[Lillis]

Hello All,

I hope you don't mind me dropping by.

I found your community while looking for advice on how to best stock my BiUbe. I know that serious fish keepers are not too keen on these aquariums, but I hope you will not hold it against me owning one. I try to be as good to my fish as possible.

After reading advice I stocked my tank with 3 Platy's a pair of Guppy's and 4 neon tetras. I did have a few shrimp too in the early days, but they died after a about a year. I think I may be told this is a little over stocked. But they all seemed to get on very well and the Platy's and Guppy's bread. Not many of the babies survived but I had a couple of toddlers from each variety. In the last three months I have lost all but two neon tetra's and 1 of the baby Guppy's. The water parameter checks all showed in the safe region. But there is a lot of ugly carpet like algae on all the plants.

I was considering pulling the tank apart completely and starting again, to try to get rid of the algae and in case something in the water was killing the fish (they had no obvious signs of illness, just kept disappearing).
The survivors have been swimming about happily with no more fatalities for a month now.

Do I need to start again, should I just leave it be, is there anything I can do to get rid of the algae. I bought new silk plants, but they were covered after two weeks.

Thanks for any advice.

Lisa

 

[Boredomb]

Lisa Welcome to the forum! And ofc we don't mind you dropping in that's why we are here to learn from everyone elses experiences.

I don't know the tank which you speak of but I am assuming it has a light on it? How long is it on for??

 

[Lillis]

Thanks for replying

It has an intelligent light. Its currently set to 14 hours daylight 10 hour moonlight.....but it is the wrong way round, so the moonlight time is during the day and the daylight time is over night. So essentially it is light all day and night. Its LED bulbs, but i'm not sure what the wattage is.

 

[Boredomb]

Thats a long lighting period especially when you don't have live plants. Am assuming you don't. I would see if you can't switch the two soo the light is on during the day. Then I would change the time down to say 8hrs at the most
As for the moon light this isn't necessary at all. Fish need darkness complete darkness. So I would use that to view for a few and shut off.

This should help with the algae. Algae will take hold when there is nutrients in the tank and t doesn't have to be much at all and when you have a long duration for a light period it will always show up. Algae isn't a bad thing as it will work very much like live plants do in filtering the water. But it doesn't always look the best. In your case I believe its due to the lights being on for soo long.

 

[Chesh]

Welcome to the group, Lisa! Bored gave you some good advice, and he's right - we all make our mistakes, and are here to help others out with what we've learned along the way! Good to have you!

 

[Lillis]

Thank you all for the kind a solid advice.

I will change all the light settings to try to get it under control, and give my poor little fishes a little rest.

Hopefully then I will be back to having a happy tank.

 

[Boredomb]

Try the changes for a few weeks and see how it does. It might take a few weeks to see the progression of the algae to stop but remember what's there already won't disappear unless you clean it. The goal here is to stop the spread of it. If this doesn't work let us know and we can try to help you work through it.