How to clean the tank?

[ColorMeBlue]

For a few months now, the tank has been doing great, I did frequent little water changes and the snails were eating away at algae. I had to go away for a long weekend and leave the tank and when I came back, I was very down on water, which I expected, so I slowly added in the RODI over the coarse of a couple of hours, no problem. Everything seemed fine except...

 

Algae growth on the glass. And the back wall. Rather extensive, in fact. Before, there's be a little bit of brown or green algae and I'd use a little scrubber or the magfloat to scrape it off, no problem.

 

But I'm a bit puzzled as to how folks clean this stuff off. One of the problems (likely silly, I know) is I've got pods all over the algae. They're the only ones who seem really happy about it. The snails eat at the edges, but it's a lot.

 

I want to do a good scrubbing, but then the stuff would be all over the water.

 

I did do a water change and a brief scrubbing where I can get at it (the rock makes it hard to reach some bits on the glass) and a wiped at the back wall with the scrubby and got brown chunks everywhere. I picked up some of the floating gunk with the water change and put fresh water in, and then skimmed off another half gallon off the top of that and added more salt water and things aren't that unhappy but I just made a dent. My anemone wasn't keen on the whole process and was a bit grumpy for hours.

 

Is it okay to knock snails out of the way to clean the glass? Do folks do that? I've got a lot of ceriths and a few nerites and I sort of feel back to just knock 'em off. I figure the pods just have to deal, after all, there are a lot of them...

 

I'm hoping with a lot of water changes and my normal macros in the tank, the algae will get back under control by the snails.

 

The only plus on the whole wackiness is I seem to be the happy owner of a previously non-existant pineapple sponge that is growing like mad and it helped me discover a *very* well disguised clam embedded in the rock since I assume sponges don't bounce up and down...

[ColorMeBlue]

I guess I got too verbose above and people got bored before they read the question, eh? :

[theevilsock]

I've been known to scrape teh glass with a clean razor blade or a mag-float. I just knock the snails out of the way...i've never had a problem doing that. After a big cleaning, i'll do a big water change, and make sure to siphon out any large bits of algae.

 

It might be good to try to figure out the cause of the algae...take a look at your water params and determine if you need to add something like GFO, carbon, etc. to pull nutrients out of the water. Also, make sure you have adequate flow and good lighting - bad lights can cause algae outbreaks to get worse IME.

 

Good luck!

[TristanC]

^ha ha. I have tons of ceriths in my tank as well and when i scrub my glass i just knock them off, they fall to the bottom and immediately start their journey back to the top so i figure its ok. You could get in there with paper towels and wipe the glass with it, some people like doing it because the algae doesn't just float around after, i just scrub it daily so there is never too much buildup.

[ColorMeBlue]

^ha ha. I have tons of ceriths in my tank as well and when i scrub my glass i just knock them off, they fall to the bottom and immediately start their journey back to the top so i figure its ok. You could get in there with paper towels and wipe the glass with it, some people like doing it because the algae doesn't just float around after, i just scrub it daily so there is never too much buildup.

 

Thanks for the replies and the suggestions! I guess I worry too much. I'm fairly sure I know why I have algae growth, ( trying to learn to feed the anemone meant a lot of free floating mysis in the tank + going away for a few days so no water changes after feeding )

 

But it's good to hear how folks handle it. I was wondering, since while I read water changes and the like, I hadn't read much about cleaning the tank *around* the critters living inside it, it hadn't occurred to me they'd get in the way. Until of course, I had to deal with it first hand.