Hairy green algae?

[tikva18]

We just moved our fish to a larger tank - 46gal from 29h. At this time I only had 1 giant danio and 3 boesmani rainbow (waiting for my new fish to come in). All of a sudden my new tank developed yhis filamentous agae - and I can't get rid of it. I've been cleaning the tank with aa brush, but it is just multiplying like mad. I would even consider putting in a plecostomus - although they've never survived w/ my tanganikans... This time around I'm going to be putting in rams and apistogrammas along w/ silver dollars and my rainbows.

so, what's with the hairy algae??? Please quickly respond - I don't want to have to part the algae w/ a comb to see my fish!

[MatsP]

Ok, so you've got Hair-algae. Common Pleco's (such as Pterogoplichthys spp.) would eat these, but another option would be Rosy Barbs, they are pretty good at removing this stuff, as long as they don't get too much other food.

However, if you don't want to keep a large number of algae-eaters, the key is to reduce the life-conditions for the algae - they need (mainly) three things:
- Light
- Phosphate
- Nitrate
Remove any (or all) of the above and the algae growth will dramatically reduce. There are filter additives you can use to remove phospates, and ntirate should be kept low by changing the water freqently. Putting live plants in the tank will also help reduce the nitrate (but only to some extent) and floating plants will help reduce the light hitting the rest of the tank leading to less light for the algae to grow from.


If you go the Pleco Route, you'll want to avoid the Pterogoplichthys spp, since they tend to grow too large for average sized tanks, not just 20-40 gallon sizes, but also 100g is too small for a full-grown one of these, they can grow to about 18". A much better option is for example bristlenose pleco's, Ancistrus spp., the common ones found in your local fish-shop would be fine, and will be perfectly happy with your rams and rainbows. I would recommend that you get a couple of them, but if you haven't got space to home fry, try to make sure they are all the same sex, as the bristlenoses are "Guppies of the catfish", it doesn't take much to breed them... They will reach about 4-5" and are VERY good algae eaters. You'll want to stick some vegetables in there to feed them once they have consumed the algae, such as courgette(zucchini), potato, spinach or sweet potato

Finally, Silver dollars should grow well beyond what a 46g. tank will hold, especially as they are shoaling[schooling] fish, well beyond 10", and I would recommend choosing something else for your tank. The silver dollars would probably eat hair algae, if you just have a 150-200g tank that can hold them when they grow up.

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Mats

[tikva18]

okay, for some reason plecos - bristlenose have never lived in my tank - is that just because my tanganikans were too aggressive?

2. I really wanted silver dollars - isn't their size somewhat limited by the tank size? and secondly, I thought that putting them with the rams and apistos would be good for the cichlids. I'll have to think of anothercharacin to put in there. I was just reading that pencil fish could be good - how about the leporinus fasciatus? he's one of my favorites. And my tank is 46 gal bowed.

3. back to the algae. My nitrates when I tested last week were 0. I'll have to look into phosphates. Light is much less of an issur in our new house than our previous and I never had an algae problem like this. Right now I have rock work on the bottom of the tank - it was a lot of rocks for my 29, but slightly less for my 46. I could add more rocks. Also, I've never done plants because my tanganikans werenot so plant friendly, so if you could suggest a few that would work well, I'd definitely be interested.

Thank you for your advice.

[Troy]

tikva18 : Mats has the right idea. Turn off the lights... do more water changes. If you want add a few plants in pots (Anubias nana, java fern) into your tank. Forget a Fish to clean your tank, a good scrub brush does a better job.

[tikva18]

The lights are off almost all day. I just turned them on about 45 min. ago and then they are on for only a few hours a day. Our water is good. I have a good scrub brush, I was just looking for other suggestions as well.

[MatsP]

Troy, I've got very good experience in keeping bristlenoses to reduce algae - not one of my tanks have any noticable amount of algae, and lights are on for about 12-14h per day on all my 5 tanks. I had plenty of algae in all tanks before bristlenoses were introduced. Now, my new (and somewhat pleasant) problem is selling the 130 or so bristlenose babies to my LFS...

tikval18: If you only have the lights on for a few hours per day, I'm surprised you get much algae - is the tank situated in sunlight by any chance?

