Nuking the tank - New to Planted Aquariums

90gal · 06-11-2008, 04:12 PM

While on vacation my house sitter obviously left the light on nonstop, and I've fought the algae long enough and have not made progress and the plants are browing out and not doing well. I setup a 30 gallon spare tank where I'm moving my fish. I am going to start dosing API Algaefix (says it won't harm fish or plants but it killed my more sensitive fish last time). Are there any better products out there?

I am considering leaving the water low (barely over the plants). Is there anything I'm missing?

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90 Gallon planted aquarium
200 watts

Tex Gal · 06-11-2008, 07:11 PM

Did you try spot dosing Excell on each plant. If you moved around your tank and used the beginning dose or even 2xs the dose and used a dropper or syringe and applied it to each plant it dies in 1 application. You need to turn off the filter for heavy current areas, but only for about 10 min. It works. I did this and put amanos, mollies, and ottos in my 125g and in 2 days all my algae was dead and in 1 week all the dead algae was eaten by the fish! The excell didn't hurt the fauna at all. I bought the mollies cheap and plan on giving them away.

Left C · 06-11-2008, 11:05 PM

Here's an article about "Eliminating Algae with H2O2" using two different methods - spot treatment and whole tank treatment. I've done the spot treat method for BBA, but I haven't tried the whole tank method for thread algae. http://www.gpodio.com/h2o2.asp

90gal · 06-12-2008, 08:05 AM

Good recommendations - I tried everything, blackouts for up to a week, OD on Excel, normal doses of algae killer, nothing was touching this stuff and the plants really started to suffer. I have a fleet of about 15 ottos, I scrubbed the tank and plants, did 60% water changes for three days in a row cleaning the filters each day - it was horrible. I got the 90 all tore down last night, scrubbed what's left of my plants, and have rescaped it. Just horrible - but at least now I get to buy some new plants!

Sterling919 · 06-15-2008, 10:30 PM

After what I'm going through to just try to have a nice looking tank...I'd be so mad if I were you. I hope it works out for you.