Hair Algae-what's the permanent solution?

[blackBRUSHalgae]

Hello and back to my experiments.

I made a tub of diluted bleach.
-Approx 400ml clorox + 30 liters of water.
Standby
- rubber gloves
-hair algae harvested from infested tank.
-separate tub with water anti-clorine to rinse whatever was bleached.
-Got ready a clock with seconds display.

Used a tweezer and pinched some of the hair algae and waved it in the diluted bleach.

25 seconds-start losing it's colour
30 seconds-yellow green
35 seconds-light yellow [this point to be point of no return]
40 seconds-lighter
45-seconds-lighter
1 minute-pale and thouroughly bleached transparent.

So I had mosses and stuff to bleach to test their toughness against bleaching.
Ferns withstood even 1 minute.
Fissidens fontanus badly damaged after 1 minute. [i presume to be lost]
Moss ball- can withstand i minute of bleaching! Done last so may be because of weaker bleach.

In total I bleached 3 branches-[1 ft] of ferns[narrow leaf and bolbitis], about three palms of mosses/gametophytes.
They seem to be fine except for the Fissidens fontanus that started to pale a day after.
Moss ball looks fine despite a minute dip.

Notes: I presume my diluted bleach would be weaker as experiment progessed so i redo the checkpoint test again. [as predicted the time to bleach increased.]

In conclusion,
35seconds-for bath. This point IMHO would be the point that the hair algae can't regenerate-just enough kill power without killing delicate tissues of mosses perhaps.

For yourselves if you're using different brands of bleach, I recommend you do a test as to how long it takes before the algae is dead so that you can determine the point of no return for the algae. Do determine with a small portion of the plant if it can take that amount of time before you dip all your stocks in it!

Caution + Disclaimer: please take care when using/disposing household bleach. Toxic and burns skin!

Thanks for doing the experiment and the writeup!!!

[wintor56]

Hi Stan,

What an experiment !!. Must have taken you quite a while.
I have a query, though.
400ml bleach and 30 litres water gives you approx a 1.33% solution.
Are you sure the qtys you quoted were correct ? or was the bleach extra concentrated?
Did you in fact use 3 litres of water which then gives you approx a 13% solution which IMHO is a bit too strong.
Cannot understand how your 1.33% solution could have killed the algae in a minute, and damaged your Fontanus.
I used a 5% ( 1 part standard bleach to 19 parts water) solution on my Fissidens Fontanus on bogwood for 2 minutes and it came out of the treatment fine. All hair algae was killed.Will try and post a picture.
This 2 minutes however is too long I found , for Echinodoras Tennellus, Echinodoras Quadricostatus and Glossostigma.Will try 1.5 minutes for these species if required in the future.
I find that the 5% solution works better, than a stronger solution for less time.

Regards,
Des

[StanChung]

Lol, I was squatting all the while! Not long though, slighty less than an hour.

Des, the tub is one of those rectangular storage plastic containers with the snap on lid. It's dimensions are 25x25x50cm ~ 31.5liters. Big enough for me to fit a 1 ft branch full of plants hanging onto it.

The amount of bleach is measured in a measuring jug-400ml.
The bleach bottle says-5.25% sodium hypochlorite.

I noticed the action of moving the plant/algae in the liquid sped up the bleaching process.

Some of the bolbitis are showing some damage, leaves are turning brown. That's normal as bolbitis doesn't like alkaline conditions.

[StanChung]

Des, I had a thought, our water here is softer. Could be the one of the reasons for more kill power.

[mordrake]

Stan, how about spraying the infected plants with hydrogen peroxide? diluted solution can be bought off the shelf from pharmacies.
tried it on BBA and it works. not sure if it works on hair algae though.

[bclee]

IME, yamato shrimps are the best immediate solutions to green hair algae. However, they do munch on some of my plants too.

BC

[StanChung]

Hi Melvin,
I tried peroxide at full dose out of the bottle it took about one day to bleach the hair algae. A bit too long and I would need a lot!

BC, the green hair algae can't be accessed by the shrimp in infected mosses.

