In July 2012 I noticed that something wasn’t right in my aquarium. I change the water in my freshwater aquarium regularly so it was a bit of a surprise to find algae in my tank as shown below.
The picture shows a bit of blue green algae or Cyanobacteria in my tank. I did regular water changes – a change between 2 to 3 weeks (which is plenty if you know my tank and if you live in Finland with good fresh water) so I knew it wasn’t because of that. It seems you can get blue green algae in your tank even if you change water regularly! I also hadn’t change the lighting conditions in the tank nor added new fish nor had I in my opinion changed my feeding habits either.
I eventually got rid of the blue green algae (read below to find out how). But again a few weeks back I noticed the blue green algae was back. I did however spot it early, so I started the treatment earlier than last time. But what could have caused blue green algae to appear in my tank, even though I do water changes regularly (between 1-2 weeks after the summer and the initial outbreak)?
Well, it turns out the tap water quality in Turku, Finland, where I live will change depending on the weather conditions. I did not actually think the tap water quality could change that radically. But we did indeed have a rainy summer and the autumn and the early winter were really warm and it rained a lot. So let’s put it frank: all the shit in the ground were flushed and the water treatment plant couldn’t purify it effectively enough. Now, I don’t have means to test for phosphor levels in my tank, but I bet my phosphor levels got sky high because I changed the water so often and because the quality of the tap water had dropped due to the heavy rains.
You can’t really blame yourself in case you get blue green algae and if you know you are not over feeding and doing regular water changes. However, I still bet in most cases these two are the main reasons, at least for beginners, to get algae to their tanks.
Treatment
Algae, especially blue green algae, are notoriously difficult to eradicate. I had to ask in my local aquarium store (in Turku, called Uusi Akvaario) about the issue, and luckily they are very knowledgeable! They advised me to use an algae removal from Jungle called No More Algae. It works!
I did a partial water change immediately just to remove most of the waste and whatever algae I could. Then I removed my active carbon filter. For my 180 liters (65 gallons) tank I dosed 20ml of No More Algae and waited a week. During this week I would feed the fish normally, but I would not give any plant nutrition nor carbon dioxide. The plants would have not been able to utilize them anyway, and I did not want to feed the algae.
After one week, I would then do a partial water change again to remove all the dead algae. Then inserting the active carbon filter again, to remove excess algae removal. Now I added the normal doze of plant nutrition, liquid carbon and carbon dioxide for the plants to be able start growing again.
There are other algae removal liquids, but I’ve heard that the No More Algae from Jungle is the most effective one against all algae. I do, however, also have one from Easy-Life that would treat only blue green algae called Blue Exit. I have not used that yet, but it would be interesting to compare that one too. I would expect it to have good results if you want to target only blue green algae.
I am in no way associated with Uusi Akvaario, Jungle, Aquaristik Shop, Easy-Life or any other brand, product or company that I write about in my blog posts! I am just a happy customer and user of their products and I do endorsements based on my own opinions. I do not get payed by any party to write about these products or companies.
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