hair algae?

1551 Views 8 Replies 6 Participants Last post by n25philly, Sep 22, 2016

n25philly

Discussion Starter · Sep 21, 2016

I'm pretty sure this is hair algae, but you go on these sites to identify what you have and all of the pictures are the size of postage stamps.

Low tech tank, I don't fert much, just flourish once a week, and rotate excel and trace the other days. Tank is a jungle and plants grow crazy all of the tank. This is the only real algae I'm dealing with. It's been multiplying lately and I'm starting to get it on the roots of my floating plants. Not a big deal but I want to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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infolific

· #2 · Sep 22, 2016

I've read that ghost shrimp eat hair algae. I'm hoping to test this out in the next few days. I just have a few strands appearing here and there (there's more in your photo than in my entire tank) so I'm hoping to get ahead of any real growth.

Excel hasn't killed hair algae completely for me. It may be slowing its growth, but it continues to grow. And I dose Excel daily and more than the usual amount.

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myswtsins

· #3 · Sep 22, 2016

Looks like hair algae to me. I also have hair algae in my low tech (shrimp only) tank but I don't add any ferts. I am going to pick up some amano shrimp to deal with it.

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Ilikefish

· #4 · Sep 22, 2016

buy amano shrimp. they are the best for this kind of algae

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n25philly

Discussion Starter · #5 · Sep 22, 2016

Ilikefish said:
buy amano shrimp. they are the best for this kind of algae

I tried that a few times in the past. I don't have a lid on the tank and my apistos seem to scare them even though I never saw them attack the amanos or anything like that. Longest I've gotten them to last is a couple of weeks. I also have really soft water, so I don't think the tank is really that invertebrate friendly. I don't really mind it actually as it's mostly where you really can't see it, I just want to make sure it doesn't spread too much

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Porkchop

· #6 · Sep 22, 2016

I had the same stuff, it will spread and for me, it got out of control. I used peroxide to treat it directly, kills it and turns it a real pretty pink, haha. I could never get totally rid of it though.

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proper.noun

· #7 · Sep 22, 2016

I'll second @Porkchop, I had it and it spread steadily and eventually got out of control in a fairly short amount of time. A LFS owner told me "too much current" so I covered the outflow in my tank with a piece of foam reducing the current to almost nothing and saw a pretty dramatic dieback in the algae. Since then (for months now..) 96% of it is just gone and the few strands that I do occasionally see are eaten by my **cherry shrimp.

**To be clear- I had cherry shrimp before I reduced the current so that factor has never changed, only the current.

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Porkchop

· #8 · Sep 22, 2016

I agree, current/flow plays a role in it spreading. I never had shrimp but I'm gonna look into them this time around because of this very topic.

I was told to dose Excel, which I did but it just didn't make a dent in it. So then I was told I needed to get a Co2 system. I did the old DIY method from the start and someone once told me that was what caused it but I don't know.

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n25philly

Discussion Starter · #9 · Sep 22, 2016

proper.noun said:
I'll second @Porkchop, I had it and it spread steadily and eventually got out of control in a fairly short amount of time. A LFS owner told me "too much current" so I covered the outflow in my tank with a piece of foam reducing the current to almost nothing and saw a pretty dramatic dieback in the algae. Since then (for months now..) 96% of it is just gone and the few strands that I do occasionally see are eaten by my **cherry shrimp.

**To be clear- I had cherry shrimp before I reduced the current so that factor has never changed, only the current.

By any chance do you have a photo of the foam thing so I can see if I can give it a try? Current doesn't seem too bad in my tank but worth giving it a try. (I kind of want to reduce the flow in my tank anyway)

For what it's worth I got the algae recently when I stopped dosing for a while in the tank. I got this and a bunch of black beard algae. Since I restarted dosing both have reduced with the black beard being almost gone and this stuff mostly showing up on my driftwood.

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