hair algee

[shadrac]

for the past week or so i have had a huge algee growth spert in my 5gal planted betta duplex, its gone crazy. there used to be only a little bit of algee on the divider but now its every where even the plants. so i went out and got some algee eating shrimp and put in there that didnt help much, so i was gunna use some algee fix but the the bottle says dont use with crustations. so no go there so all i could come up with was to only have the light on for and hour or two a day which helped but its staring to take a toll on my plants, so is there any thing else i can do besides just going in there and wipping things down (i would perfer that to be last resort since i would probly end up up-rooting most of my plants).

 

[WinterWind]

I'm also having a large growth of algae (hair, I think. It's fuzzy and long and grows on my plants). I'm looking forward to replies. I read somewhere on the internet that most algae, including hair algae, is caused by excess phosphates. Do a lot of water changes, and dose nitrates, but not any fertilizer with any phosphates, potash, potassium.

 

[Kissofthegorami]

No don't use an algaecide. It'll kill you plants and maybe your fish too. Do water changes, fertilize less. Hair algae is do too excess of some nutrient. You can try living with it for a while. When I first went to higher light i have an outbreak but it faded away one day after about 2-3 weeks. TRUE siamese algae eaters devour hair algae. How many watts per gallon in your lighting?

 

[CharlieV]

you more than likely have a deficiency in either lighting or Nutrients (just like me!!!)
In order to fix my hair algae i removed effected bits of plants, put a siesta period in my lighting schedule of 3hrs (12pm-3pm), reduced feeding to every other day and twice weekly for my plec.

There has been no new growth of the algae since doing this and the exisitng algae is in decline

I have also just increased my CO2 levels however not seen any impact of this yet as only done last night.

 

[Vyper]

Wacky as this may sound, and this is a freind of a firnde told me kind of info so dont take this as gospel, but the best cure for algae is (yep you guessed it) algae !!!!!!.

Aparently if you can introduce some other kind of algae to your tank it theory it should out-compete your hair algae for the same nutrients, aparently you should be able to go to your LFS and buy some algae, my freiend was having trouble with brown aklgae and somehow bought some green algae ??? and added that to his tank and hey presto the brown algae went, but even thats confussing cos then I dont understand how the green algae is removed, but anyway thats the theory, maybe someone else can explain that better than me.

 

[WinterWind]

Wacky as this may sound, and this is a freind of a firnde told me kind of info so dont take this as gospel, but the best cure for algae is (yep you guessed it) algae !!!!!!.

Aparently if you can introduce some other kind of algae to your tank it theory it should out-compete your hair algae for the same nutrients, aparently you should be able to go to your LFS and buy some algae, my freiend was having trouble with brown aklgae and somehow bought some green algae ??? and added that to his tank and hey presto the brown algae went, but even thats confussing cos then I dont understand how the green algae is removed, but anyway thats the theory, maybe someone else can explain that better than me.

That happened to me too. I'm not sure where you could buy green algae, though. Are you sure it wasn't java moss?

I used to have a lot of green algae on the leaves (which was better than the hair algae because it came off easily and didn't take over the tank), but when I started getting hair algae (from excess phosphates), the other green algae completely dissappeared, and I only have hair algae. The hair algae is more annoying, but at least I don't get the other one...

 

[shadrac]

right now for lighting i have a ten gall incandesent lght on my tank with a 15 and 25 watt bulbs. i use fert tabs about once every one-two weeks (usally when i rember to). i do need to do a water change so im gunna do that soon.

i also was wondering is algea actully bad for things in the tank, like will it harm things. or is it mainly a nusence.