Help Reqd. - How to get rid of Hair Algae?

[saugata]

Hi! All,

My fight with Hair Alage still continues. Still the hair algae is flourishing at full glory. In fact this is creating problems for the growth of my plants. Am completely at loss as to what more should I do to stop this growth. From your experience, can anyone tell me as to how much time does it generally take to root out the Hair Algae issue. Currently I am doing 50% weekly w/c, dosing nitrate so as to maintain a level between 5 ppm to 10 ppm, pressurised CO2 is also being injected so as to maintain 50 PPM level, addition of micro nutrients without Iron on a weekly basis, lights @ 108 watts of PLL (2 nos. 6500K & 1 no. 4000K) @ 12 hrs per day, Phosphate level is about 0.5 ppm. Tempretaure of the tank is about 25 degree C. I have two medium size Orandas in my tank who are feed on commercial pellets once a day (not too much feeding).

What else can I do to win my battle against the Hair Algae?

Regards,

[Goondoo]

Hi! All,

My fight with Hair Alage still continues. Still the hair algae is flourishing at full glory. In fact this is creating problems for the growth of my plants. Am completely at loss as to what more should I do to stop this growth. From your experience, can anyone tell me as to how much time does it generally take to root out the Hair Algae issue. Currently I am doing 50% weekly w/c, dosing nitrate so as to maintain a level between 5 ppm to 10 ppm, pressurised CO2 is also being injected so as to maintain 50 PPM level, addition of micro nutrients without Iron on a weekly basis, lights @ 108 watts of PLL (2 nos. 6500K & 1 no. 4000K) @ 12 hrs per day, Phosphate level is about 0.5 ppm. Tempretaure of the tank is about 25 degree C. I have two medium size Orandas in my tank who are feed on commercial pellets once a day (not too much feeding).

What else can I do to win my battle against the Hair Algae?

Regards,

I believed it should help if you decrease your lighting hours to 10, increase your NO3 by another 5-10ppm, increase PO4 by 0.5-1. Not forgetting removing all your hair algaes manually, and not only scraping them off the plants/wood/rocks...

BTW, what your tanks size? A picture of your tank would really help.

[saugata]

Thanks for your advice. I will try reducing the Photoperiod and see what happens. Increasing "Nitrate" levels I can understand but do you think increasing Phosphate level will help? When I was dosing KH2PO4, I had a major problem of "Diatoms" but since I stopped dosing Phosphate at least teh diatom problem has been resolved. Hence, the doubt.

Well, my tank is 24"x18"x15". I will try to upload a few recent images of my tank and will let you know.

Regards,

[bclee]

1. Clear as much algae as you can manually. The aglae will not disappear by itself.

2. Do a big water change.

3. Lower your lights level. Your lights are too high. ~60W of lights should be sufficient. (I remembered that your tank size is 20gal.)

4. Check your CO2 distribution round the tank. Make sure you have a good circulation. If possible, try pushing the CO2 a tad higher.

5. Dose 5-10ppm of KNO3 solution you have 2x a week irregardless of what the test kits says (test kits variation is too large). Dose ~1 ppm of KH2PO4 at the same time. Dose your traces too.

6. Keep up with the water changes.

Additional: add some shrimps, they are good at keeping the hair algae in check.

The idea is to create a poor environment for the algae (continual removing of algae manually and introduction of algae eaters) and at the same time boost the growth of plants (by good CO2 and nutrients).

Things should become better in a few weeks.

BC

[valice]

His CO2 is already at 50ppm... So don't think need to up anymore right? Anyway, think there could be a bad circulation of the CO2... You might wanna use a powerhead or position your rainbar to circulate it better...

[bclee]

His CO2 is already at 50ppm... So don't think need to up anymore right? Anyway, think there could be a bad circulation of the CO2... You might wanna use a powerhead or position your rainbar to circulate it better...

There is a tendency for test kits to overestimate the co2 level.

The kH kit will measure more than just carbonates. Therefore the actual carbonate is sometimes lower than the KH value.

I usually do not rely just on KH/pH calculations. I will usually push the co2 higher.

BC

[valice]

Oh... Hmmm... In that case, maybe relying on the reaction of our fauna is the best bet...

[saugata]

Well I guess I will try pushing the CO2 level a tad higher. BTW, will a complete blackout for say 4 days have any effect on the Hair Algae? The CO2 is diffused in the water through thel help of a reactor form which the water flows out so I guess there won't be much of an issue of "poor current" in the tank. Moreover, the spray bar is also position in such a way that there is enough movement of water. But even then I will try to find out if things can be still improved. BTW, how do you find out whether there is proper water movement in the tank?

Regards,

[bclee]

Keep an eye out for the critters in your tank when you tweak the CO2. Do it slowly.

Blackout, IME, may not work on hair algae.

Your high lighting level is also making it difficult to get your tank to stabilise. Maybe you can consider removing one of the PLL for now until things settles.

BC

[eddyq]

According to EI method, algae have a greater demand for light and NH4.
Plants take nutirents + CO2.

Plant more and add yamoto shrimps (dont know if yr fish eats them).
BTW, have to remove hair algae manually.

[saugata]

Yeah I do understand the concept of alage feasting on light & NH4 whereas plants prefer CO2 & nutrients. As far as my tank is concerned there is no dearth of CO2 & nutrients. As far as light is concerned maybe my light is a bit on the higher side, however I am planning to reduce it and see the difference.

However, I guess EI is a method which probably I will not touch with a "barge pole". It's something which can really make things go wrong. I have personally experienced it and wil never recommend it to anybody, moreso if the person has a small tank (20G or so).

Regards,

[eggy]

if you want to try... maybe you can back out the whole tank for a while but the plants will of course suffer...
my overgrown plants covered the light form the algae and after while they just disappeared to dun know where....
i dun have much fishes and shrimps so i dun believe they are the ones that ate the algae up..
but the idea is entirely up to u..
just suggesting from my exprience only

[nostalgia]

blacking out tank is short term solution. U can try that out while trying figure out the root of the problem!

[AquaObsession]

try reducing lights....

I myself was using 2*55 watts PL for a 2 feet tank (about 65L effective), which with hindsight proved to be too much. However, it's always nice to see plants pearling fast with 2*55watts.

Now I have reduced to 1*55watts, and some plants still pearling. I have only recently switch to EI method, dozing No3 and PO4. Still have to wait and see growth

Black out dun really work for hair algae as far as I know. I had some on a driftwood. I took it out, and left it outside in a bucket in the dark, with some mosses on it (which btw was infected with beard algae). Even with one week in complete darkness, when I took it out, all the algae was still there.