How to Kill Hair Algae?

xDetroitMetalx

xDetroitMetalx

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Apr 24, 2008
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Moro, OR
I got a bad Hair Algae break out. Right now I'm using Seachem Excel because a co-worker claimed it got rid of hers although she wasn't sure. I heard there was a species that eats the algae but I don't know what the exact species is and what am I going to do with them after they eatz my algae? It looks horrible, it gets longer everyday and I know it smothering my plants.
 
The Excel treatment worked for me for hair algae as well as beard algae, but only when my nitrates were low (< 5 ppm). It worked pretty quilckly too, and helped myplants grow better. I think the algae turned pink and then white as it died.
I once had a tank with high nitrates (> 20 ppm) and Excel didn't seem to bother the algae at all. Not sure if the Nitrate thing was really the reason or a coincidence, but that's what happened to me.
 
For hair algae I'd reduce feeding, increase co2/excel dosing(like, your regular dosing not just algae treatment), and then create a 3:1 dilution of excel/water and spray it to spot treat the heavy areas to kill off the algae. Spray during a water change and let it sit for about 5 minutes, then just fill your tank back up like normal. Should take care of it really well. If it's REALLY bad you can physically remove it using a toothbrush or something before spot treating with excel.
 
jmhart said:
For hair algae I'd reduce feeding, increase co2/excel dosing(like, your regular dosing not just algae treatment), and then create a 3:1 dilution of excel/water and spray it to spot treat the heavy areas to kill off the algae. Spray during a water change and let it sit for about 5 minutes, then just fill your tank back up like normal. Should take care of it really well. If it's REALLY bad you can physically remove it using a toothbrush or something before spot treating with excel.
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What he said! Only manually remove every little bit you can before hand.
Take a look at what may have caused it. Excess of one particular nutrient, is a nutrient missing, excess silicates?
 
Fordtrannyman said:
Excess of one particular nutrient, is a nutrient missing, excess silicates?
Click to expand...

How do you determine this? I have the API freshwater master kit, the hardness tests, and the phosphate test, but how do you test for silicates or other nutrients? :confused:
 
You can turn off the lights for a few days. I just tried it and it worked really well.
 
Don't go on a chase for some elusive "culprit" that will likely never turn up. You can do all of the testing in the world and the chances of determining any exact and fixable cause are slim to nothing in my opinion.


The only exception being to check your source water's phosphate and nitrate levels. If your tank is not heavily planted, those will be available to the algae when the levels are higher than what the plants are taking in. So the act of doing a water change, which is largely a good and necessary part of keeping a healthy aquarium, could be the very thing that allows the algae to take hold.

For example my Philadelphia tap water has a trace of nitrate and phosphate in it. These serve as free fertilizers in my heavily planted tanks but are sort of a problem in other tanks.

Excel, manual removal, amano shrimp and Siamese algae eaters are the most reliable means of keeping hair algae at bay. Especially the algae eaters. But make sure they are true Siamese algae eaters.
 
My angels actually like hair algae. So do mollys. They can eat up huge quantities in a couple of days.
 
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