Help With Hair Algea

Riso-chan

Riso-chan

The Blue Girl
Jan 17, 2005
322
0
0
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Florida, USA
My 55gal is medium density planted with varying crypts, an amazon sword, hornwart,, java ferns, java moss and anacharis, but I still have problems with hair algea. I'm dosing flourish, excel, and potassium once a week with water change. What's the best way to rid myself of this stuff besides manually removing it? ~Angela
 
what is your Nitrate level?
 
I had ALOT of hair algae at 0 Nitrates, I still have some about about 5-10ppm but now only on my microsword.

Flourish Excel helps fight it I hear I have been dosing that as well, but I still have some.

I heard there might be a relationship between hair algae and iron...I stopped using my Kent Freshwater, and switched to Flourish.

maybe I need to does Phosphate too, but I'm dosing KNO3 so, I'm not sure about that i will give it some more time. Im convinced it was due to lact of macros.
 
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I have come to the conclusion that hair algae and iron are connected. Since I quit dosing iron the hair/staghorn has reduced tremendously. Now I use ghost, and cherry shrimps, along with black mollies. Also double dosing excel has no effect on it from what I can tell. I even started dilluting it just a little w/ aquarium water and pouring it directly on some of my stem plants near the surface with no results. I also rec. doubling your potassium/flourish, but only if you use co2 which should also be brought up.
 
Need more info, how much light are you using?
(oops, hit the submit button by accident)
EDIT:
From my experience and advice from Steve Hampton, Iron can be a problem. Also, an abudancy of nutrition in the water can cause hair algae. Try doing 50% water changes, lower your light to 8-10 hours a day and remove the algae by hand. Keep a co2 level of 15-25ppm.
Hope that helps. Here's Steve's web site, very informative.

http://www.aquariaplants.com/
 
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Carbon is the issue most times for me. IF my Co2 levels drop I get hair algae. IF you aren't using co2 dose with Excell, and when you dose point the dosing device directly at the algea and squirt it with excell (This really does work)

Hair algea will also show up when plant mass is reduced too much too quickly, so it could be attributed to excess nutrients as well.

Cherry shrimp will make it go away pretty quickly also, but it would be better to identify the issue and then add the shrimp :)
Dave
 
grch36 said:
Need more info, how much light are you using?
(oops, hit the submit button by accident)
EDIT:
From my experience and advice from Steve Hampton, Iron can be a problem. Also, an abudancy of nutrition in the water can cause hair algae. Try doing 50% water changes, lower your light to 8-10 hours a day and remove the algae by hand. Keep a co2 level of 15-25ppm.
Hope that helps. Here's Steve's web site, very informative.

http://www.aquariaplants.com/
Click to expand...
Only 80 watts. They're on from 8am to 6pm usually. I also do water changes once every other week of about 6 or so gallons. I also dn't have a co2 system, but do use excel sparingly. I'll try that sqwirting method.

Also checked out that site, and it seems maybe I could've upset things by doing the water changes from what he's saying. Might try the cherry shrimp, since my plants all seem okay. How long do they live for? Do I need to add iodine to their water? Expensive?

My amazon sword has to be pruned every week or so of one or two leaves that turn yellow and then brown. I also noticed the my 'red' wendittii crypts are coming in reddish instead of the green they were when I bought them, is that normal for the 'red' species?
 
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Might try the cherry shrimp, since my plants all seem okay. How long do they live for? Do I need to add iodine to their water? Expensive?
Click to expand...

Cherry shrimp are somewhat expensive up front, But they are hardy, long lived, and breed constantly. IF you start with a couple of females and a male you will have scores of shrimp in a few months. Wherever you buy them, make sure it's someone who garantees to deliver males and females. A lot of folks sell of their males and keep their females to unknowing consumers.

Beviking Sells Cherry shrimp (And I'd Trust him without a doubt) also check your PM's.
As far as iodine, some folks seem to need it others don't. I use it but needed it for ghost shrimp before I ever bought cherries, and won't risk my cherries on an iodine free test. Either way iodie is cheap especially at dosage levels for shrimp. I dose one drop per 5 gallons at water change, at that rate with three tanks I'm gussing my bottle of iodine will last 2+ years.

Dave
 
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