mandimoron
10-26-2005, 7:05 PM
Crimey, I've more questions about my betta and his tank (are you sick of me yet? :D)
So I get home today from school, and am pleased to see that the GFM has become a little more accustomed to his new filter. Great! I also noticed lots of fine, stringie white thingies hanging off everything in the tank but the actual betta. Not so great!
What's the best way to get rid of this stuff? I have no objections to manually scraping all the surfaces in the tank, but what I've read so far says that hair algae is astonishingly quick to regroup. I can confirm this observation, too, as a part of the tank I swiped with my finger out of curiousity not two hours ago is now full of stringy gunk again.
Would a snail or shrimp eat it, I wonder? I'd rather use a natural means of getting rid of the stuff; the idea of using chemicals to kill off biological pests makes me a little nervous. I can't really get an algae eating fish for the tank, since it's only a one gallon.
Any suggestions?
ETA: I'm also wondering where the heck it came from. I read that hair algae likes lots of phosphates, making it prolific in planted fertilized tanks, but the only plant I have in there is made of silk. I wouldn't call the tank particularly well-lit, either, since it has no light of it's own, and is kept in my bedroom in a basement apartment. It also doesn't seem likely that my water is causing the problem, as my platy tank is clear of hair algae. So I'm a little perplexed about where the stuff came from and how it's surviving, to say the least. O_o
So I get home today from school, and am pleased to see that the GFM has become a little more accustomed to his new filter. Great! I also noticed lots of fine, stringie white thingies hanging off everything in the tank but the actual betta. Not so great!
What's the best way to get rid of this stuff? I have no objections to manually scraping all the surfaces in the tank, but what I've read so far says that hair algae is astonishingly quick to regroup. I can confirm this observation, too, as a part of the tank I swiped with my finger out of curiousity not two hours ago is now full of stringy gunk again.
Would a snail or shrimp eat it, I wonder? I'd rather use a natural means of getting rid of the stuff; the idea of using chemicals to kill off biological pests makes me a little nervous. I can't really get an algae eating fish for the tank, since it's only a one gallon.
Any suggestions?
ETA: I'm also wondering where the heck it came from. I read that hair algae likes lots of phosphates, making it prolific in planted fertilized tanks, but the only plant I have in there is made of silk. I wouldn't call the tank particularly well-lit, either, since it has no light of it's own, and is kept in my bedroom in a basement apartment. It also doesn't seem likely that my water is causing the problem, as my platy tank is clear of hair algae. So I'm a little perplexed about where the stuff came from and how it's surviving, to say the least. O_o