wow! thats fast!!

[paulF]

i left the house for a few hours and came home to a green tank! im battling a little bit of cyano but this is ridiculous! the whole tank has a film of green algea. snails arent doing all that much to it either (i have 5 turbo. 10 astrea) nitrates are at 10 all of a sudden they were always less than 5 after the initial cycle also very little phosphates but ill have to double check that again though. i just did a water change 3 days ago as well (about 15 gallons) should i do a larger one (its a 55g).

[Alice]

Are you missing any inhabitants or running any kind of filter media that needs cleaned out? Once the lights come on in the tank, that green film can grow pretty quickly if there's anything in the tank for it to feed on.

Water changes are good but keep to a reasonable amount and schedule unless the nitrates really spike up.

Alice

[paulF]

i have the bio balls but they are only about 3.5 months old and im removing them slowly im down to about 40% as far as in habitants i lost 4 hermits from a lot of 10 i removed 2 who were already out of their shell and the clean up crew took care of the rest evryone else is present and accounted for. i did notice my skimmer pulling green water for the last 2 days before this outbreak showed up in the tank. ive cleaned the glass and put a filter pad in the wet/dry to catch the stuff,but im only gonna do that for a few hours. then i guess ill do a water change.Ive only been doing 5g changes evry other week

[Alice]

Paul,

Is your tank 3.5 months old? If so, it's probably just going through a "stage" and the algae will settle down again when something else starts to outcompete it. You may want to cut back on your feeding just a tad, keep an eye on the temps (that green film seems to spring up when the tank gets warmer in conjunction with higher nitrates or other problems); you may even want to cut back on your photoperiod for a bit until the algae starts to let up.

This too shall pass

Alice

[Megan]

What water did you use for your water change? If you used tap water that might be part of your problem. It could be introducing nitrate to the system.

Megan

[paulF]

i used a twp, i know its not ro/di quality but its the best i can do for now (gotta let the budget recover a little bit 1st)