Algae control?
- Thread starter deepboy
- Start date
Conductive
New member
Controlling algae has more to do with keeping your water clean. I'm still new, but i know that if your nitrate and phosphate levels are up, your going to have algae growth. What type of setup and what size tank do you have? I've found luck using two hang-on-back filters using purigen and phos-ban filter media in combination with lots of live rock which also filters the water. You also want to be sure and do weekly water changes. You can read up on the finer points in the "new to the hobby" forum. Hope this helped and good luck.
No help sorry, All this I know I've been doing reef for some time now and do the same weekly water changes on this mantis as I do for my reef setup with a breeding pair of Clowns so I'm always on top of it! Other then the water purity and good filtration is there any other method like a chemical that wont harm the mantis and other inverts?
Conductive
New member
Sorry, didn't know you had experience in this sort of thing. How long have you had the mantis? If you are new to mantis keeping, you might not know that they have a habit of storing food. Maybe you are feeding your mantis too much, and the leftovers are overloading your filtration. Maybe your tank has yet to mature. It would be nice to know what type of setup you're using, as well some other details like what type of mantis and your water parameters. As far as chemical dosing goes, i dont know but i doubt it.
at one point in time i slacked off and didnt keep up water changes and was feeding too much. I was also using tap water for top off. i quickly developed a pretty bad case of hair algae. All this in a biocube with LR, LR rubble (in the back chamber), and a bit of carbon.
now my mantis tank is 100% free of the crap just because i feed less (once every three days, remove uneaten food within two hours) and keep up with my weekly 20% water changes. while i was actually trying to get rid of the algae, i did two 20% water changes a week. just had to be careful with fluctuating params. I believe using RO/DI for top off also helped.
for my own battle I didnt bother using any media other than carbon and my good ol trusty LR. I also used three day periods of darkness, but that didnt seem to help at all for hair algae.
another solution might be to just get bigger turbo snails. of course if your mantis is a big aggressive peacock or chiragra, then i think you're hooped there. either way i think water QUALITY control is a much better solution because you're forced to actually address the root of the problem instead of just brushing it under the rug. i mean, all the snails really do is hide the fact that you have the problem. the problem itself is still there though.
now my mantis tank is 100% free of the crap just because i feed less (once every three days, remove uneaten food within two hours) and keep up with my weekly 20% water changes. while i was actually trying to get rid of the algae, i did two 20% water changes a week. just had to be careful with fluctuating params. I believe using RO/DI for top off also helped.
for my own battle I didnt bother using any media other than carbon and my good ol trusty LR. I also used three day periods of darkness, but that didnt seem to help at all for hair algae.
another solution might be to just get bigger turbo snails. of course if your mantis is a big aggressive peacock or chiragra, then i think you're hooped there. either way i think water QUALITY control is a much better solution because you're forced to actually address the root of the problem instead of just brushing it under the rug. i mean, all the snails really do is hide the fact that you have the problem. the problem itself is still there though.
I have a G. Chigara and the tank I have is a 14gal cube the only filtration I've been using is a bag of Chemipure and cotten on top which I change out every other day, I always use RO/DI water would never let a drop of tap touch my tank and I test the RO/DI water with a TDS meter before I use that to, The systems been running for over 6 months and had fish in it up until a couple of months ago when I got her! I may be feeding her to much and no I did not know but it did cross my mind that she may be hidding food, Do you think she is storing food when she closes up her whole for what I have counted on her past three molts was 13days?
We use PhosGuard on our mantis tank. Just put it in a media bag in one of the back chambers. Some of the algae started to die off, but not too quickly. We manually removed the largest stuff (while he was holed up for the night), then left the lights out for 3 days while we were on vacation. The tank looks great, and we haven't had any grow back.
A refugium can't hurt either. I also use PhosGuard and PolyFilter. I had a very, very bad algae problem in my last tank. I have just increased from a 20 to a 30, and about quadrupled the size of my refugium, as well as my flow and light. Hopefully all of that will help. Actually, I know that the lights will make things worse, but I've got this massive ball of chaeto that's growing, so that should do the trick.
Dan
Dan
Similar threads
