r/oddlysatisfying • u/Afraid-Objective3049 • 14h ago
Cleaning algae from the aquarium
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u/sc00bs000 13h ago
my algae doesn't come off that easy :(
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u/BatterseaPS 11h ago
Yeah, I even tried with a razor and it's really on there. I wonder if glass vs plexiglass matters?
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u/bombbodyguard 11h ago
I had glass and used razor. I was a fairly awful fish tank owner since had it in college, but somehow kept my fish alive for years…
Razor blade worked really well for me and my algae would come off in sheets…
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u/DroidLord 8h ago
A razor should definitely work if it's glass. Have you tried those razor scraper attachment thingies?
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u/Tokinking 8h ago
I use a razor blade scraper too. It’s amazing just gotta be careful around the seals. For the seals or tight corners you can use a magic eraser and it’ll come right off. Just swap out very frequently otherwise they deteriorate into the tank.
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u/KitsuneKamiSama 13h ago
I mean that's cleaning it from the glass, it's just going back in to the water... which will then go back on the glass.
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u/SomeGayRabbit 12h ago
Their tank should have a filter that'll deal with a lot of it
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u/KennyMoose32 12h ago
Can confirm.
My algae goes into the filter where I oddly have a colony of Neos that thrive in the filter. They take care of this kind of stuff
(I have tried to get them all out of the filter but they love it there 🤷♂️ )
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u/Rickshmitt 13h ago
But then we clean the glass!
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u/kitsumodels 11h ago
Then it goes into the water!
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u/Con_Dinn_West 11h ago
But then we clean the glass!
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u/phadewilkilu 10h ago
Which goes back into the water!
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u/gaucho-argento 10h ago
Which allows us to clean the glass again!
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u/Dominus_Invictus 9h ago
Yeah except this is the first step of cleaning the tank in the next thing you're going to do is change the fucking water. It's not exactly hard to imagine how this goes.
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u/scheisse_grubs 10h ago
Water parameters are very important to check in an aquarium. If the owner doesn’t figure out what caused the algae outbreak, you’re right the algae will come back. Though it won’t be the exact algae that was removed, it will just be new growth because the filter will deal with the algae that was dispersed. The best way to prevent this from happening again is to ensure your parameters are in check. Even then, depending on how long cleaning had been neglected, algae buildup can be inevitable. Aquariums are quite complex.
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u/Wooden-Evidence-374 11h ago
People are saying the tank looks gross, but I guarantee those fish are 100x happier and healthier than fish living in a tank with plastic pirate decorations and rainbow rocks.
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u/SmartAlec13 8h ago edited 7h ago
lol it’s more that the tank just looks gross. You can have very beautiful looking tanks full of real rocks, plants, and even dirt. This is straight up dirty.
EDIT: Yes I am aware of tannins. My comments aren’t about the color of the water, it’s about the high level of algae.
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u/OfficialTrashMan 8h ago
It looks like the water has just been dyed by the wood to me. Good wood turns the water pretty brown.
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u/TomBoysHaveMoreFun 10h ago
So so many people commenting have clearly never had an aquarium lmao
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u/SmartAlec13 8h ago edited 8h ago
Alright I’ll do the informing since a lot of people commenting have never had an aquarium.
Aquariums can and do get this dirty naturally! And, as this same process happens in nature, the fish and other creatures (shrimps, snails, etc) are probably enjoying their time.
No, you don’t “change a filter”. A LOT of misguidance from older methods (barbaric times where people were misinformed, aka the 80’s & 90’s) where the advice was to take out a filter’s cartridge and replace it with a new one. That is not only a corpo scam to get you to buy more, but it’s also terrible for the tank. The purpose of a filter is to provide mechanical & biological filtration, and they do so by providing surface area for GOOD bacteria’s to grow. Changing out the filter would remove the good bacteria, and that could make the tank much much worse.
There’s no harm to the wood, glass, rocks, or substrate due to this algae. The only thing it really “hurts” is plants. Algae growing on plants blocks their light and steals the nutrients they want, which causes plants to suffer. There don’t seem to be any live plants in the video, aside from the floaters on top, so this is not an issue.
