Myth Busters - Algae Edition

After a conversation with @Lord Vader this afternoon I've decided to put 2 products that I have to the test. I will use this thread as a journal to post updates so I can also keep track. The products are as follows;

1. APT Fix
2. Seachem Excel

This study was inspired by spot dosing one tank with apt fix on a spot of BBA and 18hrs later it looked like tank 2 which I dosed no more than 5 hours ago with excel, also the same BBA.

I currently have the following types of algae:

• Green Hair algae
• Black Beard Algae
• Clado
• Some form of green algae

All of the above with the exception of the hair algae are in little amounts. The hair algae though is out of control. Apt fix says it's best for hair algae so I'm really keen on seeing this work.

The idea is to have 2 glasses of tank water, will add a type of algae, starting with hair algae and spot dose daily for 5 straight days in a row. This concentration would be like 1ml per cup per day so it will be overdosed but I guess it should still give me a good enough result to distinguish which works, If any.

Disclaimer* tank one was dosed with apt fix almost a day before tank two had excel and tank one has had no interest by BN pleccos, Otto's or snails (nerite,apple,trumpets). The shrimp in tank two have already cleaned all of the BBA that was dosed within half a day.

 

Want to follow this. BBA is hurting me personally

 

I really just have a couple spores on the glass. And on one buce. That's where I dosed in tank one.. tank 2 has a piece of wood I took and put into it from tank one that had some spores on it. So it's not growing in clumps yet. Just little spots here and there. I can confirm a single spot dose of excel and shrimp can take care of it though. Probably need to do it daily if it's spread out

 

Great experiment, looking forward to results

 

Following along

 

Lets see - keep us posted, I have a pipefish tank that can have no tankmates. And algae seems to be a problem..

 

Day 1 of 5 for Hair algae

Removed some from the tank and got them into marked cups. Have dosed today of 1ML per cup.



Excuse the clutter behind haha

 

Day 2

No visible difference on either side.

 

End of day 3. Still no change. Not gonna upload a pic that looks like the above 2. Will update with pics when there's visible difference

 

Is light still shining onto the samples? If not, algae will die without chemicals...

 

Just room lighting. And yeah I thought the lack of light will give it a boost in dying. Seems hair Algae is quite the resilient one

 

Day 4 of 5 update

Slight colour change on the both. Unfortunately my camera cannot capture the difference yet. Perhaps by the morning it should look different enough on a picture.

I have to say though I'm kinda disappointed that neither is dead as yet

 

Following this... I've battled just about everything up to date.

 

Day 5 of 5

Both have lost colour and turning more brown in colour than green. Apt fix definitely has done a better job. At the request of @Lord Vader I will continue daily dosing and figure out at which point it dies entirely. Tomorrow I will update one last time on the hair Algae and then move onto the next one.