Hair Algae Invasion!

[TheRedDarren]

hi guys,

I have a major hair algae invasion in my tank, I first noticed it had appeared about 3 weeks ago and immediately bought some anti hair algae treatment and some green-X for the filter and have been treating it ever since (after obviously taking out the carbon etc) hoping to catch it before it got a hold, but rather than getting better it has got ten times worse and has gone from a small patch on my mapani to nearly every plant in the tank.

My tank is 180 litres with internal filtration, heavily planted (about 100 plants), C02 injection unit, 2 30w tubes with reflectors, lots of surface plants that obviously cut out a lot of the light, I was using plant fertiliser every week but have now stopped.

In all the articles I've read on planted tanks I was lead to believe that good plant growth (which I most definatley have) is one of the keys to halting the growth of algae, does this include hair algae or does it thrive in different conditions to "normal" algae?

The tank is home to a total of 20 (all Asian, gouramis, harlequins and zebra loaches) fish at the moment but I will be adding another 6-10 to finish stocking once I have the algae sorted out.

Any help welcome as my tank which was begining to look quite spectacular now looks really poor.
Thanks, D.

 

[Silverlady]

I had the same problem. Have you tried Seachem Flourish Excell, it worked on my tank.

 

[TheRedDarren]

no I haven't, I have the interpet hair algae remover, I will get some seachem stuff, thanks.

By the way, water conditions are: PH 7, nitrite 0, nitrate 0 and ammo 0.

 

[andyt_uk]

rather than chuck chemicals in, which probably just reduce your nitrate levels .... and as you have none.... there are fish out there who love hair algae

now obviously you will be expecting me to name some for you

you could try some dwarf oto's for a start, or even certain shrimp

 

[TheRedDarren]

yea was thinking about shrimps and or catfish, but i want to keep the tank strictly Asian only.
Ripped out about 25% of my plants that were covered in the algae, took out the mapani and scrubbed them, looks a bit better but still loads in there, so gutted with it now, it looks terrible.

 

[Liam]

Amano shrimp are Asain and would help, upping the Co2 rate is said to help also, the toothbursh is a good tool to remove some manually. The shrimp are often small when bought so maybe the loaches would see them as a meal depending on the size of the loaches and shrimp.

 

[pjos11]

I had hair algae in my tank.

The reason why hair algae can Start is " Phosphates" If they are on the high side then algae can use them to take off big time!

Test your water for phosphates you will be surprized.