What's up fishtank people? Fishtanktv.com dustinsfishtanks bringing it to you on a Monday.
Memorial Day weekend Monday! That's right. Shoutout to everybody who is got the day off.
Big shout out to everybody who has ever served in the [inaudible 00:00:13] forces or you
know protected the stars and bars. Really appreciate it! If you are watching from another
country, a lot of Americans are actually taking the day off today, so it's nice. What's going
on? Had a comment yesterday on the video about black beard algae and the guy was asking he
hasn't seen any videos done about black beard algae. I don't talk about stuff that I typically
don't have unless someone asks me. So if someone asks me something and I typically don't have,
I won't talk about it, but I am going to give my opinion on this even though I have never
actually had black beard algae. I want to just talk about black beard algae and algae
in general from a high level and talk about a few things with algae and how to prevent
it. The 125 isn't looking too bad considering I was gone for two weeks. Got little algae
here and there, couple of dead leaves that need trim, but whatever...it is working.
Here is the deal with algae folks - It's all about balance! I have said it before and I
will say it again. Balance is everything! You got to have balance in your tanks! With
black beard algae from the best of my knowledge and in most algae it is excess nutrients or
excess light in your tank. Algae is kind of a simple form of a plant, it's just very simple.
It is actually, I don't even really want to call it a plant, but it's very simple. So
if you have excess nutrients, excess light that stuff is going to grow. The trick my
friends is to find that balancing point between how much light and how much nutrients, and
I can't tell you exactly how is it going to work. Because you know one tank will have
more light than another, but you got to find that balancing point. It is tough because
when you do a dirted tank, you start off kind of with a lot of out of balance. You will
have a lot of excess nutrients in your water column and then you will have, I don't know
how much light you will put on your tank at first. I recommend lower levels of light,
if you have excess nutrients. Excess nutrients and excess light mean significant amounts
of algae could happen for you, so it's all about finding a balancing point. Some of the
tricks to get rid of algae, and I will talk about black beard algae and I will talk about
floating green soup water, green algae, and then even I consider this java moss almost
on algae. It's just a pain this stuff down here! You got to manually remove it now that
it's in your water column. Use a UV sterilizer. I haven't actually done this in a quite a
while, but from the comments I got on the UV video I did a couple of... I don't even
know when that was, UV sterilizers help. I don't think that is completely necessary,
I think manually removing it is the best way to go. I recommend huge water changes for
the water. I also recommend killing your lights and I am talking running them like 2,3,4 hours
or none at all during the day. By the way only run your light six hours folks. That
will solve a lot of problems. Had an individual comment on my actual channel - he had like
130 watts on a 55 with 6700k I want to say that is too much light bro. I will cut that
back to one. The trick is to get your plant load high enough so that you out compete the
algae. Quick story on this tank! Back in the day
before I had a YouTube channel, before I had fishtanktv, before I had two kids. I lived
in Kentucky all by myself, I worked for myself, I had no friends and I spent a lot of time
with my fish tank. That's a shocker. I also spend a lot of time at a place called "Just
Fish" which has gone out of business, but I learnt a lot about keeping fish. When I
focused fully on this tank, when I first dirted it, people thought I was nuts, but I had a
real problem with green algae. I just had like tons and tons of green water and I couldn't
get rid of it and it was a pain in the butt. But I was running really high lights and I
just dirted it. I hadn't done excess water changes like I should have. So I had green
water, beautiful lush plants, but green water. What I did to combat that was I added a ton
of Water Sprite and a ton of duckweed, Water Sprite first! What Water Sprite does is a
couple of things: It can grow up out of the water, I floated it and it was able to absorb
the excess nutrients quickly and by absorbing that excess nutrients it grew, it also provided
more shade so there was less ability for that light to get through. So I really recommend
Water Sprite as far as algae control. Manually remove it though! Get your fingers in there,
get dirty, get ugly and get the stuff off there, because that will help just get it
out of the tank. Also do huge water changes! People recommend dosing [inaudible 00:04:51]
the CO2, it's not a bad way to go. Although with any like CO2 you want to be consistent
with it, so it's kind of one of those things you are going to have to mess with.
I like to hear your opinion on what you have done to fight algae, I think blackouts are
good. I think just really getting a ton of plant growth in there is really the most important
thing, because plants will absorb the excess nutrients and out compete them. Think of it
as like too much nutritions in there, the plants can grow fast and out compete them.
That's why I recommend like beginner plants, plants that grow fast, plants that grow to
the surface, plants that are big like the Swords or the Water Sprite, [inaudible 00:05:35]
that just grow really quickly. They can do your tank a lot of good.
That's my opinion on algae, I would love to hear some of your comments. I really liked
the snail comment yesterday. Some of the people talking about putting that lettuce on there.
I don't know what happened to that comment, I haven't seen it, but that was really good
advice. I actually want to try that out. I have heard of it before, I just hadn't messed
it. That's my take! Welcome new subscribers...had some other housekeeping notes. Oh yes, the
greenhouse! I am going to go with the six by six I think, so I am going to go back to
that video and ask some questions to some of the kind folks on this channel that have
been willing to help me out. Have a lot of fun, happy Memorial Day weekend folks! Later!