Natural Way To Remove Hair Algae ?

[michaelwgroves]

Hi, I have just started to suffer with hair algae, I know there are chemicals to get rid of it, but I wanted to use natural ways to remove it.
I have just upped my Amano population to about 30, although I never see any of them.
Is there any other fish that might like to take a nibble, also what is it in my water that causes hair algae, I'm thinking it is something in my tap water, so I have also just invested in an RO unit.
Any other idea's ?

Thanks
Michael

 

[Themuleous]

also what is it in my water that causes hair algae,

if you knew how much debate there currently is about that you'd laugh!

The amano shrimp will help but they don't eat all types of algae. American flag fish are a useful addition if you can find them.

Have you read the pinned articles? In particular the estimative index, lighting, algae and co2 ones? They will probably answer your questions.

Sam

 

[RadaR]

Siamese Algae Eaters are great at it.
Even Flying Foxs that are commonly mistaken with SAEs are good.

 

[wei0204]

I used 4 amano shrimps for my 2-feet tank, it solved the hair algae problem with a flying fox.

 

[plantbrain]

I have been inducing Cladphora in 2 tanks on purpose.
These tend to be high light tanks with good nutrients and flow etc.

But I reduced the CO2 down and then brought it back up again.
The stuff went nuts.

I maintained the CO2 at a high level and it stopped growing.
But.............it did not die etc.

The key to beating algae is with good stable plant growth, so the focus should be on the plants and making sure they have what they need to grow and be stable.

So prevention is the best defense in any war/fight etc.

Then, once you stopped the algae from growing, you can remove it and not waste all your labor/effort. Fish/herbivores will polish off the rest.

I've found a mix of methods that works well and causes nor harm to plants/fish etc:

Add suggested amounts of Excel( 5mls per 10 gal for each dose in this case)
Turn off CO2/lights for 3 days, cover tank with trash bag so no light is getting to the tank and do water changes each day, 40-60% or more.
Add ferts back the final day and turn the lights/CO2 back on.
Attack the algae when you do the water changes, just make sure to keep the tank covered when you are not working on it. Should be totally dark.

Note, this will beat it back and is to be used in conjunction with an aggressive manual pruning before, during and after.

If the algae infest fine hard to remove plants, like Gloss, Riccia, etc, just remove the plants and toss them, take some of the plants and clean them very carefully, replant, these are weeds and grow back very fast, it's not worth your labor to pick them clean and they provide a good place for the algae to entangle and grow.

Tap is not the issue here.
Stable long term CO2 is.

You could lower the lighting some also and that will help.

Regards,
Tom Barr