Green-cloudy water in a sponge filter tank.

[paramedic07]

FIRST OFF PLEASE PLACE THIS IN THE APPROPRIATE TOPIC AREA.

I HAVE AN ISSUE WITH CLOUDY, MAYBE SLIGHTLY GREEN WATER IN ONE OF MY TANKS, THE COMMUNITY ONE, THAT HAS ONLY SPONGE FILTERS IN IT. I DO THE CORRECT WATER CHANGES AND SUCH WATCHING WHAT I SHOULD. WHAT GIVES ?

[Jackielee]

do you feed spirilina? It clouds my water some times.

lighting is about the only other issue, too much. or if it is anew setup it might be cycling.

don't know.

Jack

[mewickham]

Green water can be difficult to rid of. It shows up in tanks without apparent reason. First, try cutting back on light-- intensity, duration, or both. You might turn it off altogether for a few days. Second, add live plants. The more the better. They compete with the algae and starve it out. Have you used any chemicals to adjust pH? The various pH-lowering conconctions usually contain phosphoric acid. An abundance of phosphorous is a well-known cause of algal blooms.

I looked and I don't see a section that would be suitable for this topic. It looks like we need to review our message section topics.

[etheonut]

Mike's suggestions are good. Make sure that your biological filter is running efficiently before you kill your green water though. You could potentially kill your fish by killing the green water suddenly.

I moved this to the "other" section, which is meant to a section for topics that don't have a specific area.

Kevin

[mewickham]

I moved this to the "other" section, which is meant to a section for topics that don't have a specific area

Thanks, Kevin. We probably need to look at renaming that section at this week's BOD meeting. It's actually listed as "Others" (not Other) and falls immediately after a list of specific fish groups. That led me to believe that it was for other fishes not listed in the other groups.

[etheonut]

Hmmm, yep, it does say "Others." It was meant as a category to catch topics not covered by the topics above that.

We could either change it to "Other Topics" which would still be confusing, or simply change the "Diseases" topic to "Diseases and Aquarium Problems". That way any issues that are causing problems could be posted in that forum as a group.

Kevin

[Herpchat]

Well I don't like the categories but oh well.

I like green water as it can be used to feed other creatures.

[sumpnfishy]

The worst algae bloom I ever had was in a heavily planted tank. I tried for a month to get rid of it and then one day when I had finally decided to use it for cultures in some other tanks for fry it suddenly vanished.

[sskruzr]

I had a tank that was totally green. I added a u.v. light and the green disappeared after a week. Then the live plants took over and never had another problem. No I didn't leave the u.v. on it.

[mewickham]

I added a u.v. light and the green disappeared after a week.

A UV light or a UV sterilizer? There's a big difference. The latter is commonly used to remove green water. The former I wouldn't expect to have any effect.

[sskruzr]

u.v. sterlizer