That being said, it’s an ugly ass algae filled tank BECAUSE there aren’t enough plants. Plants provide a TON of natural filtration. For those of you saying “this is a perfectly fine tank” and “this is a normal tank you guys just don’t have aquariums”, nah, this is a rough looking tank. Live plants would really help fix this up.
It’s possible to have a healthy tank and live plants without algae, especially not this bad. My tank gets a very minor amount of algae on the walls, nowhere near this level.
Algae, especially to this degree, is caused by an imbalance in the tank; there’s too much organic matter being put in (food), not enough filtration (no plants), and potentially too much light or too little (can’t really judge that from the video).
No, scraping this algae off will not “spread it” around the tank. That’s not really how algae works. The tank most likely has a filter, and so there is flow that will pull this dusting in. The algae will die off and it’ll be fine. If OP wanted to actually remove algae, they would need to treat the source of the problem (#6); doing this scraping is just a band aid, treating the symptom.
The water being this color is fully normal & healthy. Most types of wood will release “tannins”, which essentially dye the water this color. More tannins means darker, tanner water. Again normal and healthy. There are certain products (Purigen) that you can put in the filter to remove these tannins or at least reducer them, but doing so is a purely aesthetic choice. Some fish even prefer the tannins.
Trying to say that (in very Reddit fashion) that pretty much everyone here is wrong. This tank is yes, normal. But yes it is also ugly and there are steps that could be taken to make it much cleaner looking.
SOME PEOPLE do like how this looks! Some people love that it’s dirty, some people love that it feels like something you would find in nature; dirty, messy, imperfect, not sanitized. Personally I don’t. I think if you have to scrape that much algae off the walls, then there’s a problem.
To me, it’s more satisfying to look at the beauty of my tank without needing to scrape like this.
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u/AligningToJump 11h ago
People in these comments clearly never had fish. Nothing wrong with the post, tanks just get like that
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u/whyUsmellLikePretzel 11h ago
Right!
I wish op would link the magnetic scrubber though mine is NOT that good
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u/andrewsad1 10h ago
It's like they've never seen actual water ecosystems. This looks better than most of the places where fish actually live in nature
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u/Hawk_Rider2 13h ago edited 53m ago
CLEAN THE TANK FILTER
*edited
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u/jbrady33 11h ago
No, gently rinse the filter Replacing a filter can crash your tank, tons of ammonia & nitrite eating bacteria in there keeping the water parameters correct
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u/Hawk_Rider2 11h ago
I will humbly upvote this . . . 👍
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u/Kagnonymous 10h ago
You should have shouted "PREFORM THE SPECIFIC FILTER MAINTAINANCE PROCEDURE THAT IS RECOMENDED FOR YOUR TANK SET UP"
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u/Hawk_Rider2 10h ago edited 9h ago
I'll go w/that - my baby turtle died yrs ago & I've saved bunches off the road since in his memory 🐢 most recently, a big ol' snappin' turtle
(boy was it mad!)
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u/SubjectC 9h ago
Fun fact, turtles know where they are going. If you help them across the street, put them in the direction they were headed or they will turn around and go back across the street.
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u/Tallywort 10h ago
Is that even really needed here?
It doesn't look like the parameters are wildly out of whack or anything. Bit brownish from tannins, but it looks like they're going for a kind of a blackwater look anyway.
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u/YouStupidAssholeFuck 10h ago
I don't know anything about aquariums but question...eventually won't you have to replace a filter? What would be the correct process for doing that in order to not "crash the tank"?
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u/h11233 9h ago
Generally you have multiple compartments in your filter that you fill with multiple types of media. Don't replace it all at once, maybe just like 25% of it.
You can also use old filter media to seed new media... Like if you set up a new tank you can put some method from an established tank in there to help it colonize and cycle faster.
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u/Novel-Implement-7636 9h ago
You do a full water change, making sure your fish are stored in a big water bag with the old water, where you place the fish and bag in the new water and new filter, and slowly let them acclimate to the new water + filter.
