Algae or fungus?

[Bolsen27]

Hey gang I am working on a fishless cycle in a 40 gal tank with live plants and have recently noticed an abundance of white fuzzy stuff (cotton like) covering everything in the tank. All over the plants. On the plant leaves it almost looks like greyish balls all over. Then some of the plants of long strands like 2 inches long hanging off the end of them. Some of it almost looks like a light green color. It looks horrible!

Any idea what it is and how can I get rid of it? I am afraid that it is going to cause the plants to die.

[jeffs99dime]

Can you post a pic of it?

[Bolsen27]

I will try to get a decent pic or 2 of it.

[Cermet]

Green, long strands sounds like algae - what are your ammonia/nitrite and nitrate levels? Knowing the phosphate levels would be useful. Since you have plants, how long are the lights on (under eight hours?) and do you add ferts? Also, what wattage and color are the bulbs?

Unlikely to be fungus unless there is a lot of orgain matter.

If it is algae - lights or nutrients or phosphates tend to be the issue.

[Bolsen27]

[Bolsen27]

Green, long strands sounds like algae - what are your ammonia/nitrite and nitrate levels? Knowing the phosphate levels would be useful. Since you have plants, how long are the lights on (under eight hours?) and do you add ferts? Also, what wattage and color are the bulbs?

Unlikely to be fungus unless there is a lot of orgain matter.

If it is algae - lights or nutrients or phosphates tend to be the issue.

Cermet,

Tank is still cycling (21 days still no nitrites post) so ammonia is a 3, no nitrites or nitrates, no clue what my phosphate levels are. The lights are on for 8 hours a day (timed) broken up into 2 4 hour segments. I add Flourish twice a week according to instructions on the bottle and flourish excel 3 times a week according to instructions on the bottle.

The light is a Nova Extreme T5HO light that has 2 54 watt bulbs. 1 Truelumen flora (6700k) bulb and 1 Zoomed Ultra Sun(6500k) bulb. I use the same fixture on my 20 gal tank with the same bulbs and time schedule and don't have any problems. Of course the 20 gal is on a 24 inch fixture and not the 48 version I have on my 40 gal. but the WPG is identical in both cases.

[Cermet]

Does not look like algae (not that some algae may be co-growing in it.) If you have no fish food, don't think it is phosphate. Could be a bacteria feeding off the ammonia. I get some 'white' growth in my tank but it is a film, rarely forms strings. Could be the level of ammonia, being on the high side, is feeding some bacteria (good type.) As long as the plants are doing well, I'd watch. Then allow the ammonia level to fall to zero, and then try holding at 1 ppm. During this time, try wiping off the 'white' stuff and if little to none grows back, then most likely a bacteria feeding on the ammonia.

My best guess.

[Bolsen27]

So after doing more research we are thinking that it is beard algae in the tank. How should we treat it?

The tank is still cycling and there is live plants but there is no fish in it.

I read cleaning everything off really well by pulling it out of the tank and doing a bleach dip will kill it off. But we don't want to pull the live plants out of the tank and try that.

Also read that SAE and Amano shrimp will eat it all and it will be gone in no time. Probably is that because the tank is cycling the ammonia levels are high (2-3ppm) and we have no plans to keep them in the tank in the long run.

Dosing Excel in high amount will kill it off I am told. But we are afraid of going that route because we have Val's in the tank and we read that it will cause them to melt. If they do melt will they come back? If we did go this route how much do we dose with for a 40 gal tank? I read the you can spot treat it by turning off the filtration and using a syringe. The problem is that it is wide spread so that would mean basically treating the whole tank anyway.

Am I missing any options? An algaecide that will kill it off and not harm my plants?

[Goes to 11!]

The light is a Nova Extreme T5HO light that has 2 54 watt bulbs. 1 Truelumen flora (6700k) bulb and 1 Zoomed Ultra Sun(6500k) bulb. I use the same fixture on my 20 gal tank with the same bulbs and time schedule and don't have any problems. Of course the 20 gal is on a 24 inch fixture and not the 48 version I have on my 40 gal. but the WPG is identical in both cases.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't your 20g tank 3" higher than your 40g? This 3" of extra intensity may be making the difference and I would certainly give lowering the photo period a try to see if it affects your issue. WPG btw is only a measure of the power consumed by the fixture. It does not measure the available useable light at all. Click here for far more than you care to know about lighting

A peer reviewed proffesional scientific paper on this exact topic was published and strongly stated that 1 ppm ammonia was ideal mostly because the nitrite consumming bacteria would have issues if the ntrite forming bacteria had high levels of ammonia and populated most of the filter media; hence, crowding them out of space.

Understood, But obviously this is much less of a factor if you have more than adequate biomedia capacity in your filter. No idea if that's a factor here but just thought I would add it

[Bolsen27]

The height of both tanks is the same. And both lights are 4" off the top.


I have 2 AC70's with extra biomedia in both.