?activated carbon?

[scott]

i have always had algae problems in my tanks, except the ones with 1 or less watts per gallon and only java moss. in my 40gal show tank there is about 2 watts per gallon, a nutrafin c02 reactor, eco complete substrate, fluval canister and emperor 200 filters. i use ro/di water changing 25% 2-3 times weekly (depending on how quickly the algae covers the substrate and glass). the ph is a steady 6.5, tds is 3ppm gh/kh both 0-1. i cannot mix the filtered water with tap water because of serious problems with the tap water in my town. i used the flourish plant supplements in the passed but they just seem to make more algae and not help the plants at all. the algae is a green/black skin or film that covers the substrate as well as all of the plants leaves and the glass( it comes off easily when i do water changes). also none of the plants seem to grow at all and my tanks have all been running for over 2 years. i recently read that carbon can raise the phosphates and i use carbon in the filters. could this be my problem or does it sound like i am doing something else wrong.

 

[aspen]

the green slime of film you are talking about is not an algae. (cyano bacteria, blue green algae, or bga) the remedy others have used for this is a treatment with antibiotics. read this,

http://forum.apistogramma.com/viewtopic.php?t=2333&highlight=bga

try more cleaning and water changes and see how this works out for you. remember it is not a plant, it is a bacterial growth.

rick

 

[litesky]

Actually, what activated carbon(AC) does is take out mirco nutrients and perhaps some macro nutrients. What i know is that, if you have a planted tank, there's no need for AC. Your plants will do the job.

I personally do not like to use chemicals to remedy my algae problems. If you have an algae problem then it just shows that something is wrong with the water setup, and even if you got rid of it now with medicine, it'll just come back and haunt you in the future once the medicine wears out.

Do you add any ferts? There are tons of traces in regular tap water, but if your using RO, most of these traces have been removed so you would need to make up for that. Even so, I use tap water and I still add a lot of KNO3 and PO4 in my planted tank.

Fighting algae requires patience and a lot of testing. Adding medicine does not fight algae but only temporarily supresses it. Like I said to another member of this forum, show us u'r water parameters. We can definitely help you from there.