Hey guys! Since Brightwell Aquatics is my awesome sponsor I've pretty much replaced all the things I use with their great stuff. If you have any questions on products, be it Brightwell or not, you can always let me know! I haven't tried *everything*, but I have a lot of experience with a lot of products. 8:38 actually made me laugh like crazy when I was editing this video. Horror music in a fish tank video, hah! Be sure to chime in with your thoughts on the question at the end!
I once used the green scubber side of a dish washing sponge to gently clean algae off some of my anubiases. Do not do this; your plant will never be the same.
Looking forward to hearing replies about the hair algae as I have been having a horrible time with it in ALL my planted tanks! I finally broke down one tank that had my red dragon guppies in it and used AlgaeFix on all of it (sans fish). My sorority tank on the other hand I don't want to do that because of the size and I don't want to disrupt my happy inhabitants to turn them into psycho betta females. I have heard that rosy barbs are chow hounds when it comes to hair algae. I'm going to give that a try. Hopefully my bettas don't chow on them. I will look into using your sponsored products as I begin to build another planted tank for angel fish. Glad to see you back!
wilsonsheltie I own rosy barbs. I’d be very worried they’d attack the bettas more than the bettas attacking them. Yes, they eat algae like crazy, but they also fight A LOT. Especially if kept in too small of a group, or Theres females present. I wouldn’t mix semi-aggressive barbs with aggressive bettas. Maybe set up a nice tank for them on their own. They do get decently sized as well. They also prefer cooler water but can live in tropical water with no problem.
So I got a bunch of new plants from my my pet store and a couple of days after I saw maybe one or two little bladder snails. I didn't think much of it because personally I think they're cute and they're not harming anything. Then like a week later I had an extreme algae bloom of hair algae and it couldn't get it completely off my plants. I was looking into what I could do and 2 days later all of the algae was completely gone. Not a single trace of algae. But I had 50-100 little bladder snails. Since then they've mostly died off because they only (in my experience at least) produce up to the tank's carrying capacity. I haven't had any problems since. Consider going to your pet store and asking if you can have a few of their nuisance snails, my local petsmart gave me a bag of them for free. Some people find nuisance snails to be an eyesore but like it's one eyesore or the other lol.
@@oceanti6791 the pet store i worked at had outbreaks of nerite snails all the time. Theyd be all over the filters and all the tanks. Last time I was shopping there they put a goldfish in every tank to eat some of them. I'd imagine if a pet store has snails they have ones that overpopulate
Hydrogen peroxide works great if you can temporarily remove the plant and immerse it in the peroxide liquid for 3 minutes. Then replant the plant. Over the next week you'll watch the hair algae turn pink and disappear.
My fix for hair algae is baby mollies, easy for me since they constantly breed in my main tank, but I temporarily rehome some of them to my other tanks if I see any growing. Granted I don't own any aggressive fish and all my tanks are heavily planted.
5:30 "Lookat it compared to the size of my head! Just look. Look!" Awesome. I love moss and having that much is fantastic. Its nice to see how to deal with situations like this, so thank you for turning it into a learning experience.
The balance of the tank may not have been right, but the balance of the video was perfect (educational, funny, drama, horror and a happy ending) . Can’t wait for the new hobbit tank 🤓
Your video length is the inverted numbers of the best song/album ever made... 12:21. Any other Rush fans here agree? ;) in all seriousness… Great video, with great information!
Nice little tank! I like the spiral background plant. Other than what you’ve already done and doing, about all I would consider would maybe be a blackout period.
My 20 gallon's water turned completely green from all the algae and I put a towel over it for 3 days and it was completely clear. My plants weren't doing so good but they also weren't doing so well when the algae was taking up all the light. Would recommend.
YES! Good suggestion. I used to have a lengthy photoperiod on the timers but would just turn them off once every week or two for a day, or only give them an hour of light for that day. It made a pretty big difference in the algae in there. Was so glad to learn that trick!
No blackout. If the Amano don’t do the trick reduce the light, keep nitrates around 10ppm, and keep removing it every other day or so with a toothbrush. It’s hard to do a low tech with Monte Carlo. Or a high tech with Anubias. Either the Monte Carlo grows too slow and algae takes over. Or the Anubias grows too slow and algae takes over. Cut the light down. Just be aware that the Montecarlo May die off.
I'm so happy I found your channel! You are the first woman in this community I have found and it's nice to see other ladies passionate about this amazing hobby! And your videos are more informative than any other I've seen. Thank you for posting!
I'm just really happy that you are back to making videos it's so relaxing and you are awesome at it!! Are you going to make any videos on betta fish any time soon?
We added more plants. I stuck my pond plants from home in the tank - water lettuce, water hyacinth. That look is what made us look at Betta's. The bottom is messy. Needs vac often. But not much algae. Just added guppies back in the tank. Maybe add shrimp next.
I have an obscene amount of snails that that take care of my algae problem. When the population explodes I just put a potato in there, they glob onto it and I take them out. There are plenty left to maintain the tank. So glad you are back but would not mine a few gratuitous shots of that new bundle of joy. ❤️
My tanks get full of algae at times. I think it looks nice with some algae but it kills off the plants. Your tank looks great, having a baby is a lot of work. Glad you feel better now.
