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Comment by Pacifica HS on February 27, 2013 at 6:25pm

Interesting! We put a plecostamaus in the tank today..so we will see what happens

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on February 27, 2013 at 6:00pm

Wow, you'll probably need a much stronger microscope :)  If you don't have access to one, here would be a fun little side project...

Take some system water along with a bunch of "algae/cyano" scrapping and put them in a small aquarium or big jar...and leave it next to a sunny window. If you can, add a little bit of phosphate and/or nitrogen and a small air stone/diffuser.  You want a nice boisterous mucky/stringy culture in the jar/aquarium. Once you have that, stick your hand into the jar and pull out some of the bloom with your fingers slightly spread. Observe as you let the water run off your fingers and hand. If you are left with a long, stringy, filamentous mass in your hand, you probably got some green algae there. If what you have left in your hand once the water runs off is some small isolated clumps here and there, sticking to it...then it's planktonic in nature and most likely some type of cyanobacterial bloom.

Algae blooms can be either filamentous or planktonic, but cyano blooms can almost never be filamentous...