Hair Algae???

[palmbreeze]

What causes hair algae?

 

[Riso-chan]

An imbalance in water chemistry, excess nutrients and not enough competing plants that utilize them. I could be wrong as far as the exact cause, but that's usually what brings about most algea outbreaks.

 

[ghetzel]

Do you mean the real long strings of hair algae?

Excessive iron dosing caused a problem for me some time back.

 

[palmbreeze]

Yup the real long algae. It looked like I had a big hair ball in my tank one day. Yuck!

 

[ragc]

As long as there are available nutrients in the LR you will have it. It helps to reduce phosphates and nitrates and to introduce competing macro-algae, to limit "daylight" hours, to encourage coralline algae to cover all surfaces, and to introduce algae-eating cleaners, but until it has exhausted the food available to it in the pores of the LR it will continue to sprout. Time and patience are the only cure for hair algae!

 

[reiverix]

As long as there are available nutrients in the LR you will have it. It helps to reduce phosphates and nitrates and to introduce competing macro-algae, to limit "daylight" hours, to encourage coralline algae to cover all surfaces, and to introduce algae-eating cleaners, but until it has exhausted the food available to it in the pores of the LR it will continue to sprout. Time and patience are the only cure for hair algae!

I get the feeling you are thinking the first post was in the marine forum.

 

[raymond_h2002]

Tom Barr has shown that excess nutrients doesn't cause algae, and that insufficient CO2 is the cause 90% of the time. I had hair algae, staghorn, and bba, and all went away after I pumped up the co2 levels, despite my PO4 levels being above 5ppm (nitrates were around 20ppm, K wasn't measured but assumed to be more than sufficient).

He's made a believer out of me and many others; increase your CO2 levels, decrease fluctuations in its level, and your algae will go away.

 

[Blinky]

As long as there are available nutrients in the LR you will have it. It helps to reduce phosphates and nitrates and to introduce competing macro-algae, to limit "daylight" hours, to encourage coralline algae to cover all surfaces, and to introduce algae-eating cleaners, but until it has exhausted the food available to it in the pores of the LR it will continue to sprout. Time and patience are the only cure for hair algae!

LOL had to do a double take and make sure I was in the right forum! FW HA is a PITA in a planted tank, I agree that raising CO2 levels helps. I use Excel, which I think also helps, and keep Amano shrimp and a few barbs around - IMHO it never hurts to have preventative measures in place before it shows its ugly, hairy little face

ragc - IME chaeto is absolutely fantastic at sucking up nutrients before anything else, HA included, can get a hold of them. Again, prevention seems to work better than trying to get rid of it once it has taken hold.

 

[ragc]

Uh? Where am I? Ooops!

Sorry Palmbreeze...you will have to start a SW tank for my advice to work for you!

 

[mr_fosi]

Increasing CO2 and decreasing perturbation worked great for me when one of my tanks was infested with a dark green beard (hair) algae from Lake Erie (didn't sterilize my rocks, just dumped them in the tank).

It was helped along by come siamese algae eaters and oto cats as well.