I had a fluval flex 15 that I turned into a low tech setup. The light was the hands down worst I've had and somehow my plants took off like wildfire. It was the pod style lights you find tucked into some of the cheaper hoods. Just rested across a glass sheet. With a couple rubber stoppers on the edge. I had 10 females betas A handful of snails that exploded into a mass colony that I ended up starting to use to feed my pee puffers. Two Keeli fish. Only used sand as my substrate. Had a like 8 ghost shrimp in there to help clean up.
I wouldn't lower the light levels, as the plants most likely, need it. They've been through a lot. They had to grow new leafs, after being put into cold storage. Then those new leafs, were robbed of light, as the algae took over. If you want your plants to get the edge over the algae, you need to maintain the capacity for the plants to regenerate (ie: light) and do regular water changes. The new water will increase the C02 available to the plants, and remove any excess ferts, leaching into the water column, which feeds the algae. I suspect too many ferts were added to such a small tank, with ailing plants. Healthy plants would have done a better job of taking up the ferts. My suggestion is to split one water change per week, into two. Instead of one big one (ie: 25-30%) you could do 20% water changes instead, twice per week. The benefits will advantage the plants, to get control of what's being leached into the water column. Giving them more C02, to increase tissue regeneration. The light at the moment, is feeding both the plants and the algae. But you want to provide the conditions for the plants to beat the alagae to the ferts. So increase the plants capacity to regnerate. You can return to one change, per week, when the algae is back under control. Another problem though, was the kinds of plants you incorporated. Slow growing anubias, won't take up as much nutrient, as fast growing water sprite. There weren't enough fast growing plants, to take up the ferts you added. What I have done in the past, instead of defusing the light via the bulb, is put water sprite on the surface. It robbed light to the algae, whille increaing the uptake of extra nutrients in the water column, through it's dangling roots. When I saw the plants underneath needed more light, I'd remove more water sprite. Until I eventually only needed 4-6, large floating plants. But that was a 75 gal tank. To maintain balance, you may only need 1-2 in yours. The majority of plants in my tank were anubias and java fern, which were slow growing. I needed the water sprite to do the sprints in growth, the other plants weren't capable of. I love your tank by the way. You did a great job setting it up.
I know this is a year old but thank you! I just setup my 6g tank with live plants and added all the chemicals. But now i am wondering when to change water? Or do i even need to? No fish yet cuz i want the plants established a bit. Thank goodness you have a lid diy! Tuank u
So happy to have you back, Taylor!!! Well I know that exhaustion, wish I could say it's all uphill from here ;) As I'm still battling some algae issues myself, it's a timely topic. When we went away for a few days in the early summer, we didn't properly set our new timers, and I came home to a tank looking even worse than yours after only 5 days! Of course, 125 straight hours of light made for a crazy growth explosion, but even after manual removal, toothbrush swirling & scrubbing, some hydrogen peroxide dipping of movable plants (my anubias & java fern were superglued to rocks), and much better lighting schedules, I am still struggling. I think part of the problem stems from the active substrate possibly feeding too much of a good thing to he water column; in my case it's Fluval Stratum. I've picked up a phosphate test kit to try out on my tap water, some water with aging substrate, and some with fish food in it, so I can see if one of those is the source. Testing the tank water probably won't tell me anything, since the plants & algae suck up all ammonia, nitrite, and even the nitrate, so probably the same with any phosphate I may have. I've also still got to try out fertilizers... the liquid carbon you mention, though, is definitely an algaecide as well. I've picked up Seachem starter kits, best available where I am, see how they do this month in helping my plants outcompete this algae. Some short green hair algae that looks almost like a lawn on my glass and wood (almost like that stuff), some longer fluffier brown hair algae (like beige cotton candy lol) that's pernicious/tenacious/obnoxious, and now some blackbeard algae in my bedside gourami tank-oh noes! Even a smidge of blue-green-not-really-algae in a tank that's had a rough go of late thanks to some bad fish I was sold... Many planted tanks means much learning, experimenting, and tending to be done!
Oh wow, 125 hours straight! That’s a lot of light! I hope you are winning the battle now. I’ve been offered to try a product on a different tank of mine with allergy and it supposed to be all natural and All safe but somehow Kill the algae. I might be trying that product soon, it sounds interesting. Maybe using a product will be best for your issues! As much as I believe in tackling the root cause of problems, sometimes the root cause was just an accident and you just want to start over! I totally get that!
I think on smaller tanks that can't be heavily planted, that type of substrate and daily fertilizer will only ever lead to massive amounts of algae. The plants need the light more than all that fertilizer, so I'd cut all that out and use an inert substrate before cutting back on the light.
Similar to what I was thinking. The plants weren't sizeable enough to take advantage of the extra ferts. Plus they were transitioning from cold storage, meaning leafs were probably dying off. Before the new ones could grow in however, the algae exploited what ferts were leaching into the water column - starving the plants of more light.
I let my planted guppy tank go for weeks cause it was full of tiny fry, over grown java moss and loads of hair algae I removed the java moss put it in straight tap water and just pulled the hair algae off it. It was pretty thick like felt when I pulled it off. Cut back the java moss abit put what was left in a tub with tank water in it and it's sat on my windowsill at the moment. The fry seemed to like the tank busy with growth.
I've watched dozens of videos, I'm planning a low tech Betta aquascape and this was literally the most informative video ive came across. Took down a lot of mental notes and going to base my Bettas tank based off the information from this specific video.
