Algae a problem?

[Trumper]

Howdy.

Just back from a 10 day vacation. The automatic feeder worked great; water chemistry and fish are fine.

But this big blob of...hair algae? green moss? is new since I left. The Ph was stable, ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate between 10 and 20ppm. You can see the green, hairlike clump here:

I've noticed too that there are now little "hair algae" looking things on lots of the leaves of other plants. Not covering them, but quite a few here and there.

So is this gonna be a problem? What will take care of that? I don't particularly like the look of that hair algae stuff on other plants, but I can live with it if it's not a big deal... Should I remove the big clump?

Thanks

 

[FisheyLisa]

It is probably the excess of the feeder and lack of a water change or 10 days. Mine gets slime algae by 10 days if I don' t clean it weekly.

So a water change and removal of what you can is best, IMO. You can dip plants in a bleach solution 19 water to 1 part bleach and also any decore. that will kill that stuff. Though there are probably still spore in the water and you might not get it all, if you keep up on water changes weekly and manually remove it, you probably will kill the algae. Unless you had this problem before your trip and then there are other considerations.

 

[rrkss]

Most algae comes into a tank via airborne spores. That is why you can have a perfectly sterile tank cycle and get loaded with algae. I would just remove that clump of algae and try and starve the rest with waterchanges/normal maintanance.