Any bro can advice on how to get rid of hair algae? its badly infesting my mosses.
I am very tempted to nuke the whole tank by decommissioning everything .
please help
bro,
use H2O2(hydrogen peroxide) (those that can peroxide bought in a pharmacy). did wonders in my tank!
use a small oral syringe and dose directly to the algae. you will see bubbles bubbling out, not to worry hydrogen peroxide breaks down to become o2 and h2o, so no harm there, but still please use with caution!
remove manually as much as possible, if you do not have effective algae eater like SAE, Yamato shrimp, etc, get couple of them. If you already have, starve them.
lastly, get your water chemistry or tank spec right, otherwise algae will coming back
i got three XL-sized yamato shrimps from Seaview and they cleared my 45cm tank of hair algae within the day. Just get one XL and let it do the work. They seems to be forever hungry. One warning though...... they have a tendency to dig up foreground plants (unless well established(?)).
You may want to look into a good CO2 system with fully automated switching on during lights on period. This will at least keep algae at bay. Moss is more about leaving them alone. Don't overfeed, Don't over illuminate, Don't overdose.
colin | The Wilderness and Forest | FTS
Currently im trying the blackout + excel method, i only have one yamato in the tank, i should probably get a few more and not feed them for awhile. thanks for the advice bros, will update later on with results
Black out is most effective against BGA. Not much effectiveness against other genus of algae
colin | The Wilderness and Forest | FTS
as long as it is green (BGA, GSA, Green water, etc) you can use black out
I see.. Good to know. So far... black out has been used & experiment against BGA...at least for me.
colin | The Wilderness and Forest | FTS
2 SAEs didn't work for me. I bought 20 yamato shrimps and regulate the lights. This has work for me so far.
Same thing happened to me. I did a 120% water change. Throw in 20+ yamatos and adjust the lightings down from 8to4 hours.
Redose the tank with ferts and within a week, all the hair algae gone, also got the green water out.
Hi bros, I would like to update on the status.
After 3 days of total blackout and excel dosing, I could notice that there is a reduction in the hair algae, But that is mainly those that were easily visible.
For those hair algae that are hidden in between the mosses, I would check on them when I go home today. Currently I am just wondering would the Hair Algae
come back after I restore the tank to its usual 8 hr lighting. I heard there is no way to remove them completely. Unless you plan to nuke the whole tank and start from scratch which would mean that any plants that you put into the tank has to go through a tight screening.
That is why algae eater is playing important role. Unfortunately you cant eradicate it, the spore is everywhere waiting to bloom.Originally Posted by Blaze88
Sigh, guess its an ongoing battle then. time to recruit more yamato armies, although they bully my sakuras during feeding time =(
that one easy, just break what ever you feeding with into small pieces. The yamato will grab it (one each) and hide somewhere. Now your sakura can eat peacefully
Blaze88, 8 hours of lighting may not be necessary.
colin | The Wilderness and Forest | FTS
How many hours of lighting should i be providing?
It will depend on the size of your tank, plant mass, CO2 or non CO2? , and other parameters. There is no hard and fast rules. And it really depends.
colin | The Wilderness and Forest | FTS
Just don't go shorter than 4 hours straight ON light. Try that before and stem plant grow long and start shedding lower leaf. Since then I personally will not go lower than 6 hrs straight ON per day.
Tight screening cannot keep out BBA, staghorns, the usual green algaes and hair algaes. Been there done that. I soak my plants to the point of killing them before I grow the painful survivors in my tank...and still these algaes got in somehow. Cladophora is introduced, so that can be kept out if you're really careful. BBA probably too (because my first non-planted tank didn't have any until I introduced plants 6mths later), but so many plants in the market and even from forums members are already infested that it's very hard to be BBA-free for long. The rest of the algae probably came from the air and the tap water
IMHO, as long as you avoid putting obviously infested plants in, soak them with mild bleach/potassium permanganate to kill any pests and maybe give them a 10-15mins soak in 25% excel, that should kill whatever can be killed without killing the plants.
After that, its about providing good conditions for your plants and being hardworking to kill any algae growth that can be spotted early. Hair is not as difficult to battle compared to BBA...good CO2 and fertilization, controlled lightings, healthy plants and some yamatos should get rid of them after dosing excel to weaken the algae.
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