Hi SB, so many Mums put far to much pressure on themselves after pregnancy I’ve watched my wife and sister go though it placing unnecessary pressure on themselves despite in our case no internal pressure its all outside sources. Just worry out the 4 of you and what ever hobbies you guys like (I think there’s just 4 of you). Good luck and keep the content up my wife and love what you post. Kind Regards Duzzy from 🇦🇺
I do absolutely put too much pressure on myself. If I ever stopped doing that though there would be something wrong with me! It's a bad habit, I guess :0 My hunny tells me I need to relax a bit, haha.
I like keeping a healthy “pest” snail population. I like the look of snails in a natural tank and when the lights come on the snails run and hide so you hardly see them anyway. The trick is to have them established in the tank before the algae outbreak...they help prevent it all together.
do fertilizers cause algae? because i never had a problem with it but i put some root tabs in for my plants and a couple weeks later i had an ugly brown algae outbreak! btw ur tank looks so cute!
How is your Monte Carlo doing so well in a low tech set up. It looked like it had some pretty significant growth from the small mat you started out with!!
Light and ferts! Haha, I think my light is a bit too strong actually, but the monte carlo is slowly spreading and staying compact. It will probably grow a bit more vertically when I move the light up a bit. It was a couple of months from making the tank to filming it, though
I got hair algae once and I just moved the fish to another tank and covered the tank with a towel for a week. The algae was dead and the plants were all slow-growing pants which didn't bat an eye.
I don't understand - why don't you use snails for the algae? I recently set our first tank for my son (6yo) - 2gallon, 1 betta, 1 moss ball. Got algae. Did mistake - scrubbed the tank (acrylic) and now it looks muddy (damaged the walls), just read snails are the solution. Why didn't you put snails in there to solve this? I am also a parent, I don't plan to spent much time on the aquarium. Thanks
Consistency in lights and fertilizers, along with water changes, seems to work best for hair algae. Oh, and a toothbrush for manual removal. :) Yours should eventually fade as the plants start to thrive. I love marsilea, btw, but it's one plant I have no luck with.
Stuff filter floss or those colorful plastic dish scrubbers into your gravel vac tube and tie a net or something at the end to cap it. Water changes done without water pressure hitting substrate. Please try it out sometime.
@@SimplyBetta , in general, the more surface area there is to break the water tension the better. You can eventually have a full heavy stream going in, but it's broken up in the water change tube, before it hits the main water column. Just fiddle with your own design that practical for you and convenient. Makes water changes so much smoother.
@@SimplyBetta . Just trying to find a solution to this problem that even high tech shop owners still go through, using their hands still and plastics, *sigh* lol needs to change is all.
Hi! I had a question about filters. You mentioned you put in an already cycled sponge filter into your new tank. I am brand new to owning a betta, and just set up my tank with a new filter. The instructions say to change it every 3 to 4 weeks with a new filter. But this would just get rid of all the good bacteria and start it over again. So do I change the filter at all?
Yeah don’t do that, they’re trying to sell more filters! Unless they mean to replace like, a screen or a pad that catches gunk. And those you can just rinse and re-use
Sarah Kay Pretty much - I never change my biological media, whatever that may be. Sometimes a sponge from my sponge filter, sometimes it’s ceramic thingies that hold the bacteria, whatever. I just don’t touch that
i had hair algae issues, minor compared to yours. my 15g (6in cube) aquarium only has a 3w light and plants do just fine. I used a chemical product (Algae Fix from Api) and did water changes, it took around 1-1.5 months and eventually it died. I stopped using fertilizer since the plants take all they need from the roots, I just doze potasium since food nor fish waste give potassium to the water column. Easy plants can adapt to a low-light low-nutrient diet, you just have to teach them (its a harsh process) and they will grow and multiply and go green.
Good to know that algaefix worked for You! I’ll probably try it if the other methods don’t work. I have another little 5g below it that has a WORSE algae problem!
@@SimplyBetta remember that your substrate sends nutrients to the water column, you will keep on finding this issue until about 3 months when your substrate stops this process (thats why this substrate lowers your ph like other soil-based-substrates (except seachem flourite which is clay-based)).
If it gets that bad I would does the tank with peroxide. I don’t know, I’ve never really had algae problems like that, usually I get that brown algae that’s really hard to scrape off the glass. I would probably put peroxide in and try and spray it right on the worst parts where it’s attached and then it all turns white and kind of dies and it’s easy to clean off. When it grows in my tanks it’s usually buy water flow or where bubbles pop and then it grows on the lid, and pond snails or bladder snails are kind of a pain but we love algae and if the algae starts growing they start breeding like crazy to to eat it. Every time I do a water change a suck up as many as I can but there are always plenty left. I have turned off my lights for a couple of days, and an awesome trick I found was to use a different spectrum light, I have a 29 gallon tank with a 10K Aqua net light that was made for marine tanks and I can leave it on 12 or 15 hours a day and have almost no algae at all, on some of the ceramic shrimp toys I have in there I’m actually getting that purple algae you get in marine tanks, But it’s just a thin purple they’re almost like paint, I put a 6500 K spotlight on my plants and they stopped dying but I still leave them on about 12 hours a day and I have no problems with it at all but the shrimp and pond snails probably have a lot to do with that and I’ve got narrates nails in there too and Moroni moss balls which eat the same nutrients algae does. And I don’t know if the temperature makes much of a difference but are usually keep my tanks colder than most people, I have a heater in there for the winter but it said it 72.
