litesky

I posted an issue I had earlier last month in the "Erythromycin use?" thread. However, someone suggested that another thread would be better. So here it is:

Basically what happened: I had a DIY CO2 for awhile on my 29 gallon. When i finally went for pressurized system, green dust algae broke out all over my tank. I thought that was pretty ironic. I thought getting pressurized would help me with the war against algae, but it didn't. So how my green dust algae broke out is still a complete mystery to me. After a 50% water change, green dust would completely cover my tank walls and plants by the third of fourth day. Something had to be done.

I also had these other problems:
- Black beard algae was growing around my microswords.
- Blackish Algae that I commonly see growing on anubius leaves have been growing at the tips of my cyprus helferi (not too sure what this one is called)

So I read up on some information about green dust and found out from Tom that maybe a blackout would be a good idea. So that was what I did. I first did a water change, scraped the green dust off the glass walls, making sure that it didn't fall back in to the water. There were still some more green dust at the bottom near my substrate, but I wiped and sucked that out with the vac. Added new water. Blacked out(I only left the lights out, I didn't cover the tank) for one whole day. Turn the lights back on the second day, but instead of my normal 12 hours, I set it down to 8 hours. Did another 50% water change after that immediately does KNO3 and PO4 without Flourish. I then dosed flourish the second day. And then KNO3 and PO4 the third, flourish the fourth...alternating back and forth. I left my lights running at 8 hours a day for the first week and noticed that my plants started growing taller rather than out. I kind of got annoyed with that and on the 8th day after the water change, I did another water change, clipped some plants and reset the light timer to 12 hours.

I also upped my KNO3 and PO4 dosages.

Green Dust and Black Beard gone! and hasn't returned for 1.5 weeks now. However, my cyprus helferi tips are still having trouble with this blackish spottish algae and it is also destorying the lives of the blades. I'm going to wait another few weeks to see if the problem will continue to persist, because it's only the second week.

Anybody want to make any suggestions? I will continue to update because I know some people have been having a hard time with the green dust algae recently. Good luck to the rest of you.