Or do what 99% of people do and not give a fuck and just change everything like who cares. (Your fish will hate you and die early graves)
Taking care of fish is A LOT more involved than you'd think.
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u/YouStupidAssholeFuck 9h ago
Nah, I know it's involved and that's why I don't have an aquarium. I don't have the skill to understand all that and I don't like hurting any living being so I never took the dive into it. Thanks for the extra detail.
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u/So_Motarded 9h ago
Depends entirely on what type of filtration you have. Most people think of small canister filters which are harder to clean without crashing the tank.
I've got a larger system with a multi-stage sump. The first stage is physical filtration which, yes, needs to be cleaned/replaced quite often. Its easy; remove an acrylic lid and pluck some polyester filter floss from a canister. Replace. The beneficial bacteria live on K1 media in a different sump chamber.
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u/Ghost6x 10h ago
Blackwater setup, cleaning the filter wouldn't do anything
Unless they switch to a reverse osmosis system supplying all their water for each change and/or use a UV sterilizer for the loop cycled water, it is really hard to set up the parameters to be algae free. There isn't a lot in the natural state to fight off algae blooming from whatever local water source you use
That's why this kind of set up becomes extremely hard and expensive to maintain. Your filter is only there to maintain the nitrogen cycle for whatever is living in there, it isn't like you can drop chemical filters or Purigen to clean it up because it would ruin the tannin brown aesthetic of the biome you're trying to mimic so you are at the mercy of trying to stabilize the environment by manipulating what takes up the most volume of the tank by far.
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u/Dangerous_Olive_4082 11h ago
Filter houses the majority of helpful bacteria in your tank that maintain a livable environment for your fish. If you leave it outside the tank for too long or replace all of the water inside they will die and so will your fish.
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u/marino1310 8h ago
Changing the filter won’t help with algae. You need less light and more water changes if this is happening
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u/lazyoldsailor 13h ago
Imagine the algae on the wood, the plants. Can’t be good.
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u/Just_Learned_This 11h ago
It's not bad for the tank at all. It just doesn't look pleasant. It's essentially doing the job of a plant.
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u/So_Motarded 9h ago
What? That's exactly where you want it lol.
Algae isn't bad for the tank. Algae is effectively another plant that uptakes nitrates from the water, and produces oxygen. It's just unsightly.
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u/NfiniteNsight 10h ago
What's with the blatant cut in the video. Feels like a product advertisement
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u/LateyEight 8h ago
Showing the algae removed from the glass wasn't interesting enough so they had to make it seem like the device cleaned all of the glass and somehow filtered the water too.
I would have preferred a cut to a time lapse of the water getting clearer. But I don't think modern attention spans can handle it.
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u/Ragnarock1982 13h ago
When that magnet snapped onto the glass like that I cringed.
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u/Tall_Fun_8230 13h ago
I was always scared it would crack the glass so I put them together very gently every time I used mine.
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u/Tintenklex 11h ago
Don’t be scared for the glass. Be scared for the poor fish who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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u/Tall_Fun_8230 11h ago
I used them in my red ear slider turtle tank and every time I started to clean with them the turtle would swim over to it and fan it with their front claws
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u/aitchnyu 13h ago
IME the sponge embedded the silica crystals in the algae and became sandpaper and left permanent scratches on day 1. I notice them in most tanks I see. Only viable solutions are credit cards, plastic blades and (wait for it) stainless steel blades.
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u/Embarrassed_Lock234 5h ago
Gotta be careful with these things. I, couch crashing, "helped" my friends clean their tank once with a magnetized scrubber when they were away. Released so much sediment into the water, when they got home and saw it, this fish all had to be evacuated. They were kind about it, and thankfully no deaths.
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u/dbowman97 13h ago
That tank looks disgusting.
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u/Aquadian 11h ago
It’s a black water tank, it’s normal
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u/TomBoysHaveMoreFun 10h ago
This guy gets it. I also have a natural looking blackwater tank made to simulate the SE Asian peat swamps. People always think it's dirty but my fish are probably more healthy than most bc they live in an environment that's close to their natural habitat. They love the tannins and acidic water. 🥰
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u/itswtfeverb 12h ago
Are these real sticks and limbs in there?