Simply Betta It’s pretty common in saltwater tanks. But it’s thin and it’s very hard it’s almost like paint. Luckily it only grew on those little square clay shrimp decorations. Lol
@@SimplyBetta I love those ideas! I've had lucky with anubis in the past but it was killed off by diatoms. I'll be better prepared this time. Thanks for the suggestions
I’m not 100% sure how much it would cost for a 20 gallon! The place is substrates aren’t super cheap like Gravel and sand but they’re worth it for plants! If this is your first tank you could get away with just using a planted substrate and not the mineral layer underneath like I did
I never use any kind of algae killing products. I can't stand the thought of using anything that is poison of any kind in an aquarium. There's no way I can believe that it doesn't adversely affect all the life in the tank. Instead, as you said, I think trying to find the natural balance is the key. It's not an instant fix that we really need for any aquarium, it is a long term solution.
I agree! Fixing the root of the problem is harder and takes more discipline but in the end it’s better than just a quick fix of a surface problem. I can see the allure of products that are supposed to kill off algae though, it’s like you can start from a clean slate again. That must be a good feeling to be able to do that,
Taylor, nice build. If you want to see really bad algae, you should check out my solving an algae problem videos. I finally got it under control by reducing the number of lights over the top of the tank and switching to low light plants. All of my black beard algae disappeared over the course of the summer. I was away most of the time and the tank was on an auto feeder. I think my 20 or so Pelvicachromis juveniles got hungry! Cheers, Chris PS I've had problems with Amano's eating fry and sometimes small fish. I finally got fed up with them and removed all of them from my tanks.
I'm sorry to tell you, that pipette definitely isn't accurate to the ml. Look for a 1ml volumetric bulb pipette (or whatever size you require) if you're looking for accurate glassware.
Hey guys! Since Brightwell Aquatics is my awesome sponsor I've pretty much replaced all the things I use with their great stuff. If you have any questions on products, be it Brightwell or not, you can always let me know! I haven't tried *everything*, but I have a lot of experience with a lot of products.
8:38 actually made me laugh like crazy when I was editing this video. Horror music in a fish tank video, hah!
Be sure to chime in with your thoughts on the question at the end!
Personligt i use a toothbrush and a scissors for hair algea
Thanks! I love the toothbrush/bristle brush method but some of it is STUCK on to the hardscape and plants and won't come off. Grr
I bought 2 siamese algae eaters and they did the job of keeping my tank clean and pristine. I love them because they are more active than ottos.
I once used the green scubber side of a dish washing sponge to gently clean algae off some of my anubiases. Do not do this; your plant will never be the same.
Too bad you didn't have a goalie mask handy while the horror music played. A shot of you slipping it on would have been hilarious.
Great to see another simply betta production.
Thank you! 🙏
Looking forward to hearing replies about the hair algae as I have been having a horrible time with it in ALL my planted tanks! I finally broke down one tank that had my red dragon guppies in it and used AlgaeFix on all of it (sans fish). My sorority tank on the other hand I don't want to do that because of the size and I don't want to disrupt my happy inhabitants to turn them into psycho betta females. I have heard that rosy barbs are chow hounds when it comes to hair algae. I'm going to give that a try. Hopefully my bettas don't chow on them. I will look into using your sponsored products as I begin to build another planted tank for angel fish. Glad to see you back!
wilsonsheltie I own rosy barbs. I’d be very worried they’d attack the bettas more than the bettas attacking them. Yes, they eat algae like crazy, but they also fight A LOT. Especially if kept in too small of a group, or Theres females present. I wouldn’t mix semi-aggressive barbs with aggressive bettas. Maybe set up a nice tank for them on their own. They do get decently sized as well. They also prefer cooler water but can live in tropical water with no problem.
So I got a bunch of new plants from my my pet store and a couple of days after I saw maybe one or two little bladder snails. I didn't think much of it because personally I think they're cute and they're not harming anything. Then like a week later I had an extreme algae bloom of hair algae and it couldn't get it completely off my plants. I was looking into what I could do and 2 days later all of the algae was completely gone. Not a single trace of algae. But I had 50-100 little bladder snails. Since then they've mostly died off because they only (in my experience at least) produce up to the tank's carrying capacity. I haven't had any problems since. Consider going to your pet store and asking if you can have a few of their nuisance snails, my local petsmart gave me a bag of them for free. Some people find nuisance snails to be an eyesore but like it's one eyesore or the other lol.
@@oceanti6791 the pet store i worked at had outbreaks of nerite snails all the time. Theyd be all over the filters and all the tanks. Last time I was shopping there they put a goldfish in every tank to eat some of them. I'd imagine if a pet store has snails they have ones that overpopulate
Hydrogen peroxide works great if you can temporarily remove the plant and immerse it in the peroxide liquid for 3 minutes. Then replant the plant. Over the next week you'll watch the hair algae turn pink and disappear.
My fix for hair algae is baby mollies, easy for me since they constantly breed in my main tank, but I temporarily rehome some of them to my other tanks if I see any growing. Granted I don't own any aggressive fish and all my tanks are heavily planted.
Great video Taylor! Glad to see you're all recovered and back at it now!
Hey man, thanks! It’s nice to be back sort of consistently ;)
It's understandable... You were keeping a family and 3D printing a human!
That's the best excuse!
It's nice to be watching videos like this. All natural, no lying whatsoever.
Awww thanks
5:30 "Lookat it compared to the size of my head!
Just look.
Look!"
Awesome. I love moss and having that much is fantastic. Its nice to see how to deal with situations like this, so thank you for turning it into a learning experience.
