[mst_mugen]

Hey All,

I am currently in the process of cycling my tank and at about Day 4, I started seeing transparent strands of algae develop on my HC. This then spread to other parts of the tank and is now growing off my stones, sand and soil as well. Strands have grown up to lengths of over 15cm.

Pics are as follows:









Have you ever experienced thread algae before and did it just pass without you having to go out of your way to do anything about it? Beside removing as much as you can manually.

I am at Day 10 of the cycle now and I have since lowered my lighting time to 4 hours. My CO2 rate is 2bps which comes on 1 hours before lights come on and turn off half an hour before lights come off. From what I can see, it appears that the rate of growth of the algae may have slowed down as a result? Wouldn't be certain on that though, as I am constantly manually removing the thread algae from the tank.

Since Day 1 of my cycle, I have performed 40% WC's everyday.

Please share your experiences on how you managed to rid of this particular algae.

Thanks

 

[laconic]

You tank is still new so its hard to say you have an issue until it cycles. You can remove the hair algae with a toothbrush (spinning the algae like spaghetti).

BPS is not a good measurement for CO2. Get a drop checker (they are cheap on ebay).

I had a bad case of hair algae and the h202 1-2 punch (there is a big post on this) worked well.

 

[brandon429]

ten years of online algae battling threads fw and marine summed up:

algae growth is nearly always viewed as a negative inference about some aspect of nutrients or tank params when thats the rarest case. algae exploit, so they are constants.

importation ranges and is varied, so one tank gets spiros and another gets bba on and on. the lucky seem to inherit nothing but pure greatness and dont have algae problems, they are in the mix too.

of course nutrients and limiting factors can be used to boost or lessen undesirable algae growth. for marine the current big deal is limiting phosphate. in the 2000's it was limiting nitrate. fw views tend to ascribe algae issues to *lack of certain nutrients in their quest for indirect control, and prevention of algae.

some facts remain about algae control through the years

you have the power to hand remove always, and in fact thats the only thing guaranteed to work. Throngs of threads w always exist on how to prevent, find causes, identifications of algae, and thats fun to keep watching evolve. but the answer to your direct question is the cause of your unidentified strand algae is importation unknown at the time and nothing wrong with your tank. making the countless counter adjustments to battle it is common, but is an indirect method, so its so so.

but this one tank keeper who hand removes, or chemically burns, or ensures the tank simply has no algae- has no algae to speak of, just a pristinely clean reef and planted tank. he or she may or may not spend a lot of time doing removal work, depending on their luck and planning. so the answer is you should just remove it all if you want it fixed. id peroxide burn it but thats just me and Im biased.

learn to see algae battles in two modes: that which prevents, and that which removes. dont confuse the two, most do. whether the tank is 1 week or, or 800 weeks old algae battles come down to the same distilled events> either choosing or not choosing to instantly remove any algae that can become a problem. prevention of algae is where you get ten thousand opinions.

 

[lauraleellbp]

Excel and algae eaters have always worked great for me with all the thready/stringy/bushy algaes. Algae turns red and then gets nommed by the algae eaters.

 

[Mirkinator]

BTW this really looks like filamentous diatoms and not algae. Very common for a new tank and I just got done battling it myself.

First off, a tooth brush and the 1-2 punch (search the algae subforum) works wonders to remove it. And the diatoms it will turn green then brown again when dipped in H2O2. These guys live off silicates in the tank and can take 1-2 months (in my experience but sometimes longer) to remove all the silicates. But you still need to make sure your lighting isnt too mucha nd the photoperiod isnt too long (maybe 7-9hrs) and your CO2/fertz is proper.