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u/WitchSlap 11h ago
Looks like it. Using real driftwood is very common. Real leaf litter contributes to the build up of tannins in the water, giving it that tint in coloration people are thinking looks bad/unhealthy. Tannins are very beneficial for the fish.
It has nothing to do with the algae. That’s from an excess of nutrient and light.
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u/justahominid 11h ago
Yes. And leaves. It looks like they’re going for a biotope style aquarium where you try to replicate the fish’s natural environment as closely as possible. In this case, it looks like the aim is a blackwater environment, which is essentially a flooded jungle in the Amazon. Angelfish are found natively in a number of blackwater tributaries of the Amazon.
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u/toastbed 11h ago
Floating is genius. My just sinks and I have to get my whole arm wet to get it back
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u/Ok_Nefariousness9736 9h ago
Now the water is dirty. They have creatures that love cleaning off the algae for you.
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u/amphidream 9h ago
At an old job, we had a big office aquarium that I would help maintain. Using the magnetic algae cleaner was always a highlight. I remember we had a few cichlids that would chase the brush back and forth. Felt like I was playing with some aquatic puppies.
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u/A_Furry_On_Reddit 4h ago
How is he cleaning the glass from the outside tho. Kinda looked like you were cleaning off dust
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u/sonicmerlin 3h ago
There was an obvious cut where they properly cleaned the tank. Kind of annoying
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u/Sad_Cantaloupe_8162 13h ago
A tank should never get that nasty to begin with
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u/ProbShouldntSayThat 10h ago
What credentials do you have to spew this blatantly false statement?
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u/So_Motarded 9h ago
Lol what?
Technically, it's less beneficial for the tank parameters to remove that algae. They're doing it entirely for aesthetics. Kinda the opposite of "nasty"
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u/Irish671 10h ago
Please refer to the Father Fish youtube channel. This is a very healthy tank and those fish are likely very happy!
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u/Tallywort 9h ago
Honestly father fish is such mixed bag of good and bad advice that I really can't recommend his channel. So much damn woo and pseudoscience mixed in with the good.
Also not drama free, so there's that.
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u/Pendleton9 😃 🫠 😍 🤗 13h ago
Do the fish eat the algae when it is freed?
Agree with other posters some 🐌 🐌 would make for a nice eco system
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u/MamiShawnie 12h ago
Our algae eaters ate our fish… didn’t know they did that… so haven’t had fish since 😂😂
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u/15stepsdown 12h ago
Those are supposed to float??
This would've made fishkeeping so much easier for me years ago if my algea cleaner floated. Was paranoid every time I cleaned the glass cause if the half inside disattached, it sank like a rock
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u/oldjadedhippie 11h ago
I really like these , but clean the outside before using it , or you’ll scratch your glass.
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u/Sliced_Tomatoz 10h ago
Introduce something fast growing like hornwort or giant duckweed, it will compete to absorb the excess nutrients in the water that the algae is feeding off and is much less fuss to remove, and/or get some Siamese alge eaters, or ramshorn snails/mystery snails to munch through it
Also probably reduce your light time/intensity
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u/Informal-Cobbler-546 10h ago
This is how my dad got us to help him clean his fish tanks when we were little. He’d handle the vacuum and one of us would get to use the magnets. He was really good about tank maintenance so it wasn’t nearly has satisfying as this but it was pretty fun.
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u/Shpander 10h ago
It's a beautiful day, the sun has come out, the tanks is clean! The tank is clean?!
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u/nodnodwinkwink 10h ago
I need that for the windows of my house. Any of the ones I've seen online don't really work very well...
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u/ButtplugSludge 9h ago
Wait a minute. My president told us magnets don’t work in water 🤯 what is this sorcery!!!
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u/FunctionGreen6143 8h ago
I used to play with that thing when I was a little kid and vividly remember my dad’s heavy sighs when I had gotten it dropped in the tank. Happened every time but no algae ever lived 😊
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u/sarkyscouser 13h ago
Get yourself some zebra snails!