Hair algae nightmare

[Evaunitone]

I have an issue with hair/thread/possibly staghorn algae. My tank is 20 gallon long with the lights on 4 hours, off 4, on 4 and I do no use any fertilizers. I have a DIY CO2 setup which probably is mostly useless. My tank is not overrun by algae quite yet but its pretty bad and my hair grass that covers the floor of most of the tank is completely interwoven with the thread/hair algae. What do I do?? Rip everything out and abandon the idea of a planted tank?

When I o water changes (50% weekly) the next day the algae is way worse. Very distressing.

 

[meegosh]

Sounds like a nutrient imbalance to me. What lights are you running? If you have higher light then you might want to start dosing. I would recommend EI dosing as you can't really screw it up. As long as you dose everyday and do a 50% PWC at the end of the week (to "reset" the levels) you will have little to no algae.

Also, how is the flow in the tank? Some people have had luck getting rid of staghorn by adding more flow to certain areas of the tank. I would try to manually pick/remove as much as you can then play around with dosing.

 

[Evaunitone]

It may be time to admit defeat. I've the EI index and no luck. The algae is everywhere and it looks terrible. I've come to the conclusion that the fact that I basically don't have CO2 is the problem. I had been using DIY CO2 but it didn't work very well so I removed it. The algae was a big problem long before I removed the DIY CO2 though. I think I may just admit defeat and go with a black sand set up with lots of slate instead of plants, and have some marimo balls and a background plant only.

 

[timwag2001]

no dont do that. you cant just quit because things get hard! come on. you were raised better than that!

thats the speach my dad would have given me.

what was wrong with diy co2 before you got rid of it? could you possibly go pressurized? its much easier and much less of a hassle.

here is how i would handle it.
get your co2 going again. i would probably have two 2liter bottles going at the same time in a 20 long.

buy the ferts you need for ei, its VERY easy. EI light: for those less techy folks - - Aquarium Plants
just dose every day and water change at the end of the week.

now... go get some excel today. do a 50% water change. while the tank is half full, add 20ml of excel. that will overdose the water in your tank (half full) by 4 times. let it sit like that for a little bit. then fill your tank back up. that will leave your tank overdosed by 2 times the recommended amount. and continue to dose 20ml every day.

i'll give it about a week, maybe 2 weeks at the most, and your algae problem should be taken care of