The balance of the tank may not have been right, but the balance of the video was perfect (educational, funny, drama, horror and a happy ending) . Can’t wait for the new hobbit tank 🤓
Oh gosh, thank you. The next fantasy tank is coming up soon! I think I'll start officially this week and start the long recording process :)
Great to see you back!! Love this tank.
It’s nice to be back sort of consistently! Sort of! ;)
@@SimplyBetta I totally understand! :)
When i had hair algae I removed what I could. Got some otos and cherry shrimp then cut down my hours. Haven't see it after.
Your video length is the inverted numbers of the best song/album ever made... 12:21. Any other Rush fans here agree? ;) in all seriousness… Great video, with great information!
Nice little tank! I like the spiral background plant. Other than what you’ve already done and doing, about all I would consider would maybe be a blackout period.
I totally should do a blackout period!
My 20 gallon's water turned completely green from all the algae and I put a towel over it for 3 days and it was completely clear. My plants weren't doing so good but they also weren't doing so well when the algae was taking up all the light. Would recommend.
YES! Good suggestion. I used to have a lengthy photoperiod on the timers but would just turn them off once every week or two for a day, or only give them an hour of light for that day. It made a pretty big difference in the algae in there. Was so glad to learn that trick!
Interesting, that would be like having cloudy days in the wild.
No blackout. If the Amano don’t do the trick reduce the light, keep nitrates around 10ppm, and keep removing it every other day or so with a toothbrush. It’s hard to do a low tech with Monte Carlo. Or a high tech with Anubias. Either the Monte Carlo grows too slow and algae takes over. Or the Anubias grows too slow and algae takes over. Cut the light down. Just be aware that the Montecarlo May die off.
I'm so happy I found your channel! You are the first woman in this community I have found and it's nice to see other ladies passionate about this amazing hobby! And your videos are more informative than any other I've seen. Thank you for posting!
Have you heard of the wallstead method😂
It's not John walstad is Diana walstad and I think that's how you say the last name😅
I kind of love that you are project oriented. You have drive Taylor! I admire that!
I'm just really happy that you are back to making videos it's so relaxing and you are awesome at it!!
Are you going to make any videos on betta fish any time soon?
Aww thank you. I will have betta videos! I'm just working on a backlog at the moment
I love the music, it’s not annoying or over used, it’s very chill 😎
No chemicals here. I would do what you've done. Ammano shrimp are amazing at cleaning up algae. So nice to see you back.
👍💕👍
Thank you!
I always enjoy your planted tank videos!
Thanks, I appreciate it :-)
Nice to see you back. Love your tank so much 😊
Thank you! It’s nice to be consistently back ;)
Stay awesome Taylor. Is hard having two young children, home, hobby and a mind that never stops.
Ha ha thank you, I will try
That Hobbit tank was fantastic I saw how you put that together and it blew my mind away
We added more plants. I stuck my pond plants from home in the tank - water lettuce, water hyacinth. That look is what made us look at Betta's. The bottom is messy. Needs vac often. But not much algae. Just added guppies back in the tank. Maybe add shrimp next.
I have an obscene amount of snails that that take care of my algae problem. When the population explodes I just put a potato in there, they glob onto it and I take them out. There are plenty left to maintain the tank. So glad you are back but would not mine a few gratuitous shots of that new bundle of joy. ❤️
Haha thanks @Mega Mindylou ! Wow it takes a lot of snails to be obscene. Baby might be In A few vids soon :)
A simply fantastic video as always.
Thank you :)
My tanks get full of algae at times. I think it looks nice with some algae but it kills off the plants. Your tank looks great, having a baby is a lot of work.
Glad you feel better now.
Thank you for the comment! I do feel better :-)
100% you are my favorite aquarium youtuber. Glad you’re back
Aww thank you
I had a fluval flex 15 that I turned into a low tech setup. The light was the hands down worst I've had and somehow my plants took off like wildfire. It was the pod style lights you find tucked into some of the cheaper hoods. Just rested across a glass sheet. With a couple rubber stoppers on the edge. I had 10 females betas A handful of snails that exploded into a mass colony that I ended up starting to use to feed my pee puffers. Two Keeli fish. Only used sand as my substrate. Had a like 8 ghost shrimp in there to help clean up.
I wouldn't lower the light levels, as the plants most likely, need it. They've been through a lot. They had to grow new leafs, after being put into cold storage. Then those new leafs, were robbed of light, as the algae took over. If you want your plants to get the edge over the algae, you need to maintain the capacity for the plants to regenerate (ie: light) and do regular water changes. The new water will increase the C02 available to the plants, and remove any excess ferts, leaching into the water column, which feeds the algae. I suspect too many ferts were added to such a small tank, with ailing plants. Healthy plants would have done a better job of taking up the ferts.
My suggestion is to split one water change per week, into two. Instead of one big one (ie: 25-30%) you could do 20% water changes instead, twice per week. The benefits will advantage the plants, to get control of what's being leached into the water column. Giving them more C02, to increase tissue regeneration. The light at the moment, is feeding both the plants and the algae. But you want to provide the conditions for the plants to beat the alagae to the ferts. So increase the plants capacity to regnerate. You can return to one change, per week, when the algae is back under control.
Another problem though, was the kinds of plants you incorporated. Slow growing anubias, won't take up as much nutrient, as fast growing water sprite. There weren't enough fast growing plants, to take up the ferts you added. What I have done in the past, instead of defusing the light via the bulb, is put water sprite on the surface. It robbed light to the algae, whille increaing the uptake of extra nutrients in the water column, through it's dangling roots. When I saw the plants underneath needed more light, I'd remove more water sprite. Until I eventually only needed 4-6, large floating plants. But that was a 75 gal tank. To maintain balance, you may only need 1-2 in yours.
