When I woke up today, I was greeted by this sight in my tank. Luckily, it was not the algae itself which greeted me, but that it finally turned red. As that is the sign it is dying.

This marks a turning point in my battle with Staghorn algae. It appeared about 4 weeks in the tank, and slowly has taken over a lot of the plant leaves - the anubias, the java fern and the grass.

I started dosing with Seachem Flourish Excel last week, and three days ago I started squirting it with a syringe directly at the plants when the light period started. That seems to do the trick, and the Staghorn algae is starting to die off.

Now I just need to get the algae off the plants - they are really, really hard to pull off. The guppies started to pull at it once a while, and I’m thinking about getting some Amano shrimps, they are supposed to be eating at least the dead algae. And if not - I learned by now that shrimps are really entertaining to watch, and they have a really low bioload. So the more the merrier!

The next step now should be to address the nutritional problems with the java fern, as they look truly pitiful. But one thing after another…