besides manually, what is the easiest way to get rid of this hair algae?
Is it a nutrient imbalance ?
hair algae
I've been reading up on algae problems lately. Here is the general consensus on hair algae. The algae doesn't seem to appear in show quality tanks, so every post about hair algae someone chimes in balance your fertilizers.
This is what posts say:
Hair algae is eaten by most shrimp commonly kept. Stock 1-2 per gallon to win. Rosy barbs, black sailfin mollies, Siamese algae eaters (C. siamesis)and American flag fish are reputed eaters of the pest. I have read posts about all of these fish that say they will nibble on fine leafed plants, except for the sailfin molly. Give the mollies no choice but to eat the algae, do not feed them. SAE, rosy barbs, and Aff are potentially aggressive toward tankmates, the latter two fin nippers.
Personal Experience:
I stocked my tank 40 with:
1 Black Molly - BBA
4 Siamese algae eaters - fuzz/hair
4 American flag fish - hair
3 Otocinclus - brown/cyano
1 Rubber pleco - any filmy algae
They cleared an algae infestation except for the green spot algae that i have no idea what would eat it. The AFF are chewing on exposed roots of glosso now, I imagine this will become a problem soon. From where it came from a month ago it looks great except for the R. indica that grows like a foreground plant.<edited><editID>Cory</editID><editDate>38312.5252430556</editDate></edited>
This is what posts say:
Hair algae is eaten by most shrimp commonly kept. Stock 1-2 per gallon to win. Rosy barbs, black sailfin mollies, Siamese algae eaters (C. siamesis)and American flag fish are reputed eaters of the pest. I have read posts about all of these fish that say they will nibble on fine leafed plants, except for the sailfin molly. Give the mollies no choice but to eat the algae, do not feed them. SAE, rosy barbs, and Aff are potentially aggressive toward tankmates, the latter two fin nippers.
Personal Experience:
I stocked my tank 40 with:
1 Black Molly - BBA
4 Siamese algae eaters - fuzz/hair
4 American flag fish - hair
3 Otocinclus - brown/cyano
1 Rubber pleco - any filmy algae
They cleared an algae infestation except for the green spot algae that i have no idea what would eat it. The AFF are chewing on exposed roots of glosso now, I imagine this will become a problem soon. From where it came from a month ago it looks great except for the R. indica that grows like a foreground plant.<edited><editID>Cory</editID><editDate>38312.5252430556</editDate></edited>
ok, i have not added and ferts in the past month, ive cleaned my tank, and removed as much of it as i could.
also i have turned off the lights and covered the tank for 3 days and the hair algae keeps coming back ... what else can i do besides add a few mollies .. i really dont want to add them ... but if thats what it takes
also i have turned off the lights and covered the tank for 3 days and the hair algae keeps coming back ... what else can i do besides add a few mollies .. i really dont want to add them ... but if thats what it takes
-
Ghazanfar Ghori
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3258
- Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2003 5:26 am
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Let me chime in (after months absent from the forum...)
It's just that I'm battling this pest for many months
now, so I think I got *some* insight <img border="0" src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0">
IME, hair algae doesn't care if there is light, or not.
It can survive unscathed for a week of total darkness
(I tried it, believe me...). It can survive in the
darkest spots in the tank.
I only got a hand on it after I did two things: removed
*all* driftwood, and started dosing phosphorous as per
Ghazanfar instructions.
Hair algae tends to grow on dead organic matter first
(driftwood is dead organic matter). As it gets stronger,
it starts to colonize living matter with low metabolic
rate (such as slow growing stems or leaves, and bateria film on gravel particles and glass walls). When it's in
full blast mode, grows everywhere, even on fast growing
new leaves.
Thus I removed the wood and tried to keep the tank as
clean as possible. But only after starting supplementing
with phosphorous I got to see it dying away. One of my
tanks is almost clear of any algae now, the other still
shows signs of hair and other types, but looks *much*
better that a few months ago. Yes, the time frame for
this process to work is several months, maybe a year <img border="0" src="smileys/smiley18.gif" border="0"> .
Patience is mandatory...
-Ivo Busko
It's just that I'm battling this pest for many months
now, so I think I got *some* insight <img border="0" src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0">
IME, hair algae doesn't care if there is light, or not.
It can survive unscathed for a week of total darkness
(I tried it, believe me...). It can survive in the
darkest spots in the tank.
I only got a hand on it after I did two things: removed
*all* driftwood, and started dosing phosphorous as per
Ghazanfar instructions.
Hair algae tends to grow on dead organic matter first
(driftwood is dead organic matter). As it gets stronger,
it starts to colonize living matter with low metabolic
rate (such as slow growing stems or leaves, and bateria film on gravel particles and glass walls). When it's in
full blast mode, grows everywhere, even on fast growing
new leaves.
Thus I removed the wood and tried to keep the tank as
clean as possible. But only after starting supplementing
with phosphorous I got to see it dying away. One of my
tanks is almost clear of any algae now, the other still
shows signs of hair and other types, but looks *much*
better that a few months ago. Yes, the time frame for
this process to work is several months, maybe a year <img border="0" src="smileys/smiley18.gif" border="0"> .
Patience is mandatory...
-Ivo Busko
Hair algae is the bane of my existence. I do not seem to get much of the other types, excepting green spot on Anubias. But hair algae is always present - sometimes only barely detectable, sometimes highly obvious. Strangely it only affects some tanks in the circulating range and not others, despite the shared water. At the moment the worst is the rainbow's breeding tank, the one with the least wood in it. It does have very few Amanos (they eat eggs), but the tanks with the Synodontis cats have no Amanos, and may not show any hair on the substantial wood present. The differences within that system I attribute to light - I get rather lax about tube replacement, and when I prune/thin the plants I tend to overdo - an invitation as it were.
My mollies never showed any propensity to eat anything but my blackbeard dispite there being tons of hair algae around. I would buy a couple American Flag Fish and a couple Flying Fox/SAE (C. siamesis). The Aff will pull off the hair algae close to the leaves of plants, and the SAE are more adapted to scraping clean the surfaces of the leaves. The AFF will munch plants, mine chewed on glosso, but not much until the hair algae was gone.
I've seen aff for sale in petco, and a store in gaithersburg recently ~$2. I do hate to introduce fish from the pet chains. Though, I've had good luck with the new petsmart by me. If you want some free, I have 1m/2f of Aff that are in a bare bottom tank, removed for eating too much glosso. I would only take the two females if you have similar bodied fish in the tank. If you don't have a place for them, and they live, just givem back to me.
<edited><editID>Cory</editID><editDate>38321.0185763889</editDate></edited>
I've seen aff for sale in petco, and a store in gaithersburg recently ~$2. I do hate to introduce fish from the pet chains. Though, I've had good luck with the new petsmart by me. If you want some free, I have 1m/2f of Aff that are in a bare bottom tank, removed for eating too much glosso. I would only take the two females if you have similar bodied fish in the tank. If you don't have a place for them, and they live, just givem back to me.
<edited><editID>Cory</editID><editDate>38321.0185763889</editDate></edited>
