Algaeeeee

[shrimpandram]

Help me kill this algae. it's killing me. Aka hair algae
I use USA satellite and runs less than 8 hours per day and I use flourish once a day.

 

[TMaier]

Is your tank near a window or in a room with strong natural light?


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[shrimpandram]

Is your tank near a window or in a room with strong natural light?


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Nope they don't get any sunlight

 

[Huffers]

Wow that's quite a lot of algae. For that much algae to grow your tank is either getting too much light or you have too many nutrients in the water. What's your lighting setup? Do you dose anything in the tank?


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[shrimpandram]

Wow that's quite a lot of algae. For that much algae to grow your tank is either getting too much light or you have too many nutrients in the water. What's your lighting setup? Do you dose anything in the tank?


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I get around 5 hours of light and I barely feed my fish but they look healthy and I use flourish excel

 

[TMaier]

What are your nitrates? Too much light and nutrients is usually the cause. Do you vacuum your tank and PWC?


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[DocOck]

Way less light

Less nutrients

Bigger and more frequent water changes. All of the experts with beautiful planted tanks agree with this.

If you really want to get serious, pressurized CO2


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[Huffers]

I would do a water test and see what kind of nitrates your measuring at. I would bet there pretty high. I agree with what's been stated about doing big water changes....this will help lower some of those levels. I'd look into dosing some liquid carbon if it's a small tank and you don't want to put a pressurized c02 system on it. Algae can't stand carbon.


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[PerfectDepth]

I would do a water test and see what kind of nitrates your measuring at. I would bet there pretty high. I agree with what's been stated about doing big water changes....this will help lower some of those levels. I'd look into dosing some liquid carbon if it's a small tank and you don't want to put a pressurized c02 system on it. Algae can't stand carbon.


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Algae is quite similar to plant life and also requires carbon to grow. Algae thrives in the same conditions as plants, even more so since it isn't nearly as fussy about nutrient concentrations. If you want to see an algae explosion just set up a tank without any plants but with lots of CO2, light, fertilizers, flow etc.

I don't agree with the advice to reduce nutrients without even knowing the concentrations first. Reducing nutrient levels isn't going to help anything if a nutrient deficiency is what caused the algae to take over in the first place due to poor plant growth. This is exactly the kind of algae that shows up in my tank when I forget to dose fertilizers, not that it's necessarily the same scenario here, just giving an example.

I do agree that large water changes and reducing light intensity and/or duration will help. Keep light period at 5 hours per day for now, do some extra water changes, and pull out as much algae as you can. Excel will kill most algae so when you dose excel you can apply it directly to the algae using a syringe or pipette. For further advice, more info on your tank will be helpful. The size, lighting (did you mean current usa satellite plus?) and what is the distance the light fixture from the substrate? If possible, you might want to raise your light up higher to reduce intensity. Is there injected co2, or just excel for the carbon source? It might be necessary to increase available carbon either by injecting co2 or increasing excel dosage, which in turn will create higher nutrient demand so you will likely have to increase fertilizer dosage as well. What is your fertilizer regimen?

 

[Huffers]

I guess what I meant is that algae can't stand carbon in higher doses. I dose liquid carbon in my tank and never have issues with algae. Flourish excel after all is a liquid carbon additive.


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[DanB80TTS]

I guess what I meant is that algae can't stand carbon in higher doses. I dose liquid carbon in my tank and never have issues with algae. Flourish excel after all is a liquid carbon additive.


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Excel is actually an algacide, it just also happens to have organic compounds that can be utilized by plants as an alternate carbon source but nowhere near to the efficiency of actualy Co2.

Also to those that mention Pressurized Co2 injection, that isn't a solution to algae problems. As PerfectDepth stated algae requires the same conditions as plants to thrive. Hair algae will benefit just the same if not more in a Co2 injection tank if it is out of balance.

As for the OP's issue, I'd advise you to try and remove as much of the hair algae as possible manually and perform a large water change. Restrict the lighting schedule further and see if it continues to progress. If that doesn't change anything then its not the lighting causing the issue.

 

[shrimpandram]

Alright thanks for helping me out . BTW how long do I have to keep the condition to stop the hair algae.

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[Caliban07]

Try not to focus on the algae. Think about growing plants and the algae will dwindle.

This means balancing your parameters so that the plants have adequate nutrition, light and water flow whilst removing dissolved organics.

I think those plants are too far gone now and you may need to start over.


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