Habitat - Indoor :: Alge Treatments for tank

[Tammymi105]

Hello Everyone,

Our turtles are doing great now at a tender age of 14 months or so. They certainly liked being moved into the 90 gallon fish tank permenantly as they used to get to swim about when their 5 gallon tank was being cleaned. A couple hundred dollars for a Fluval canister filter, a large turlte dock and larger lighting was necessary for the move, but it has paid off in happy turtles. One problem was are having is the constant green complexion of the tank. Alge is growing fast with 16 hours a day of the heat lamp, uv lamp and the sun that comes in the window due to the lower winter angle of the sun's trajectory across the sky.

I was looking at some chemical treatments for alge the other day at the pet store, but no one was around to answer questions for me. Does anybody use any products to contrl alge growth, or just scrpae and clean?

Tammy Miller
New Jersey

[Tammymi105]

By the way, they will eat anything and really like fresh fish, crab and we love to watch them try to catch live grass shrimp that we catch off our dock and put in there, although the large tin foil barb that they share the tank with puts them to shame on catching the shrimp. Fish have an amazing way of sucking in food.

[Pizza]

The most common and safest way for turtles is scrape and clean. I haven't tried any chemical agent to control the algae growing, so maybe someone else would be better suited to answer your question. Just my opinion, I'd only try the fish-safe algae chemicals if the algae growing was too much for scraping to handle.

[marisa]

It's winter (albeit a mild one so far)---you don't need to have the lights on 16 hours a day; cutting down to 11-12 hours a day would be better and more in line with the seasonal hours. I have some green algae growing on the edges of my turts' basking areas, on some of their rocks, on the sides of some of their stock tanks, and on some of their plastic plants. I think it looks nice and natural, and it in no way affects the clarity of the water. If the algae isn't overwhelming your tank, I'd just let it be.

[Starchick]

I'm having the same problem since switching to a much stronger heat lamp, and have considered getting an algae eater. My main hesitation is whether that might introduce disease to the turtle. I'm told that my turtle will probably eat the little guy, but I'm willing to consider it an expensive feeder that'll get some cleaning done if it won't hurt Napoleon. Any thoughts?

[VuONG]

i have a strong algae bloom and my water is all green... i try to cover it with a blanket but it didnt work and i tried, teta algae remove, and algae destroyer BOTH SUCK! almost used the whole bottom and its still there... ALGAE FIX works wonders... but i cant find it anywhere... anything else i can try?

[industrial_girl_2000]

I don't add anything into the tank to control the algae, but I do have several scrapers that help a lot & just scrape a bit every other day or so. One of the scrapers is on a long stick (kind looks a bit like an ice scraper but with a thinner handle) and the other is one of those 2-piece magnetic scrapers that stick to the side of the tank (one piece inside, one piece outside, they stick together thru the glass with magnetic force). And when you aren't using the magnetic scraper thing, you can just shove it under your basking dock for added dock support if you need it (my turtle is very heavy & the dock sometimes sags or slides down a bit so this helps a lot!).

The above tools help keep the algae under control & my water is very clear.

[industrial_girl_2000]

i have a strong algae bloom and my water is all green... i try to cover it with a blanket but it didnt work and i tried, teta algae remove, and algae destroyer BOTH SUCK! almost used the whole bottom and its still there... ALGAE FIX works wonders... but i cant find it anywhere... anything else i can try?

Clean the tank & change the water more frequently. Don't rely on the algae chemicals to do this job for you. And buy an algae scraper (see my above post).

Also, make sure the tank's not near a window since incoming sunlight can make algae grow like mad.

[VuONG]

ive done 3 water changes in in a week haha algae just loves my tank and i moved it too but i think the UV blubs i have helps it grow like crazy lol so... im honeslty thinking about one of those earth filters

i also clean the rocks and everything tat has algae on it im thinking its my filter hose... hmm how would you go about cleaning XP3 hoses?

[VuONG]

so i just did a complete water change and cleaned out the tank completely ITS GONE! haha an hr worth of work for sparkling wter lets ee how long it lsated and hopefully i dont have to get the earth filter