Very little or no algae? Good or bad?

This is probably a stupid question. . .and some of you will probably wonder why I am even concerned about this. . .but what does it mean if you can't see any signs of algae in your tank? Not on the glass, nor the gravel, nor the rocks.

I have a few tiny snails that probably eat whatever algae there might be, but I can litterally see zero algae in my 60 liter tank, and I just find it a bit odd. Been this way for months now and I cannot tell if it is good or bad? I had quite a lot of algae in this same tank last year (around September - October) but eventually it has slowly dwindled down to nothing, at least to my eyes anyway.

The fish are healthy and the plants I have are green and happy and growing as usual.

I have "normal" amounts of light, using a regular fluorescent tube, which is turned on sometime in the morning and turned off a few hours before I go to bed at night.

I use no special water treatment, I don't add salt to the water, and when I do medicate my fish I use Aquadene general tonic (which has not affected algae growth before). The filters in my 60 liter tank are two undergravel filters and one medium sized corner filter with gravel, filter wool and activated charcoal, none of my methods for filtering the tank has changed in quite a long time.

Although I am probably paranoid for nothing, my main concern is that it might be a sign of pH imbalance or something worse. Anybody got a clue?

 

You will eventually get algae or have an outbreak then you will have plenty of problems then

 

Algae is a plant - but opportunistic always present in a working aquarium. Not seeing it means you probably have a tank that has matured and that you are not messing with the routine to much. Unless you have fish that need it stay away from the ph chasing game additives can cause more problems than what you realise. Plants adapt better to change than say fish.

Trick now is to spot the filtration system crashing and do just enough of a clean so that you do not have the same issues you had in 2013. Having loads of plants also change the type of algae your tank is prone to growing so keep an eye on that also.

Later Ferdie

 

Thanks for clearing that up! I feel better about it now, and will keep your advice in mind.