green hair algae taking over my betta tank!!

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Damiri

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 20, 2017
Messages
17
I have a serious hair algae problem in my betta tank. It is growing like crazy and taking over everything. The tank is 5 gal with a live plant and a silk plant. I am doing water changes and cleaning and it still grows! On Friday i did a 50 % water change and gave the tank a good cleaning and today it already looks like i have not cleaned in a month. Is there an effective way of getting rid of it?
 
Your main "fix", is to figure out what's causing it in the first place.
Too much light, and too much food are the common problems.
Does the tank get much sunlight?
I would start by switching on the lights for just a couple hours each (evening) when you're home and leave them off the rest of the day.

You can buy chemicals to stop it, but unless you get to the root of the problem you'll be buying and adding those chemicals for the rest of your tanks life.
 
I definitely think the excess of light is part of the problem. The tank doesnt get much direct sunlight, maybe an hour or so and this also thru partially closed blinds but the tank lights are on for 10 hours a day as well. I am gonna cut the time the lights are on in half and see if that helps. I am just curious if the betta will not mind so many "cloudy days" without his sunshine?
I am also gonna clean out as much of the algae as i can by hand and put some algae killer in there as an immediate remedy and see how it goes.
 
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