Something I've noticed on cycling during the uglies

[ps2cho]

so I have just gone through my 4th main tank uglies stage.

One thing I've noticed which has been consistent between the last 3 independent tanks using different rock and substrate:

During the algae I begin by stepping up water changes and trying things to eliminate po4 and nutrients, give up as the tank looks like garbage...stop water changes for 1-2 months completely and all of a sudden by the end of week 5-7 the uglies vanish!

I can't believe this is a coincidence...

With My current tank I kept doing water changes until the NO3 stabilized and stopped climbing up quickly, then eliminated all water changes and/or maintenance other than the skimmer emptying, water top up and feeding. A month later everything vanishes.

This is also not time dependent. On my last tank I still had the uglies at month 9, gave up and the same thing happened...within 6 weeks it ended.

This tank is on its 4th month and now the carpet of algae has vanished after leaving the tank alone for a month! Basically i replicated what I did in the last tank to see if the same result would happen -- and like clockwork 5 weeks later it's GONE!

Maybe sometimes when nothing works, do nothing!!

 

[dbl]

Interesting discovery, and yet more proof that we all can find things that work in our given system(s). More than one way to skin a cat.

 

[jetmaker]

That's the same way I keep my tank