Help with Hair Algae

T

tankenvy

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Apr 4, 2007
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Well, I think that's what it is--tiny, hairlike, a few millimeters long, covering the glass walls of tank and bogwood. Newly set up tank, 38 g, 95 watts of light, 12 hours a day. Daily Flourish Excel, twice weekly micros (potassium, nitrogen, phos), once weekly Fluorish macros. One big crypt, one big sword, two small swords, two big anubias, a few small ludwigia.

I just cut back the lighting to 8 hours, but I've read that light isn't the only cause of algae--maybe my ferts are too much? Not enough plants to use up energy in the system? (I could add some duckweed from my friend's tank, if that would help.)

I have four otos, but they don't seem to be eating much of the algae. No other algae eating fish in the tank.

Thought of adding a clown pleco, but they get mixed reviews on how much algae they actually eat. And would they bug my corys? (Corys are Kings--I don't want anyone screwing with their mojo.)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
 
Agree with JM1212, adding livestock to solve a problem isn't always the best. guily of it in the past, but won't do it again.

Duckweed will become a nuisance, and block light from your lower level plants..

If you want to add a fish, add an LDA08 bristlenose, they will stay small and are hardy. 1 per 10g, got mine from Blu @ Exotic Finds via aquabid.com

If its true hair algae, like I had, nothing would control it(tried fish (BN amd Oto's), shrimp (cherry and amano), hydrogen peroxide), Algaefix fixed it, and it should be ok with your plants, might want to be careful with livestock if you have any scaleless fish. Did half doses for a few weeks, and once it was gone. it never came back.

If its brush algae, short in legnth and brown/black, clean it by hand.
 
Hair algae sucks. I had them in one tank before and I never managed to completely make it go away. I had to use the good old method - just remove them using hand.

Once my java ferns spread much more throughout the tank, I _think_ hair algae has slowed down in growth but it never went away.

I would be interested in knowing how to get rid of hair algae too if someone knows how... :)
 
Thanks for the advice. I scrubbed it off by hand, cut lighting to 8 hours a day, reduced feedings and boosted excel a bit, since the latter seems to work against hair algae according to some of the threads. Hard to say if this will work in longterm. Most of my plants are fairly low-light, so 8 hours probably won't be a problem.

Still, it doesn't take much of an excuse for me to buy new fish, so off I go to the LFS to buy a clown loach and a siamese flying fox!
 
Green algaes (hair included) are usually a result of excess phosphates in an aquarium. Personally, I've had luck with just manually removing all that I could and adding a "phosphate sponge". First, a couple questions.

1) Are you using carbon in your filter or in your filter's filter cartridge?
1a) What brand of filter/filter cartridge/carbon?
2) What color temperature are the bulbs in your lighting? (Should say like 6700K, 10,000K, etc)
 
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