I keep my bristlenoses with Boesman's rainbows, Rosy Barbs, Zebra danio's, Satanoperca Jurupari, other Pleco's, and lots of other fish. I haven't kept them with Tanganyikan cichlids, simply because I don't keep any Tanganyikan cichlids - However, I don't have to pay for mine, so I would probably drop a couple in if I did get some T. cichlids. Rams and apistogrammas are generally much less agressive than Tanganyikans, so they should be fine with the bristlenoses. If you wanted to keep Tanganyikans and for instance a bristlenose pleco, I'd say you need one that is in size-parity to the cichlids. That should make it survive. Give it lots of hiding spaces, of course [but then, you should have that for the cichlids anyways].

On Silver Dollars: All fish will grow to the size their genetics say they will grow to, assuming they are cared for properly - if you don't believe me, what size do you think you would have grown to if you were placed in a 3ft x 3ft x 3ft cube as a baby, and given sufficient food and got cleaned out properly at all times? Less than 3ft? No? Why would fish be any different?

It's certainly possible to stunt fish's growth in several ways, including not giving them enough food, or keeping them in conditions where the water quality is not good enough for them to grow properly [poor water quality is usually what happens when you keep large fish in a small tank].

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Mats

[tikva18]

Mats, I hear what you are saying about the silver dollars, So, why then does the guy i'm working with keep saying that they'd be fine? I can't believe that he is just after a sale. They seem to truly care about the fish...So, what other characin would you suggest?

[MatsP]

I don't know why the guy you're working with says they will be fine. But if you look up silver dollars on the web and find the max size, you'll find that they CAN grow quite big, although I must have confused things, as the largest measure I could find is 8" - still big enough that you need something like 75g+ to house them - but a little bit better than 10"+ that would be barely large enough tank with a 120g...

I'm not an expert [heck, I'm hardly an expert on ANY fish, compared to some on this forum] on Characin's, so I'm not sure what alternatives are suitable. But there are certainly dozens of medium sized fish that are suitable for a 46g tank. Here's some ideas that you could look at - but I'm sure just walking round your local fish-shop may be just as good an idea - choosing fish is very much a personal thing, some like one kind, others another kind...
- Further species of rainbows - blue-eyes perhaps [sorry, not latin name here]
- Red-eye tetra Moenkhausia sanctaefilomenae grow to about 3"
- Buenos Aires Tetra Hemigrammus caudovittatus
- Emperor tetra Nematobrycon palmeri
- Penguin fish Thayeria spp.


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Mats

[tikva18]

Well, I've been mulling over the idea of anostomus -

OH, and the Baensch atlas says that the silver dollar grows to a maximum of 5 in. - so it seems that it would be fine afterall.

[Lisachromis]

- Further species of rainbows - blue-eyes perhaps [sorry, not latin name here]

That would be Pseudomugil sp. They are tough to find. Very pretty but only get about 1" long. Good choices would be pencilfish, or maybe cardinals and neons (careful with neons in a new setup though, they need an aged tank). I'd stay away from the bigger types like the Anostomus. Smaller danios would work well. Dwarf rainbowfish are a good choice - Melanotaenia praecox (dwarf neon rainbow). Are you planning on breeding the apistos?

[Ken Boorman]

That would depend on which of the 10 or so species of Silver Dollar you have...

Ken

[tikva18]

my plan is to get metynnis argentis which maxes at 5 in. I have boesmani rainbow and now 3 dwarf rainbow (I got the dwarf last week and one died in the night - the others are healthy) as well as one giant danio (let over from my tanganikan tank).

Having never had apistos before, I don't have any immediate plans for breeding, but if it did happen, I'd be quite pleased.

[Ken Boorman]

Most sources for information on Metynnis argenteus cite a maximum size between 5"-8" actually. You might want to do a little more research. I was sure they maxed out around 7" myself when I kept them years ago.

Ken

[tikva18]

well, after much deliberation, I decided to listen to the advice of those more knowledgeable than I. I skipped the silver dollars and went with tetras ( and let my family pick them out - hey, that should happen at least once - so they chose the penguin - of which there was only one - neons (the kids chose them) and two diamond tetras. All in all, they had a good time. I'm still waiting on my cichlidae - sure is gard being patient.