[B]Hairy Stuf on Plants!!![/B]

[Aussie Fish Boy]

Hello could someone please help i have got this haity alge stuff on my plant and i don no what to do i only came up wen i bought a special light tube that enhances plant growt but it also made my plants gro but the alge to. Can you plase help!!

Thanks AFB!!

 

[OrionGirl]

Sounds like one of the beard algaes. The basic way to treat algae is to remove one or more of the growth factors--light and food are the obvious ones. Since you have other plants, you may need to look at either buying more plants, reducing the nnutrients (not sure if you're fertilizing or not, but if so, you may need to cut back), and reducing the photo period to around 8 hours a day. Remove as much of the lagae as you can manually, as well.

HTH

 

[jmottle]

I had a similar outbreak after I switched bulbs to a Power-Glo. I talked to my LFS and did some reading on the net and found that the best way to get rid of it was to dip the plants and anyhing else it is growing on in a 1:20 to a 1:50 bleech and water solutiion. I tried this in my planats, but at 1:20 it killed them all even after only a 2 minunte dip of the leaves. Not sure if this is just a bad idea or if I dipped them for too long in a too strong solution. I'm a bit worried to do my rocks as I don't want bleach leeching back into the water. My LFS sais they dipped rocks in a 1:1 solution and just rinsed them off really well. Anyway something to consider unless someone else here disagrees.

 

[thalassic park]

lights

hi,
My opinion on flouro globes that have fancy names is. Don't buy them. they last for 6 months and they cost a fortune. A far better option is to buy the plain cool whites. Cheap to replace every 6 months & their light spectrum is close enough to sunlight for excellent plant growth.
Plants hate change as your fancy light bulb loses efficiency, the alga, which is a plant can dominate your stem plants. 1st the algae grow on the leaves, ideal spot for algae, but the plant is shaded which slows the metabolism of the plant, which in turn allows the CO2, the Light and the nutrient to be capitalised upon by the algae. Increasing the alga's available resources.

I also believe (not proven) that plants actually like the water to be cooler than what the fish do. As a result plants kept in heated tanks (26-27oC), seem to be dominated by the alga. I grow my plants in an indoor pond, the water is cooler than the fish tank.

 

[wetmanNY]

Good point about temperature, Jeffrey. I seldom hear that. There's more CO2 in cooler warter...

Good points in general!