Habitat - Indoor :: New turtle parent - Algae problem

[Johnchops]

Hi guys!

About a month ago, my fiancée found a small red eared slider on the sidewalk outside of her work. No idea how he got there, there's some woods behind her work, but as far as we know, no water. Being an animal lover, she decided to adopt him and bring him home.

I found this site, and used it as my primary source of information to educate ourselves as new turtle parents. We didn't have a lot of money to spend on his habitat, (we're saving up for our wedding this fall), so we set him up in a 10 gallon tank with a Eheim 2213 filter.

Here's our tank:


And here's Scooter:


So far, everything has been going pretty well. Recently, however, we've started having some algae problems, and it is slowly getting worse. I am now looking for a solution to control the algae. I've done some research, and so far the options I've found are:

• Algae eating snails
• Algae eating fish
• Algae chemicals
• UV sterilizer

A UV sterilizer is too expensive of an option. I prefer to avoid the chemical route if possible, as I'm trying to keep this setup as 'natural' as possible. Which lead's me to the algae eaters options...

Can anyone who is knowledgeable about these options weigh in and give me the pro's and con's of the various options? I have two concerns as far as this option goes. First, I'm worried about Scooter deciding to try to snack on whatever we would add to the tank. Second, I want something that is very low maintenance. My fiancée and I are both working two jobs at the moment, so we don't have a whole lot of time right now to dedicate to another animal in the house...

Also, does anyone have any suggestions of things that we can do to decrease the algae growth outside of the above options? I don't know if tank placement, more frequent water changes, etc, could have an impact on the algae growth, but if anyone has any feedback in that direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the help guys!

Oh, and Scooter says thanks too!

[VeipaCray]

See this thread....

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28813

[Johnchops]

Doh! How did I miss that thread!

[VeipaCray]

No worries. It's in a weird spot. I spent a lot of time writing that and no one reads it. Anyway, I hope it helps you. If you have any questions feel free to post them or PM me.

[SINI5T3R]

i once read that snails will not clean the glass on a tank and instead they leave tracks that you can not see untill they have been in there for a while. I read they only eat whats on the floor but sometimes i see my snails mouth moving when he is on the glass. duno if he is eating anything or not but thats just what i read. maybe you can get like a nice algae eater? your turtle is a hatchling and almost anything bigger then that turtle will have enough armor to keep it safe. all algae eaters are armored fish and have tough skin. even a full grown res will have problems eating a armored fish. If your not going to be keeping any other fish in there you could go with simease algae eaters or maybe some sort of common algae eater. I would stay away from the Chinese algae eater because they get big fast and get aggressive as hell once they are about 3 inches long and stop eating algae and turn to meat and fish foods. I once had a Chinese algae eater suck half a face right off a goldfish i threw in my turtle tank and the gold fish just swam around like "what happened to my other eye" lol..on the other half tho, chinese algae eaters are a BLAST to watch because they love to play tag with eachother and love to school with eachother. I had two of them and the would chase eachother around the tank SUPERRRRRRRR fast alll day it was great.