How to Get Rid of Algae in Your Fish Tank

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Eric with the World of Wet Pets Tropical Fish in Portland, Oregon. I'm here to explain how to remove algae from your aquarium. Anybody who has an aquarium with a light over the top of it knows algae happens. And it happens a lot. The best way to remove algae from the aquarium is to try to prevent it from growing in the first place. We're all familiar with algae pads and wiping down the fronts of the tanks and dealing with it that way. Chemical algae sides don't normally work as well as we would like them to. So the best thing to do is try to remove any sort of food source for algaes. Algaes require light, lots of light. Generally anything more than eight hours of aquarium light in a day is too much. Now even with live plants you're basically feeding the algaes more than you're feeding the plants at that point. Also phosphates are a primary food source for most algaes. Depending on your water source or perhaps even your rocks and ornaments you could be having very, very high phosphate levels. Green water blooms are oftentimes caused by very high phosphate levels. There are test kits for monitoring your phosphates. There are products for removing phosphates that will just absorb them right out of the water. The key to keeping algae growth from happening is to keep the food sources down."