Black Algae

Quite sometime ago I posted an entry about the aquarium I was building.  Well I have been forced to restart the tank from scratch due to a Black Algae (pictured on the wood below) infestation.  Green Algae is much easier to control and eliminate when it decides to take your Aquarium hostage, as many fish will actually eat Green Algae.  Black Algae not so much. Unfortunately Black Algae is not a snack for fish and is really hard to eliminate, especially once it takes root on plants and wood.  I fought the good fight for a few months and finally decided last week that it was time to retire the Flourish Excel, a plant mineral, which can help control it from growing, but due to the high lighting system I have on the tank even this failed.  So I decided that with rebuilding the tank I am going to share the experience via the blog.  I have lost one or two critters that I had in the tank, one who committed fish suicide last weekend, and one who vanished, but I will be adding some more new fish in the coming months. 

The first step to rebuilding the tank will be to buy some plants which I will be quarantining for about a week or two as I have on occassion had a few snail infestations, which typically come as eggs attached to the roots of plants.  The other thing which I plan on doing is building a couple small little cave like systems for the smaller fish and invertebrates (shrimps, blue lobster, clams).  I have a few layout ideas for how to create an awesome looking tank but it will take sometime as rocks, wood, and aquarium furniture believe it or not actually add up to be quite costly. 
Aqua Blodgett