Thread/hair algae on plants

[momar]

Is thread algae on plants a serious problem? What can get rid of it? Any fish species is probably not a good solution as my tanks are fully stocked (if not a little over). Anything more would push the limit. Having said that, it would be interesting to know if there are any thread-algae eating fish.

BTW I think it's thread algae - grassy, thick and dark green, growing on broad plant leaves.

 

[phanmc]

Fishes won't touch thread algae once it becomes a noticeable problem. Your best option is manual removal and then making sure your nutrients are in check (if you're dosing nutrients).

 

[hughitt1]

I started to see some black hair algae showing up on one of my tanks after it had recently been setup.. it was gone in a couple days thought after a few steps-- clean off any algae you can manually (doesn't have to be 100% clean, but any big clumps at least..), and take out any plants that are beyond saving. scrub aquarium glass if any algae on there. Added some bacopa and hygro polysperma (fast-growing plants), reduced lighting from 12 to 10 hours/day, started dosing slightly above suggested flourish excel... within a day or two it was no long around.

from my experience having the very lighting planted invites algae since there is excess organic materials., if you have enough plants to out-compete the algae for nutrients, along with the other usual maintance stuff, should be good alright

 

[Bmeasure]

I just went through 2 weeks of battling hair/thread algae in a customers new set up. The plants hadn't yet had the chance to grow in (only in for a week when the algae started), and after the 3rd week of the tank being set up, it had become a complete nasty swamp in certain areas. I had one piece of driftwood wrapped with Java moss that had become completely covered in this stuff. It looked like greyish-green flowing cotton all over this driftwood. Needless to say, the customer was a bit concerned.

Anyways, I finally got some Flourish Excel in and started dosing at the suggested rate, daily. During that water change I took a pipe cleaner style scrub brush (comes with certain filters) and twisted that in the huge masses of hair algae, and it picked it up very easily. After removing as much as I could with that tool, I then used my hands to gently shake and disturb the remaining moss and other affected plants to remove the last bits of hair algae so I could vacuum it up. I also adjusted the pH controller to keep the CO2 at 30ppm or greater at all times. Previously it was maxing at about 29ppm then dropping to around 24ppm before the controller would turn the CO2 on again. Now it runs from 30-38ppm CO2. The results were immediate. I just went for the 4th week's maintenance, and I barely had to do anything to the tank except just drain and re-fill the water, and of course redose all nutrients. More CO2 in the water makes a HUGE difference. This is the first time I've run a CO2 controller, but it's really nice, and the consistently high CO2 levels really make the difference when battling algae. After a couple of months I'm going to try weening off the Excel, but for now it seems to only be helping to keep excess CO2 in the tank during "grow-in". I believe I will use it in all future new planted setups along with minimum 30ppm CO2 injected to help the plants establish dominance in the tank.

BTW, I also noticed a few stems that had started accumulating some BBA have noticeably started to win over the algae. There are 3 or 4 nodes of new leaves without any BBA on them, this is just 1 week of adjusted CO2 and Excel. Even the BBA that was there seems to be a little more thinned out and more grey colored than black. :dance: