algae in spring?

[Jay21]

Iv noticed that no matter what in spring I get algae on the front of my tank, way more then usual.

Nothing has changed, tank is in a dark room with the same LED lights and the same Chiller set at 78f.

Yet always this time of year I get green glass!

A fellow reefer said its mother nature. It just tells the Algae its time to grow and environmental factors like air from the skimmer could be what tells the algae to grow? :fish2:

 

[billdogg]

Mine does the same thing . Has for years.

 

[Sk8r]

I used to have a marine tank on a freshwater lake. I swear the stuff floats in the air.

 

[Mrs. Music]

Pretty interesting. I never noticed this pattern, except to think in the spring I very busy with outside stuff, and start to neglect water changes a bit.

 

[Dan_P]

Pretty interesting. I never noticed this pattern, except to think in the spring I very busy with outside stuff, and start to neglect water changes a bit.

You are probably on to the explanation.

It would be interesting to measure algae growth on aquarium glass over a period of a year. Maybe somthing as simple as measuring the amount of light passing through the glass. I can imagine using the parts from a Hanna checker to do this. A microscope to record the dominant species could be useful.

Any students out there needing an idea for a project?

 

[CyclistMT]

Another possible explanation is spring runoff. Especially if you're not using RO/DI or if it's time to change out filters. Municipal water that gets it supply from rivers would naturally experience increased nutrients (TDS) during high water conditions due to spring runoff as the snow in the watersheds melt and spring rains bring in fresh nutrients. All the tributaries swell and dump into the major river systems and with the high flows the river beds and banks get churned up creating all that muddy water. Although this comes out clear from your tap, there are still levels of dissolved nutrients that are acceptable from a potable water standard that could contribute to extra algae in our tanks.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Another possible explanation is spring runoff. Especially if you're not using RO/DI or if it's time to change out filters. Municipal water that gets it supply from rivers would naturally experience increased nutrients (TDS) during high water conditions due to spring runoff as the snow in the watersheds melt and spring rains bring in fresh nutrients. All the tributaries swell and dump into the major river systems and with the high flows the river beds and banks get churned up creating all that muddy water. Although this comes out clear from your tap, there are still levels of dissolved nutrients that are acceptable from a potable water standard that could contribute to extra algae in our tanks.

Wait...but isn't that what RO/DI is for? If it doesn't filter out ions and larger molecules out to give us TDS approaching 0...then what are we using them for?

 

[stackrat]

Could also be something to do with a higher level of pollen floating around in the air.

 

[Dan_P]

I have not run across anything that says that algae respond to the time of year. Algae growth increases are associated with increased nutrients and/or light. So, I think the investigation has to focus on a source of increase in light or nutrients. And it might be something you introduced into the system a month or two prior that set off some other change that resulted in a pulse of nutrients. I would use the same arguement for the apparent seasonal appearance of cyanobacteria.