Wild Algae Growth

[capper]

We just spent 12 days away from home. While away, we had our 2 aquariums (57 liter and 157 liter) running with a light timer (approximately 10 hours of light per day as we have many plants in both tanks). Only our 57 liter aquarium has fish as we were planning to wait until we got back to add fish to our 157 liter tank. Anyway, we got back tonight to find both tanks with way too much algae growth. Both tanks are really a mess. It's going to take a lot of work tomorrow to clean them up. We kept our curtains closed during our entire trip. Does this mean that the excessive algae groeth can be attributed to too much artificial light per day? Or could there be other reasons beyond our control?

 

[punkrockfish]

with a new tank algae growth is common at the start, and yes, too much artificial light can be the cause of it. if you add nutrients to the tank that can cause it too if that gets unbalanced. you can cut the light back to 8 hours, always try a black out, or go buy some snails.

 

[Lotus]

If you don't have fish in there, or haven't been adding fertilizers, then the imbalance in nutrients will cause algae.

How much lighting do you have on each of these tanks, are you using CO2, and are you adding any ferts? Do you have readings for nitrates and phosphates that you can share with us?

 

[echoofformless]

I just got some algae in my betta tanks.

Just started seeing the algae begin to dissipate in my main tank that was getting a little bit of a problem after I started using my pc light and ferts.

The short of it is, most tanks, like everyone else has stated, need a balancing point where the ferts, light, CO2, etc begin to be utilized more by the plants than by the algae. It has to do with plant mass vs. nutrients, light, CO2, etc.

I don't really have any seriously solid advice as I am a plant newbie, but I've taken some good advice on this forum from people posting on this thread and I'm getting some nice results. I'm not really worried about my new betta tank algae, as I'm sure it will pass.