the magnet algae cleaners and other things that just didn't work.

[Adrian]

Algae scrappers do infact work, if one needs them. However, the best medicine for algae, is to not have algae in the first place. Algae, like most organisms need certain things to survive. If you deprive the algae those things, it either kills the organism, or prevents it in the first place.

Algae needs light, food, (as in excess waste or fish food and high nitrates) and water at certain parameters. If you remove one of those ingrediants, then algae does not grow.

Most of the time, the culprit is 2 fold. Wrong lights, or too much of the wrong color, usually the blues, and high levels of nitrates. I would check your water parameters and make sure your nitrate levels are below 10ppms. Then, check the lighting, make sure that the lights operate at or around 6700k. Also, make sure the lights are not on all the time, and the tank is not exposed to sunlight, like in front of a window. These things will greatly diminish how much algae grows. You can not get rid of all algae, but you can control how much grows.

Hopefully this will help.

[smaug]

Good job on the discovery of the pro scraper,I use the stainless steel bladed model.Dont fret having algae,its quite common and is not a sign of poor tank keeping as long as it is not building up to the point that you have to scrape more then twice a month.