You obviously haven't ever had a bloom of green water algae then, have you ?
You can do a 90% water change - which I have, and 3 days later it's pea soup
green again. Especially if you're running high lighting for a planted tank.
I suspect you could even take the fish out and do a 100% water change, and
the problem would still not go away, still the algal cells would just settle
to the bottom in the gravel, and then resuspend when you filled it back up.
The only way a water change could help would be if you also disinfected
everything in between - a complete tear down. Disinfect the gravel,
disinfect and scrub the inside of the tank, chlorine-dip all the plants and
driftwood and anything else in the tank. This is something I want to avoid.

Since having the green water algae bloom, I've done up to 80% water changes
every 3 days, just to keep it from looking like crap. I'm currently trying
the "total darkness" method I read about on the Kribs. Theoretically, 4
days or so of total darkness kills the primitive single celled algae
completely while the fish and the higher plants do not suffer. Well, at
least the plants do not suffer to the point of dying.

I'm crossing my fingers .....

Shawn (Original Poster on the Barely Straw Extract)




"Tyler" wrote in message
...
IMHO, a water change or many would be better.


On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 10:48:37 -0500, "Shawn P. Good"
wrote:

Does anyone have experience treating "green water algae" infestations
with
barley straw extract ? What were your conclusions ? Did it work or not
work ?

Also, does it actually *kill* the algae ? Or does it just clarify the
water
in some other way ? I have a 55gal tank and the bottle I was looking at
online at www.thatfishplace.com says it treats 2,500gals. So that's
making
me think now that I have the infestation, I'll have to treat it forever
and
ever.

If barley straw extract ISN'T the best way to deal with green water
algae,
what is ?

Thanks - Shawn