weird stuff on my plant

[Nauplii]

its like hairy greenish greyish stuff ... i thought it might be a form of algea maybe?

 

[smithrc]

sounds like hair algae.

sorry for the bad news.

 

[Nauplii]

how do i get rid of it... what bad news

 

[Da_Oz]

Bad news is... very hard to get rid of.

Good news... less iron will take care of alot of it. Faster growing plants, and alot of fish eat on it, mollies tiger barbs, shrimp, about any veggy eater will chew on it.

 

[konrad05]

Only well-known fish that takes care of it is a siamese algae eater, shrimp won't touch it, not sure about mollies or tiger barbs. Patience will take over from there.

 

[Yeaulman]

I have iron enriched gravel, so how would I go about lowering the iron level? As for less phosphates in the water which could be from food/waste, would changing food to a blood worm lower phosphates? And I thought I had taken care of hair algae in my tank by trimming all the bad leaves back, but then today I looked again and there are more leaves to trim

As for adding more plants, I think I have a lot and the fish keep losing space to swim as I add more. Take a look.

 

[Yeaulman]

I found this link that says that it gets rid of hair algae here. Anyone think this would work?

 

[konrad05]

thats one awesome tank! you should post it in members aquarium and fish pictures. I would advise strongly against using any chemicals to get rid of the problem. SAE's are literally the best choice you have. I would leave the iron alone.

 

[Nauplii]

id get them but my tank is a bit fullish at the moment

 

[Yeaulman]

Ok well I dont really wanna deal with chemicals either... but will a SAE live with black moors and calicos? Also where can I get them in Saskatoon, SK, Canada? I tried all the fish places and they cannot get them.

Please help

 

[Lateral Line]

Black Moors are coldwater fish, SAE's tropical. They are not compatible. If the algae looks black and hairy, then it is very difficult to get rid of, (it is actually a red algae species).

It is not particulaly Iron that encourages hair/beard algae. Any nutrient surplus encourages algae. I also have highly enriched Iron substrates, but in heavily planted tanks, nitrate and phosphates are limiting nutrients, so no algae.

High Iron doesn't equal hair/beard algae.

 

[-cAtFiSh-]

i really like your tank! that is a mad piece of bogwood!

 

[Yeaulman]

I'm glad you people like it... I am beginning to hate it with all this hair algae. Will a few water changes help any you think?

 

[Da_Oz]

Have you found what kind of algae this is?? Hair algae and Black Brush Algae are to different kinds of algae and cuased by two differnt things. Black Brush Algae is short about 1/4 inch and Hair algae can get very long I had some in the 5 inch area.

I got rid of my hair algae by stoping iron, after doing a 3 hour web search on it and reading very good info about 80% saying that is it cused by high iron in tank. Most of my fish ate on it. And I have seen many places on here saying that ghost shirmp don't eat algae well for some odd reason mine did. Not hard to tell what they are eating cuase you can see it in them.

Black Brush Algae. Short hairs (1/4" long), closely packed together. Appears dark green, black, or dark red. Grows on plant leaves, and sometimes on decorations/substrate. This normaly grows after the plant has stop growing. The plant will start to release phosphate or just not use it. Phosphate comes into the tank many ways threw us putting it there and fish foods.

If your nitrate is low you could try adding some to the tank. This will make your plants start growing again. But this needs to be done slow.

 

[Yeaulman]

Well I have some pictures and you guys said it was BBA algae. I am posting the pics right now Hope you can sure help me