[madness]

Use combi of shrimps, otos and kuhli loach... Clears most unwanted stuffs in the most natural way..

[bclee]

Peroxide can kill your moss too.

BC

[blackBRUSHalgae]

I would say those long filamentous greed thread/hair algae is only savoured by Ameca splendens, rosy barbs and maybe molly?

[blackBRUSHalgae]

for those who wants to know more about ameca splendens( hmmm maybe Azmi can bring them in?)

http://www.thekrib.com/Fish/ameca-splendens.html

[Plantbrain]

Cladophora is pretty much like Riccia and moss when it comes to contact herbicides/algicides.

You will kill the plant trying to kill this algae and in many cases, the Moss/Liverworts are more sensitive to this and Excel than this particular genus of algae.

It grows pretty well under good plant conditions, because.........well....it's a lot like a higher plant.

I've found bad CO2 sure helps to grow it well.
Some folks have found growing it as a foreground looks pretty nice.
Given it's not much different than moss etc, not a bad idea really.

But not if it's infested your lawn of Gloss etc.
I've found just the old manual method, replanting etc seems to work well. Rosy barbs rip it up, but they will also rip anything else that looks furry.
Amano shrimp do seem to help but this can be hit or miss.

This algae is tough to kill but..........it does not attach to plants really, thus you can prune and toss the plants that have it tangled and remove it that way. Careful cleaning of the plants returned to the tank will resolve the rest.

Clean the filter and pipes etc, anywhere it can get a hold of and grow.
Aggressive pruning is very helpful.
Blackouts are not.

Excel roast several plant species at about the same times as the alga.
I used small cups and dosed the Excel and added both the algae and several plants that get it tangled in the dark for 5 days and observed the effects of dosing the recommended doses on the label and did a complete water change daily and observed each day.

Bad selectivity all the way around so far.
Good CO2, manual removal, Rosy barbs and pruning seem the best methods.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[yeoyl87]

I quite like the bleach method but the most badly hit is my hair grass.... grrr... pull them all out? Anyone tried Florida Flag fish?

A most efficient weapon against HAIR ALGAE in your
aquarium. They just LOVE to eat this algae.
They will even devour hair algae forms that
Siamese Algae Eaters (SAEs) won't touch. Its
been noted recently that several forms of Bush
Algae will also fall before a FFF onslaught.
The Florida Flag Fish (FFF) also makes short
work of Lemna minor and Wolffiia arrihza; two
forms of Duck weed. Duckweed is a really
annoying surface plant that spreads rapidly
and blocks light to your aquarium plants.

[StanChung]

Sounds good. Too risky in my shrimp tank though. I have at least 500 cherries.

[StanChung]

Hi Desmond,

I know the answer to why my bleaching seems to be more effective.

Temperature.
It's warmer here.

[wintor56]

Hi Stan,

What makes you say that?.
A few degrees temp difference should not make that much difference to the total time taken.

Regards,
Des.

[StanChung]

Hi Des,
It's around 29-31C, what's yours like?

[wasabi8888]

As anyone here tried to Florida Flag Fish? I saw these Fishes in Polyart and was wondering whether i should get them.. In Polyart, it's called the American Flag Fish

[Plantbrain]

They are not bad. They bite anything furry, moss, Riccia, algae etc.
Rosy barbs seemed better IME.

But good stable CO2, removal via pruning aggressively, especially plants that trap pieces of detritus and algae is wise.

Amano shrimp in mass help a great deal.
Excel is not that effective.

Excel + 3 day blackout + daily water changes can be effective if you also add aggressive pruning and trimming.

You need to really work harder with this algae to get rid of it because it's more like the regular plants.


Regards,
Tom Barr

[beetroot]

I have read quite a few threads lately about hobbyists battling with hair algae .
I myself have some in my tank, but nothing major.
Found this [old] thread by Master Stan on an experiment (or battle?) he did .
There are also various useful comments from others .
Thought that we could learn from this...

I find that rocket shrimps (or red nose) also eat hair algae, but do bear in mind that they may eat some of your plants too (eg. moss, myriophyllum, hornwort, cabomba).

Good luck in our war against hair algae!