Anti Hair Algae

[invictor]

Hi all,

Had some hair algae growing in my tropical tank over the last week or so, and saw this Anti Hair Algae stuff made by Interpet in my local store which was recommended. However it says I should remove the carbon zeolite (ammonia removing) cartridges from my filter before I treat the water to remove the algae....is there any reason for this and do I need to bother removing them?

Thanks,
Mike.

 

[-SPB-]

If you don't remove the carbon it will filter the med out of the tank.

 

[schooly20]

Yeah SPB has it right, those cartridges will pull that stuff out of the water before it can do anything. Your tank should be fine without them while you get rid of the hair algae, but buy new ones and put them in after the treatment.

 

[Bigbadbaz]

I have used this treatment lately on my tank, it will get rid of hair algae but it is better to remove as much as you can mechanically before treatment, I ended up binning a load of plants as the treatment would not remove the algae completely from them, it did remove it from everything else though.

 

[saltynay]

The activated carbon removes chemicals from the water such as the treatment and the zeolite removes ammonia. If your using a Zeolite capsule then you may not have a sufficient bacterial colony to be able to cope with the ammonia spike afterwards. Depends on how mature the tank is...

 

[aaronnorth]

the algae will only return if you dont fix the problem.

poor CO2, undetectable ammonia spikes (waste floating around, rotting plant matter, disturbing substrate, dirty filter etc etc), low nutrient levels.

 

[snowflake311]

the algae will only return if you dont fix the problem.

poor CO2, undetectable ammonia spikes (waste floating around, rotting plant matter, disturbing substrate, dirty filter etc etc), low nutrient levels.

I agree chemical treatments are not a cure. You need to find the source and fix that. I had that stuff growing too when my tank was only a month old. I went a way after the dying plants were taken out and I cleaned it off my decorations. Then I just kept up with maintenance have never seen it since.