fish or other way of getting rid of string alge

[jaajaa40]

Hi,

What is the best fish to eat string alge, or a way to get rid of it?

I have nice planted tank that I am ripping string alge out of weekly.

I have some rams horn sails keeping things clean in the tank.

I have some dwarf cichlid that I hope will lay eggs some day.

I have an albino Bristlenose Catfish (Pleco) as my only bottom eater.

Other than that, no other fish in the tank.
Plants are java mos and java fern.
A nice pice of drift wood also.

Thanks for your thoughs.

If your recommendation is fish, how many would you get for my 56 galon tank. I only have 8 fish right now.

 

[MyCatsDrool]

Tell us more about your tank.

Are you adding any fertilizers?
Are you using Flourish Excel?
Are you injecting CO2?
What kind of lighting do you have?

 

[jaajaa40]

First of all thanks for the reply. You are right, I should have mentioned a little more info.

I am not doing anything you mentioned, just changing my water one a week. I change about 10 gal of my 56 gal tank once a week.

My PH is about 7.5, lake Michigan water in the Chicago area.

My lighting is just a strip light, of course with a good plant bulb, I will look for the wattage tonight if you like.

My tank and plants are doing fine, growing and spreading as I would hope.
Tank has been up for about 6 moths now. String alge showed up about 2 months ago.

I also do have some grass like plants, and they are shooting out runners and spreading slowly, I am very happy with that.

My goal was to get 'low' light "easy to grow" plants so I would not have to do any co2 injection or put in any additives.

No other alge problems other than this string stuff. I never has to clean my glass.

 

[Zezmo]

If the string algae is not too bad, maybe just remove it manually. Depending on exactly which algae it is. If cladophora for example, then it does well when plants do well.

You can cut your lights on time to 10hours per day, that may help you.
Some livebearers (swords, mollys, guppies) may eat some string algaes. Some recomend Florida Flag Fish. I am not a big fan of buying animals to sontrol algae.

Try, Manual removing algae, feeding a little less, cutting back light to 10hrs for a couple weeks, that may be enough.

 

[MyCatsDrool]

What kind of plants do you have

 

[jaajaa40]

These are the plants I have

Tropical Hornwort
Java Moss
Java Fern
And some type of grass (still looking up the name)

I think I am 12 hours with my timer for my light. Would the plants be able to recover if cutting back the light had a bad effect on them?

I am very careful with feeding already.