Hair algae problem

[mack606]

Hello,
About a month ago a huge hair algae burst that took over my aquarium in about a week. I didnt change anything for this to happen and i only have 2 fish. So i cleaned it all off and did a water change. It has continued to grow at the same rate so ive been cleaning it off and doing a water change every few days for the last 4 weeks. I also bought Ph up and algae destroyer but they didnt slow down the growth. i got fed up and drained my aquarium completely and cleaned it for about an hour in my bathtub. It came out spottless except some of the gravel was still a bit green. I put it back together and the algae has continued to grow at almost the same rate. The only thing that I think it might be is my bright flourecent lighting. I have 2 13w spiral bulbs (they're kind of rare). Hers a picture:

Do you think its my lighting? Or what else do you think it could be?

 

[Leopardess]

Hi,

How big is the tank? that affects how many watts per gallon of lighting you have.

I wouldn't have personally torn down the whole tank as I'm sure you've lost some beneficial bacteria, but mostly, its a huge pain. Algae (for the most part) is not something that will be easily gotten rid of by tearing the tank apart. There is obviously something about your tank that it likes and so is bound to show up again.

Hair algae generally likes high light, high nitrates, high phosphates, or a combination of those. I would suggest keeping your nitrates around 5-10 ppm (done with frequent water changes) and cutting down on over feeding (which will help keep the nitrates down as well as cutting back on excess phosphates from excess fishfood).

Another thing to try is to get live plants (do you have any? If not, maybe also cut back on some lighting). Live plants that are fast growers, like indica or hornwort or anachris will compete for nutrients - hopefully "stealing" them away from the algae, which will then have difficulty growing.

You can also invest in some amano shrimp as they like to eat filamentous algaes.

What kind of fish do you have in the tank, btw?

Also, ditch that bottle of pH up. Do a search for pH and you'll find a lot of info. Basically, you don't want to mess with it. *Especially* with chemicals. They do more harm than good, most of the time. THey create ups and downs in the pH. A stable pH, even if a little high or low, is MUCH better than a "target" pH.

And, I wouldn't suggest using any chemical "algae removers." They are just another chemical that doesn't belong in the tank (and sucks up money for no real reason). Try to fix problems by finding the cause rather than covering up the problem.

Hope that helped some

 

[mack606]

Algae Reply

I just have a 10g tank. I have one convict cichlid (i know it should be in a bigger tank), one tetra that i dont know what kind it is and 2 snails. I actually had a money wart plant when the algae first started but i had to get rid of it when i used the algae destroyer-BAD MOVE I guess. I cant get any algae eating fish because my cichlid will eat them. Also if I have to dim the lighting, can i just put something translucent over the lights to make it not as bright? I dont wanna buy new lights becasue these ones were about $6 each and they last for a long long time.