Just sharing my battle with hair algae!

[Turbosaurus]

I think you are going to be really surprised with what a good job those 15 shrimp will do on this type of algae. Reducing light to 8 hours is a good idea. Shrimp work best, the love this stuff.

Don't ever pull a crypt to dip/bleach treat outside the tank- they don't like to have their roots disturbed and will invariably melt leaves if you do.

If you treat with H2O2, don't exceed 2ml/gallon/day although I would let my shrimp handle it. I've never had this type of algae for long- it usually burns itself out.

 

[herns]

If you introduce CO2 and play around with light period, ferts, it will help.

 

[FishFanMan]

Ok, I've got 3 otos, 15 shrimps, and 7 nails in this 5 gallon tank. Have not seen much reduction of algae yet. So today I used small scissors to trim some and rubbed them off using my fingers. Have started daily dosing liquid CO2 also and stopped ferts at the moment because I put 2 root tabs in the sand when I started this tank. Hoping to starve this algae to death.

 

[FishFanMan]

I found my soldier against hair algae! It's not my otos, RCS, or a platy. It's a snail! Not just any snail, this snail. Looks like some kind of horn snail. But it's really munching away the hair algae. Now I have to find some more. Petco didn't have any today. I'm kind of disappointed with my shrimp. They are all doing great but aren't eating much algae, more perhaps they can't keep up with it.

 

[Turbosaurus]

You will not need more for long... LOL. This is a very invasive species, they breed insanely quickly- commonly called ramshorn snails

 

[FishFanMan]

You're right, I do see lots of small dots moving around in this tank. Once the algae is under control I'll have to find a way to remove them from the tank!

 

[atreis]

Naa... If you don't overfeed they'll reach a stable population level, and continue to be beneficial. I've actually requested them along with purchases at aquarium stores when setting up new tanks.

 

[ZorroNet]

I switched my photo period to 5/4/5 (7 am - 12 pm on / 12 pm - 4 pm off / 4 pm - 9 pm on) and it has kept it at bay giving my SAE a chance to munch it. It also give the plants a CO2 advantage because the water get 4 hours to "re-charge". The concept of the "siesta" comes from Diana Walstadt's book. It's a great read if you want to get sciencey

 

[FishFanMan]

My LED light is pretty weak I think so I have it on from 6 to 4. So far I don't see much growth from my plants, but they're not melting, so I'm ok with it. I don't like SAEs too much. They get aggressive and like fish food over algae in my experience. I'm thinking of getting some pea sized apple snails and see if they like this stuff.

 

[FishFanMan]

Update. My little nano with hair algae problem got even worse than the previous pictures show. And my 1 pea sized ramshorn wasn't reproducing so the algae kept growing and growing! Doubling the dose of liquid CO2 didn't do much. It took awhile but I finally found someone with lots of nice sized ramshorn snails. I with a dozen of them in my 5 gallon tank, it took just a week to pretty much clear the hair algae!

My nano finally looks nice now! Thank god for ramshorn snails, they are now my buddies.