Hydrogen Peroxide use advice HELP!

[Borderlesscott]

Hi, I have been battling black hair algae for a few weeks now in my 63 gallon and all I've managed to do is slow it's progress. It's on an Anubias I have and started to spread to hairgrass, so far I've cut down my lighting to 7-8 hours a day 2xT5 bulbs, reduced my dose of flourish to once a week from twice - i also use flourish root tabs, should i stop flourish liquid? and i reduced feeding. I do regular water changes in total of around 50% a week, water is always crystal clear and ammonia, nitrite, nitrate always at perfect levels. First I tried treating with excel with a syringe but this killed my Vallisneria plants, next I tried interpet hair algae remover which might be why it's slowed down, it's driving me crazy!
I have ordered a bottle of hydrogen peroxide 3% but really concerned about using it, can I remove the plants and treat externally? should I treat in the tank? how often do I treat and at what amount?

Please guys helppp!

 

[aqua_chem]

I've dosed up to 4% tank volume to my tanks without problem. As long as you range precautions against damaging your biofilter, you should be fine.

 

[Borderlesscott]

Thanks, I was hoping you would respond as I follow a lot of your advice in the planted section.

Do you recommend treating the whole tank then or spot treating? I'll probably turn my filters off for a half hour during the treatment.

Sorry for all the questions but can I ask also, do you think the seachem root tabs I use would be enough or should I keep dosing flourish once a week - new to the planted side of things, was going well until the hair algae.

 

[aqua_chem]

What I did was attach 3-4' of airline tubing to the end of a large plastic syringe (~40 mL or so) such that I could easily keep track of how much I was putting into the tank. You can then manipulate the airline tubing so that you can easily directly apply the peroxide to the affected area. If you directly apply the peroxide, the 'effective' concentration is much higher than if you just dosed it into the water column, and high concentration = more effect. There are times when dosing the water column might be desirable, but for what you're doing I think spot treating is better.

As far as ferts go, I would do both. They are complementary of one-another, and they won't completely replace each other if you aren't using one.

Out of curiosity, what is the plant just left of center in your pic?

 

[Borderlesscott]

Thanks for the advice, really appreciated.

The main background plants are Eleocharis vivipara, the small one centre left is Eleocharis Parvulus grown on bogwood, also one far right. The rest is Vallis spiralis 'leopard', Anubias, Amazon Sword, Java Fern, Cabomba and a mix of Java and Willow moss on lava rock.

 

[boadams87]

I had it to and as I did my wc I would take a syringe and squirt it directly on it, let it sit about 10 min then start refilling. It would turn pink the next day and fall off.

 

[rkilling1]

I have never used H2O2, but here is an article that may help you:

Eliminating Algae with H2O2

 

[Borderlesscott]

Thanks for the help guys, bottle is due next week - ill post an update of how it goes.

 

[boadams87]

Why did u order it? U can get it at Walmart! !

 

[Borderlesscott]

I'm in Northern Ireland, can be a pain in the *** to get some items, only £2.00 for a bottle on eBay, so about $3.00 delivered.

 

[boadams87]

Oh ok. Cool