Help Please, What Is Out Of Balance?

[Marnee]

I need some direction to try and get this hair algae to stop spreading. I have a 50 gallon tank. T5 lights, 103watts. I leave them on 6hrs daily. I use Flourish excel once daily, 1 capful. I use Flouish 2x weekly for ferts. 1 capful each time. I do 50% water changes on Saturday when I clean the tank. I do 2 smaller water changes during the week, probably about 8 gallons each time.
Somewhere I am out of balance as this hair algae continues to grow on my plants. Any ideas where I could be lacking or overdosing? I tried for 10 days using a syringe directly on the algae but didn't see a whole lot of results with it dying off. Plus it is rather wide spread so treating that way would take a very very long time and as I said I didn't really see too much of it turning red and dying.

 

[Gilli]

Are your nitrates or phosphates high?, is your tank situated where it can get direct sunlight? - all of these can cause it. Green hair algae grows when there is an imbalance in the tank so you have to find out what that is.

 

[Marnee]

Are your nitrates or phosphates high?, is your tank situated where it can get direct sunlight? - all of these can cause it. Green hair algae grows when there is an imbalance in the tank so you have to find out what that is.

It gets no direct sunlight at all. The tank is situated on the north side of the house against a wall quite a distance from the window. Nitrate reads approx. 10ppm, certainly no higher.
Phosphate is slightly different in colour when tested against tap water, but so slight that it is almost undetectable so I will give it at less then .25ppm.

 

[Gilli]

Keep algae's favorite nutrient out of your aquarium with phosphate controlling media and biological boosters for your filtration system. Feed fish sparingly because overfeeding or overcrowding both lead to an abundance of nutrients on which algae thrive. Give the algae some competition with plants by planting more live plants - the more plants in your aquarium the less chance algae has of taking over because they compete directly with algae for light and nutrients.

 

[Marnee]

Keep algae's favorite nutrient out of your aquarium with phosphate controlling media and biological boosters for your filtration system. Feed fish sparingly because overfeeding or overcrowding both lead to an abundance of nutrients on which algae thrive. Give the algae some competition with plants by planting more live plants - the more plants in your aquarium the less chance algae has of taking over because they compete directly with algae for light and nutrients.

Phoshate controlling media? I have a hob penguin with ceramic rings, sponge and bio wheel, filter floss. I also have a Eheim canister filter on this tank with a full compliment of filter media. I know you will ask why I have 2 filters and it's simple, I added the canister about 2 months ago assuming I would only use it once it cycled, left the hob filter running as well but I like the water movement I now get all over the tank with two filters running. If I remove the hob filter I will just have to buy a power head to do the same thing so for that reason I have left both filters running.
Last week I added some fast growing plants and just let them float to try and do what you have explained. I have still seen hair algae spread even with the addition of about 7 floating plants. (They are stem plants, Cabomba & Water Wisteria but I just let them float for now because they don't really do too well planted with only 2watts per gallon. They are growing nicely floating) Is there anything else you can think of that might help make a difference.

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

I could be wrong. Not overly hot on plants. But have you tried decreasing the amount your lights are on for?

 

[Tonyb111111]

IMO I would try reducing the photoperiod an hour at a time and see how the algae responds over the course of 3-4 weeks when you do it. I also got rid of massively high phosphates when I had an issue (5ppm). I believe 2wpg on reflected T5's is equivalent to about 3 wpg of unreflected T8's, so there is a fair amount of light going on there that may be encouraging the algae growth. Also everything Gilli has said will contribute to algae growth

 

[cms091]

Looking at how much water you change, I would look at the stats of your tap water. mine is high in nitrates and, in my lightly planted tanks, the water I take out is sometimes lower in nitrates than the water I put in! If yours is high in nitrates or phosphates you could be adding to your problems by changing the water!

It's worth a test anyway!

Cathy

 

[daz4321]

My link have a look there see if that helps