# How to beat hair algae



## John P. (Apr 10, 2004)

Get your phosphates in check?


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## BSS (Sep 24, 2004)

In my tank, I noticed a correlation between adding my trace ferts and the growth of long, hair-like algae (thread algae?). When I cut down on amount of trace I was adding, it stopped appearing. I only recently started adding Flourish Iron in addition to the trace (which has 7% Fe) to see if I might have caused an Fe limitation. YMMV.

Brian.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

My phosphate test kit no longer works. I guess i have to order a new one to see whats going on. 
Brian, i dont think i have the thread algae. Its grows in tangled mats of threads. It looks pretty coarse. Ill try to cut down on traces and see waht happens.


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## AlgaeHater (Sep 4, 2004)

I would stop dosing your ferts until you get your algae under control. Cut your light down some maybe an hour or two. Get nitrate and phosphate kits and do water changes until you get them down. feed fish less to produce less waste. I have been battling algae for awhile too. It is no fun. My phosphate level was 4.5 and now I have finally got it down to .5. Get two or three sae's and a few bunches of fast growing stem plants like cabomba. what is your water change schedule? How many fish do you have? Get nitrate and phosphate kits and give your water conditions. You will probly find high nitrate and phosphate levels. Time to do 15-20% water changes everyday or you could get media to lower your levels instead of doing a million water changes. I'd start today anyways by doing a 35% water change now. good luck


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## putty (Nov 19, 2003)

...or just add CO2.


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

I'll bring a some kits up to do some testing of the water this Saturday.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Thanks eric!
All good suggestions. My nitrate is at 15ppm. I have 6 medium discus, 10 cardinals, a rosy barb,5 other assorted livebearers, 2 plecos and 3 ottos.
I feed them beefheart, bloodworms, and some times live worms.
25% weekly water change in a 100gallon tank.
I have pressurized CO2. 
Ill try cutting down the light and using a phosphate sponge. 
I heard a photoperiod break in the middle helps cut down algae?


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

I cant cut down on ferts yet. I think there is either iron or mg deficiency. Im seeing yellowing in new leaves and green veins on both older and newer leaves.
I dont dose nitrates. Only K, Fe, and trace.


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## trenac (Feb 15, 2004)

Ray, dosing iron everyday is one of your reasons for hair algae. If you are using a iron test kit don't, the readings are not accurate, instead go by how your plants look.

The following help me get rid of hair algae...

1) Get your N03/P04 in balance.

2) Stop dosing ferts for two weeks.

3) Reduce your daily lighting by 2 hours for 2 weeks.

4) Increase water changes for 2 weeks.

5) Add algae eaters, like Amano shrimp.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

I think your NO3 readings is on the low side. How much do you trust your NO3 reading? My 100g has 2x your bioload(13 discus plus other fish), but I have to perform 3x60% water change per week to keep NO3 in check(<10ppm right after water change, close to 20ppm right before wc). You don't need to dose NO3 with heavy discus feeding, but I think PO4 dosing is still needed.

I have very little algae now that I try to keep my nutrient dosing consistent. I dose 1/4 tsp K2SO4, 0.5 ppm PO4(KH2PO4), 30 ml PlantexCSM+B/Iron(1tbs CSM+1tsp Iron10% in 500ml bottle.) after each water change.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Forgot to mention I also dose 10ml trace daily apart from what I dose right after water change.

BTW, I keep temp at 82-83F. No need to keep it at 86F, even Cary the great breeder only set it at 84F. 

Getting CO2 to 30 PPM helps with algae as well.


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## Hop (Mar 27, 2004)

Just food for thought:  I too am battling the terrible algea infestation. I found the exact opposite of Shalu. Appearantly the differences in water quality and bioload are not the root cause here for the common problem (in my case anyway). I had to change less water. Turns out that my tap water is very high in all the bad stuff. So I cut back from 35-50% water changes weekly to approximately 10-15% waterchanges. I don't dose anything other than Kno3 (three times a week), haven't seen any deficiencies yet. And after two weeks of doing less, the battle is getting easier. I was to the point of coming home every night and pull, pull and pull to get about a golf ball sized clump of the algea. Now I only have to do it maybe once a week.

