Hair algae overrunning tank...

[rjbelles]

Hi,
I have a 30 gal tank. I change the water out every two weeks. The plants (live) and being overrun with dark green hair algae. I have been doing some research and found that hydrogen peroxide (3ML, every other day) will get rid of it. Any comments on this? I appreciate your help.

 

[Colin_T]

Pictures of the algae and tank?
What sort of light is on the tank?
How long is the light on for?
Do you add plant fertiliser? If yes, what do you add?
Are you adding carbon dioxide or any form of carbon?

no idea about peroxide unless you are trying to become a blonde

 

[Nicodemus]

 

[Nicodemus]

I got the same problem going on, ughh. Prepping my tank for oto's and new rasbora raised my bio mass by fertilizing and turning up aeration. All 20+ of my phoenix rasbora in hiding now. Hoping this all levels back out soon slowing down growth at this point.

 

[Colin_T]

@Nicodemus, too much light and fertiliser. Not enough live plants.
Reduce lighting times by an hour a day and monitor over the next 2 weeks. If algae is still going crazy, reduce lighting by another hour and monitor. Keep doing this until the algae is not going crazy.

 

[Nicodemus]

Yeah really just got to find the balance again was afraid of starving oto's and overshot. Just surprised how bad it got so quick. Never had hair algae just biofilm on my glass. Thanks for advise, figure I'll need to take out some of glass beads and boil um to make it look good again.

 

[Beastije]

Or a very good "nutrient sucker" is either duckweed or limnobium, add either of those and wait for them to get the nutrients out. Dont do all the suggested changes at once, dont stop the fertilizing, dont mess with the light and dont do drastic or out of scheduled waterchanges.
Do one change, wait a week, see results, do other changes, wait a week, see results.
Fishkeeping is a process for the patient, and is not about the glass being pretty (for a while)
feel free to remove the algae out of the water manual way, but dont do it for the stuck on glass one ( the spot one, if you have it), that one should be kept there for at least 3 weeks before removing manually, or you just breed it out more

 

[Nicodemus]

Very sound advise, turned down my aeration a hair and lights I kept at 12hr but dimmed one click will wait to see if that helps.