It happens to everyone who keeps an aquarium for any length of time. Your little masterpiece is humming along in a nice balance of chemistry, lighting, livestock until BLAM! Once crystal clear water turns a pea soup green, brown slime covers every square inch of the gravel bottom and staghorn algae is blooming off plants. Okay, maybe its not that bad but when you're in the midst of the invasion, it doesn't seem that far off!

Green Water - First off, if your tank is less than a month old - Relax! Many new tanks will go through a green water phase which is really just single celled algae floating around. They are feeding on the overabundance of Ammonia, Nitrites and other nutrients in the water column as your tank is completing its cycle. Cycling a tank has always been a part of a raw tank start-up but you can speed it up by adding live nitrifying bacteria culture. There are commercial products available that claim an instant cycle (we are still evaluating these claims) but until then, green water it is. Don't worry, as the tank chemistry stabilizes, Ammonia, and Nitrites will convert to nitrate and will no longer be available to algae. What about the nitrates you ask? Well, that's the beauty of live plants; they will pull nitrate (inc. ammonia and nitrite directly) as well as phosphate (another cause of algae blooms) right out of the water. Without live plants, the only way to remove nitrates is by regular water changes.

Algae growing on my tank glass- Yep, it's going to happen. The trick here is to clean your glass often before the algae really attaches to the glass. Use the trusty glass cleaning pad (acrylic tank owners use pads made for your tanks) or the nifty magnet cleaners (one of the "better mouse trap" ideas along with the venturi driven water changers). If you do this as you see it forming, the green haze will come off like a gentle cloud and no longer be a problem. The longer you wait between wipings, the greater chance for the hard "green spot" algae to attach to the glass. You will not believe how hard this stuff will stick--removal will most likely require the use of a scraper cleaning tool. It only takes 30 seconds to wipe the glass with a magnet cleaner so do it every week or as necessary and give yourself a break from "wet arm syndrome".

Algae growing on my Rock, Wood, Decorations Heck, you can just take these guys out and give them a good, hard scrubbing under hot water. Of course this is kind of drastic, just short of a break down but you can decide if its worthwhile. Plecos are great natural algae control and will rasp wood clean of all but the hardiest of algae. They can get quite large and be a little clumsy so I don't recommended plecos for all setups. There are great choices like clown plecos which tend to stay a little smaller.

Algae growing on my plants!!! Just about the saddest sight watching your prize plant slowly getting overrun by invaders... Here is where patience and persistence really is required. Get your arms in that tank and start pulling as much algae as you can off the plants. Maybe even take the large leaf plants and tougher specimens out of the water and scrape at it with a razor blade. More than just physical removal, this seems to stimulate you algae eating critters. I do not have a definitive explanation for this but I've seen my siamensis ignore staghorn algae until I started ripping it out- then they started really gobbling it up! Maybe it's like peeling an orange for them or something. Keep at it and make sure to get the critters that can help you out.

Turn off your lights Shortening the photo period (the time you leave your lights on) might also help you get an upper hand on your algae. Be careful not to kill your plants in the process! There are many ideas out there including shortening photo periods, turning off some of your lights (reducing intensity), blacking out the tank for a period and a voodoo mix of many techniques.

Algaecides and nuclear warfare- Well, this is an option but I want to encourage trying the natural methods first. Of course if you have plants, this is NOT an option. Many claims are made for plant safe algaecides, but this is not our experience. Yeah, anubias will survive but they really could live through nuclear attack, no?

Remember these are ways to deal with algae after they have arrived at your doorstep. Read the articles on the causes of algae to address the source rather than the symptoms. There is a lot of chatter about magic pills for algae and there might be valid rationales behind the ideas but really what I think is happening is people try so many things to get rid of algae but only remember the last thing they tried when the algae up and left! Algae eradication is really about a confluence of conditions not the least of which is yes, your patience and persistence.