Bacterial Bloom Help

[mchlnovak]

Pretty sure this is a bacterial bloom and that I caused it by foolishly doing 20% water changes over the course of 4 days (that’s a separate story). It looks green because of the plants, so it’s not green water. The setup is 5 months old and I’ve not had this happen before. From what I read I simply need to wait for it to clear up and not to do any large water changes because that will prolong it. Is that right?

Parameters:

Amm = 0

Nitrite = 0

Nitrate = 10

pH = 7.5

[Colu]

Usely bacterial bloom will go away  on there own it looks more like free floating algae to me 

[Brandy]

If you put that in a white dip out container, say a quart or so, what color is it? Because that looks like classic green water to me. I don't know how the plants could have anything to do with that, no matter how weird your camera settings are.

[Ben_RF]

This honestly looks like an algae bloom.

[CT_]

If it is bacteria I'd throw in an air stone in case its consuming a lot of oxygen.  I think at night algae can also consume oxygen.  Either way seems like a prudent thing.

[mchlnovak]

16 hours ago, Brandy said:

If you put that in a white dip out container, say a quart or so, what color is it? Because that looks like classic green water to me. I don't know how the plants could have anything to do with that, no matter how weird your camera settings are.

So it does appear to have a green tint when in a white container. Do I just black out the tank for a week to kill off the green water?  Concerned for the plants if I do that...

[Jungle Fan]

You said you have plants in the tank, so I would recommend to run the blackout for no more than a week, and I would check at the very least every 2 days because some plants are less tolerant of it than others. I would start with a 50% water change.

Another option would be to run a UV-Sterilizer until you've killed off the algae, it would also kill bacteria not anchored to the tank, its decoration, or in the filter but that is free floating in the water column.

[Colu]

How long do you have your lights on and is your tank exposed to natural light

[mchlnovak]

Lights are on for 6.5 hours each day. No exposure to direct sunlight 

[Brandy]

If you lower your light it may subside with time and patience--a lot of patience. Or it may work to blackout, but mostly I have not heard that being very fast either. One thing that is a sure fire solution is a UV sterilizer. However, that will not solve the inherent problem of too much light or nutrient imbalance that started the issue, and will just mean that a new algae will take its place.

Importantly this is NOT bad for your fish. This is just cosmetic. So you are free to try each thing and play with it to dial your tank in.

[Kelly S]

If you use a UV sterilizer, it sounds like you may want to do extra water changes. I do NOT claim to know what I'm talking about lol, but I'm catching up on podcasts and that's how I get the live streams (thanks Cory!). In the one I just listened to, Cory mentioned that someone used UV to kill off an algae bloom, which worked, but all of the suddenly-dead algae led to an ammonia spike which killed the fish.

I'm 99% sure it was the Nerdy Fish Questions Live Stream:

 

[mchlnovak]

I ordered a UV sterilizer to tackle the immediate problem, but I obviously have an unbalanced tank. I’ll start with lowering the light time even more since the light is a 50W LED floodlight. Thanks for everyone’s input!

[Maggie]

You're not alone in the "unbalanced tank" department! Thankfully most times our fish are perfectly okay with it but it's extremely frustrating to continually lose plants that cost $8-10.