Terrible Fuzz/beard Algae Problem

[eschaton]

So, I've been doing everything possible to create a good environment for my plants to grow. I put in ferts once a week, put together home-made CO2 reactors, and recently installed high-qualiity lighting. While I know it won't solve the issue, both tanks have algae-eaters, including snails, shrimp, and ottos

Plants seem to be doing really well, but the algae has been going mad now. At first I had some algae on the glass, but that was about it. Since the lights have kicked in, the surfaces of the major rock in my tank, and all the upward-facing leaves, are covered in thick, hairlike algae. There's some tufts of black brush algae on another plant as well. There's even hair algae on the walls of the tank!

The other tank also has hair algae, but it's comparably minor, only affecting a few small bits near the light source since the tank lighting has doubled. I'm crediting the faster-growing plants in this tank like water wisteria with making the crucial difference.

I'm sort of left at a loss as to how to fix this tank up, but in the next few weeks, I'm going to be moving all of the fish and plants out of my existing two 20 gallons and into a 40 gallon. Well, one of the 20 gallons will be left up in a reduced form until I can get the bits together for a planned nano which will exist mainly for cherry shrimp and my African Dwarf Frogs.

I want to move over the plants all at once, along with the cycled filters, in order to stop the chance of the new tank growing terrible algae. I've heard that a bath in a bleach solution should kill any algae on the plants but leave the plants unharmed, but I'm worried about the logistics, especially because I do not want to kill any bacteria when I'm attempting to jump-start the new cycle.

Any ideas as to how to proceed?

 

[eschaton]

My camera is too crappy to take a decent res picture of the algae on the plants, but here's a pic of the rock two weeks ago.

And here's the rock again, less than two weeks later

 

[JamesC]

This sounds like a case of too much light and not enough ferts, especially CO2. Reducing your lighting will probably help but need more details of your setup to help anymore.

 

[eschaton]

Okay:

Both my tanks are 20 gallons, and have coralife freshwater lights on them. 28 Watts of power each.

I use two liter soda bottles. I put a cup of sugar in and a teaspon of yeast every so often. Generally it fizzes like mad the first few days, and then gets a whole lot slower going. I replace the bottles when there's no fizz left, which seems to happen every three to four weeks or so.

I put in the dose of flourish the bottle suggests once a week.

Nothing special in the substrate. Just gravel in both tanks.

PH of both tanks stays really acidic, somewhere between 6 and 6.4. Ammonia and Nitrites stay at zero, and Nitrates maintain themselves at a really low level.

Tanks are, by some definitions, moderately overstocked. My LFS guy is pretty knowledgable (took awhile to find one who was) and said up to two inches per gallon is fine provided I do weekly water changes, and as far as I can tell the chemicals seem fine.

For algae control, I have:

Algae-coated tank: Amano Shrimp (almost never see them, dunno how many are in there now), Malaysian trumpet snails, ramshorn snaips (pests), and two Ottos.
Other tank: cherry shrimp (do a damn good job), nerites, trumpets, ramshorns, one mystery snail.

Originally, I had the mysterly snail and some nerites in the algae-encrusted tank. However, my LFS guy gave me a med which, even after numerous water changes and introduction of carbon, still kills my nerites and puts my mystery snail into a torpor. I'm not sure how much different having those snails in there would be however, as they seldom eat algae off anything but the glass, and the glass isn't the issue now, it's the plants.

Don't ask me what the plants are in the tanks, as honestly I only know the names of half of them. Off the top of my head, one tank (more algae-covered) has dwarf sag, dwarf onion plant, java fern, water wisteria, blyxa, and...I'm drawing a blank from here, though I can post some pics. Other tank is dominated by a huge bush of water wisteria, though it also java moss and a substantial amount of long, stemmy, fronded things I can't remember the names of.

So, is that enough information to start with?