The majority of plants in my tank were anubias and java fern, which were slow growing. I needed the water sprite to do the sprints in growth, the other plants weren't capable of. I love your tank by the way. You did a great job setting it up.
Can you make another video on the tokays?!!
Yeah! I’ll have one coming up but I need to finish a handful of half-finished betta videos ;)
I know this is a year old but thank you!
I just setup my 6g tank with live plants and added all the chemicals.
But now i am wondering when to change water? Or do i even need to?
No fish yet cuz i want the plants established a bit.
Thank goodness you have a lid diy! Tuank u
I dont like using chemicals I.just manually remove it though I have found I get no issues in my tanks with hornwort even if I forget my lights on
I bet the goldfish love to chow down on it!
Excellent walk-through, Taylor. The video is well-produced, right down to the sound effects. :) New subscriber.
I appreciate it! Thanks for following along :)
So happy to have you back, Taylor!!! Well I know that exhaustion, wish I could say it's all uphill from here ;) As I'm still battling some algae issues myself, it's a timely topic. When we went away for a few days in the early summer, we didn't properly set our new timers, and I came home to a tank looking even worse than yours after only 5 days! Of course, 125 straight hours of light made for a crazy growth explosion, but even after manual removal, toothbrush swirling & scrubbing, some hydrogen peroxide dipping of movable plants (my anubias & java fern were superglued to rocks), and much better lighting schedules, I am still struggling. I think part of the problem stems from the active substrate possibly feeding too much of a good thing to he water column; in my case it's Fluval Stratum. I've picked up a phosphate test kit to try out on my tap water, some water with aging substrate, and some with fish food in it, so I can see if one of those is the source. Testing the tank water probably won't tell me anything, since the plants & algae suck up all ammonia, nitrite, and even the nitrate, so probably the same with any phosphate I may have. I've also still got to try out fertilizers... the liquid carbon you mention, though, is definitely an algaecide as well. I've picked up Seachem starter kits, best available where I am, see how they do this month in helping my plants outcompete this algae. Some short green hair algae that looks almost like a lawn on my glass and wood (almost like that stuff), some longer fluffier brown hair algae (like beige cotton candy lol) that's pernicious/tenacious/obnoxious, and now some blackbeard algae in my bedside gourami tank-oh noes! Even a smidge of blue-green-not-really-algae in a tank that's had a rough go of late thanks to some bad fish I was sold... Many planted tanks means much learning, experimenting, and tending to be done!
Oh wow, 125 hours straight! That’s a lot of light! I hope you are winning the battle now. I’ve been offered to try a product on a different tank of mine with allergy and it supposed to be all natural and All safe but somehow Kill the algae. I might be trying that product soon, it sounds interesting. Maybe using a product will be best for your issues! As much as I believe in tackling the root cause of problems, sometimes the root cause was just an accident and you just want to start over! I totally get that!
I think on smaller tanks that can't be heavily planted, that type of substrate and daily fertilizer will only ever lead to massive amounts of algae. The plants need the light more than all that fertilizer, so I'd cut all that out and use an inert substrate before cutting back on the light.
Similar to what I was thinking. The plants weren't sizeable enough to take advantage of the extra ferts. Plus they were transitioning from cold storage, meaning leafs were probably dying off. Before the new ones could grow in however, the algae exploited what ferts were leaching into the water column - starving the plants of more light.
I let my planted guppy tank go for weeks cause it was full of tiny fry, over grown java moss and loads of hair algae I removed the java moss put it in straight tap water and just pulled the hair algae off it. It was pretty thick like felt when I pulled it off. Cut back the java moss abit put what was left in a tub with tank water in it and it's sat on my windowsill at the moment. The fry seemed to like the tank busy with growth.
That amount of miss is commonly known as a head-full of moss! 😉😂🥰🐶
How did I just find you?!! I LOVE your videos and your narrations:))
Oh gosh, thank you
You are so awesome and made me feel like I can do this. Thank you!
The shrimp will obviously really help you with the hair algae problem. Great looking tank!!
Cute baby bettas!
I've watched dozens of videos, I'm planning a low tech Betta aquascape and this was literally the most informative video ive came across. Took down a lot of mental notes and going to base my Bettas tank based off the information from this specific video.
Thanks for showing how it actually goes and how we all make mistakes and teaching us all how to fix it!
Thank you :)
You’re Taylor? I thought your name was literally Simply Betta! 😂 Glad you’re back and not SUPER pregnant. Love the vid!
I have a lot of people thinking my name is Betty :0 haha thanks!
I would probably introduce a lot of amanos, and do a blackout. Love what you did with this tank!
Thanks!
Hi SB, so many Mums put far to much pressure on themselves after pregnancy I’ve watched my wife and sister go though it placing unnecessary pressure on themselves despite in our case no internal pressure its all outside sources. Just worry out the 4 of you and what ever hobbies you guys like (I think there’s just 4 of you). Good luck and keep the content up my wife and love what you post.
Kind Regards Duzzy from 🇦🇺
I do absolutely put too much pressure on myself. If I ever stopped doing that though there would be something wrong with me! It's a bad habit, I guess :0
My hunny tells me I need to relax a bit, haha.
Super cute tank!!
Thanks!
I like keeping a healthy “pest” snail population. I like the look of snails in a natural tank and when the lights come on the snails run and hide so you hardly see them anyway. The trick is to have them established in the tank before the algae outbreak...they help prevent it all together.
I'm sorry if I missed something but what are those fish in there?
How often do you change the water if ever?
Hi! Would u recommend a betta fish living with two guppies? I would say my betta is fairly calm and i think he is bored of living alone!
Don't put guppies..betta will try to nip its tail..it is my personal experience..you can put mollies instead or platy
See on my channel..ua-cam.com/channels/VN-jehENzBH73KV_Ittl_A.html
Thank you! Since i already have the guppies i think I’ll divide the tank and put them together at least during the winter, but ill check ur video out!
C4 always does the trick at getting rid of algae.
I would have gone with some shrimp too. Nice bit of variation to the bottom of the tank, some added color and they feed on that unwanted algae.
do fertilizers cause algae? because i never had a problem with it but i put some root tabs in for my plants and a couple weeks later i had an ugly brown algae outbreak! btw ur tank looks so cute!
sometimes I just let my light off for a week and the algae are gone!
How is your Monte Carlo doing so well in a low tech set up. It looked like it had some pretty significant growth from the small mat you started out with!!
Light and ferts! Haha, I think my light is a bit too strong actually, but the monte carlo is slowly spreading and staying compact. It will probably grow a bit more vertically when I move the light up a bit.
It was a couple of months from making the tank to filming it, though
I got hair algae once and I just moved the fish to another tank and covered the tank with a towel for a week. The algae was dead and the plants were all slow-growing pants which didn't bat an eye.
I'll consider a black-out too! If I get impatient with my slow method :)
So simple so nice i just love how you make it so fun to DIY gratz keep up the good work
I appreciate it :)
I don't understand - why don't you use snails for the algae? I recently set our first tank for my son (6yo) - 2gallon, 1 betta, 1 moss ball. Got algae. Did mistake - scrubbed the tank (acrylic) and now it looks muddy (damaged the walls), just read snails are the solution. Why didn't you put snails in there to solve this? I am also a parent, I don't plan to spent much time on the aquarium. Thanks
I use peroxide on hair algae....it works sometimes..mostly I removed the plant or damage leaf.
Consistency in lights and fertilizers, along with water changes, seems to work best for hair algae. Oh, and a toothbrush for manual removal. :) Yours should eventually fade as the plants start to thrive. I love marsilea, btw, but it's one plant I have no luck with.
Love this little tank.
What was the aquarium light you used at the end? Looking for one for my plants tank.
Oh the light Is a cheap one off of Amazon, nicrew i believe! Working pretty well for this little tank, I was pleasantly surprised
would the algae growth be a resul of to much nutients and not enought plant growth?
Too much waste nutrients, too much light, poor CO2, too long of a light period. There are a lot of factors!
arty u have to many fish in ur tank clean ur gravel with a siphon once a week and do not over feed
Stuff filter floss or those colorful plastic dish scrubbers into your gravel vac tube and tie a net or something at the end to cap it. Water changes done without water pressure hitting substrate. Please try it out sometime.
Hmmmm
@@SimplyBetta , in general, the more surface area there is to break the water tension the better. You can eventually have a full heavy stream going in, but it's broken up in the water change tube, before it hits the main water column. Just fiddle with your own design that practical for you and convenient. Makes water changes so much smoother.
@@SimplyBetta . Just trying to find a solution to this problem that even high tech shop owners still go through, using their hands still and plastics, *sigh* lol needs to change is all.
SALUTATIONS! #happytears this tank is AMAZING!!! Love it❤️❤️
Oh thanks so much ^^
Hi! I had a question about filters. You mentioned you put in an already cycled sponge filter into your new tank. I am brand new to owning a betta, and just set up my tank with a new filter. The instructions say to change it every 3 to 4 weeks with a new filter. But this would just get rid of all the good bacteria and start it over again. So do I change the filter at all?
Yeah don’t do that, they’re trying to sell more filters! Unless they mean to replace like, a screen or a pad that catches gunk. And those you can just rinse and re-use
@@SimplyBetta okay great! So basically just don't ever change the filter, only rinse the screen with holes that catches gunk?
Sarah Kay Pretty much - I never change my biological media, whatever that may be. Sometimes a sponge from my sponge filter, sometimes it’s ceramic thingies that hold the bacteria, whatever. I just don’t touch that
Oh man I’m in love with you Taylor!!! I wish u was in uk and single. Damn...
i had hair algae issues, minor compared to yours. my 15g (6in cube) aquarium only has a 3w light and plants do just fine. I used a chemical product (Algae Fix from Api) and did water changes, it took around 1-1.5 months and eventually it died. I stopped using fertilizer since the plants take all they need from the roots, I just doze potasium since food nor fish waste give potassium to the water column. Easy plants can adapt to a low-light low-nutrient diet, you just have to teach them (its a harsh process) and they will grow and multiply and go green.
Good to know that algaefix worked for
You! I’ll probably try it if the other methods don’t work. I have another little 5g below it that has a WORSE algae problem!
@@SimplyBetta remember that your substrate sends nutrients to the water column, you will keep on finding this issue until about 3 months when your substrate stops this process (thats why this substrate lowers your ph like other soil-based-substrates (except seachem flourite which is clay-based)).
What kind of contacts are those ?
No contacts, just reflections
Love you Taylor ❤️💕
If it gets that bad I would does the tank with peroxide. I don’t know, I’ve never really had algae problems like that, usually I get that brown algae that’s really hard to scrape off the glass. I would probably put peroxide in and try and spray it right on the worst parts where it’s attached and then it all turns white and kind of dies and it’s easy to clean off. When it grows in my tanks it’s usually buy water flow or where bubbles pop and then it grows on the lid, and pond snails or bladder snails are kind of a pain but we love algae and if the algae starts growing they start breeding like crazy to to eat it. Every time I do a water change a suck up as many as I can but there are always plenty left. I have turned off my lights for a couple of days, and an awesome trick I found was to use a different spectrum light, I have a 29 gallon tank with a 10K Aqua net light that was made for marine tanks and I can leave it on 12 or 15 hours a day and have almost no algae at all, on some of the ceramic shrimp toys I have in there I’m actually getting that purple algae you get in marine tanks, But it’s just a thin purple they’re almost like paint, I put a 6500 K spotlight on my plants and they stopped dying but I still leave them on about 12 hours a day and I have no problems with it at all but the shrimp and pond snails probably have a lot to do with that and I’ve got narrates nails in there too and Moroni moss balls which eat the same nutrients algae does. And I don’t know if the temperature makes much of a difference but are usually keep my tanks colder than most people, I have a heater in there for the winter but it said it 72.
Woah, purple algae! Weird! :-)
Simply Betta It’s pretty common in saltwater tanks. But it’s thin and it’s very hard it’s almost like paint. Luckily it only grew on those little square clay shrimp decorations. Lol
Please update about macrostoma eggs
Once I have success!
This is exactly what I needed!
Except I'm trying to plant a 29 as a beginner. I'm so worried I'll buy all these plants just to ruin them as usual
Definitely start with Anubis and java fern! Some good starter stem plants would be stuff like moneywort, guppy grass, pearl weed.
@@SimplyBetta I love those ideas!
I've had lucky with anubis in the past but it was killed off by diatoms. I'll be better prepared this time.
Thanks for the suggestions
Can you do a video on breeding betta fish? Like from the beginning to the end. I am super interested in breeding them!
Yes, it’s on my project list! I’m getting footage for it now
@@SimplyBetta yay! I can't wait to watch it! I really love you videos and am actually watching the fry to adult feeding video now!
How much does all the substrate items cost all together? I've been wanting to turn my 20 gal into a planted Betta tank!
I’m not 100% sure how much it would cost for a 20 gallon! The place is substrates aren’t super cheap like Gravel and sand but they’re worth it for plants! If this is your first tank you could get away with just using a planted substrate and not the mineral layer underneath like I did
I love the face!!! Haha
😁
I like to rotate my shrimp and snails so when one tank gets a bunch of algae I put them in there than it also saves me time and money
수초 물고기 넘 이뻐요! ^_^)v so pretty aquarium
감사합니다! :)
Can you add live plants into a functioning aquarium.
Absolutely!
I use a product called Phytocarb. It works like magic.
Shrimp, snails, floating plants and rent some platys for a week should be enough! 😁
I never use any kind of algae killing products. I can't stand the thought of using anything that is poison of any kind in an aquarium. There's no way I can believe that it doesn't adversely affect all the life in the tank. Instead, as you said, I think trying to find the natural balance is the key. It's not an instant fix that we really need for any aquarium, it is a long term solution.
I agree! Fixing the root of the problem is harder and takes more discipline but in the end it’s better than just a quick fix of a surface problem. I can see the allure of products that are supposed to kill off algae though, it’s like you can start from a clean slate again. That must be a good feeling to be able to do that,
Tell me Taylor, are you the voice of Mobile Legends Guide?
Youre my idol iloveyou ✌️😊
I love your videos and you are so sweet :)
Taylor, nice build. If you want to see really bad algae, you should check out my solving an algae problem videos. I finally got it under control by reducing the number of lights over the top of the tank and switching to low light plants. All of my black beard algae disappeared over the course of the summer. I was away most of the time and the tank was on an auto feeder. I think my 20 or so Pelvicachromis juveniles got hungry!
Cheers,
Chris
PS I've had problems with Amano's eating fry and sometimes small fish. I finally got fed up with them and removed all of them from my tanks.
🤔🤔👁👁let's do this...
Taylor sounds kinda like if Peridot, Lapis, and Pearl from Steven Universe fused... Just me? Okay..
Baby betta fish
I'm sorry to tell you, that pipette definitely isn't accurate to the ml. Look for a 1ml volumetric bulb pipette (or whatever size you require) if you're looking for accurate glassware.
U could hava just tossed some siamese fishes they really love to eat algae and would have cleared ur tank a lot faster
They wouldn't like my tiny tank! ^^
Shorten the light duration.
A algae eater
Get a small fish that loves algae
I did put amanos in there!
god, shrimp would've loved that algae
They did a good job chowing down on it
Why does this say betta? I been watching this hoping for some ideas for my betta tank and this... wasn't anything to do with Bettas 🤣
It’s a tank I made for bettas :P I guess this was the planting stage
Jesus loves you
Wow, what a difference! Very beautiful tank tho! Also how to you get the pearling in your tank? I never get that 😢
Monte Carlo is a good pearler! I think my lights might actually be a little too strong. Well the Monte Carlo likes it but so does the algae ;)
"I'm back!" Best words all year :)
;)
For algae, I would normally employ a cleanup crew of albino algae eaters and amano or glass shrimps and then let them go at it.
Rachel O'Leary uses a bottle brush to get that hair algae... just a tip