Good Luck and let me know any other secrets you might learn.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Shalu,
THanks for the tips. I will follow your schedule and give it a shot. My PMDD chemicals are coming in soon. I think my nitrates are too low, they should be alot higher. I will do a retest. How do you if you need phosphates? I dont want to risk creating a bigger algae bloom. Alameda water is terrible for discus. Do you pre age your water? 60% X 3 is alot of water to go through. How do you go about doing it?

Trenac,
What is the correct NO3 P04 balance?
i will reudce my lighting and bump up water changes. I think my plants need iron since their colors arent as red as before and im seeing green veins. I am seeing white stripes on my stargrass. 
Is it iron or mg deficiency? 

THanks!


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

*hair algae horror*

This one got the prize IME with algae. It got so bad I had floating rafts of the stuff. I spent months trying to fertilate it out of existence. I was able to get rid of just about everything else through fert balance, but not this. It came in on one of my plants, and it left after I instituted the bleach protocol ala Paul Krombholz. There are several types of filamentous algae, one is spirogyra, I don't remember the other. Anyway, we don't keep track of this part of the hobby very scientifically (hair? brush? bush? beard? thread? ...sheesh).

Now everything gets the bleach before it goes in. I hope I never have to go through that again. Lost several plant species as well.


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## trenac (Feb 15, 2004)

Rayhwong... Sounds like a manganese deficiency (leaves turn yellow, but the veins remain green). If it was a iron deficiency the leaves turn yellow become brittle and glassy then disintegrate.

The ratio of N03 to P04 is 23 to 1 or N to P 10ppm to 1ppm.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Quote " think my nitrates are too low, they should be alot higher.". I was trying to say the opposite: I think your nitrate is higher than you thought/measured. 

I do water change straight from the tap using Python, with water conditioner added to the tank. Yes, I agree, I even think using straight tap water is too much work, but that's what I need to do to reduce Nitrate and organic waste. I found that too much organic waste in the water(when not doing enough wc) interferes with NO3 measurement.

I don't measure PO4(my AP kit is totally junk), I simply assume I need it. I feed Frozen blood worms exclusively. About 3 ounces of it goes into the tank daily, that's a lot of stuff. But I don't see phosphate as a big part of the food, so I does PO4. My plants are growing better, less algae.

I basically use Tom Barr's estimative method, without much measuring apart from NO3 checking. I will probably let that go soon as well now that I have a good handle on it. 25% weekly water change is not enough to "reset" probably, because in the worse case you will have 4X your weekly dosage accumulated. 50% wc will only have 2x worse case. So you either have to measure things accurately and do less wc, or you do large water changes and get away with measuring less.

Dealing with heavy load discus tank is a little different than other planted tank, because you have high Nitrate and organic waste content.


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## Aphyosemion (Oct 15, 2004)

*Hair algae*

I just had to throw in my two cents on this because I have a similar situation. I have an overloaded 10 gallon that is planted with glosso, dwarf sag, R. Wallichi, and R. Indica. The bioload is very high in that tank because I have a dozen neons I bought on sale and one of my most beloved oddballs, the Dragon Goby (G. Broussonett). The goby is eellike and about 8 inches long or so and growing. I feed him a mixture of frozen enriched brine shrimp or mysis shrimp and fish food pellets to keep him healthy. He always eats it all, but that is a lot of waste in such a small tank. The only reason why it works is that I have so many fast growing plants in there that the nitrates are prettymuch always at zero and I cycle 75% once a week to once every other week if I am being lazy with recontituted R.O. water.
Anyway, I am droning on, but what I am trying to say is that I had some hair algae hanging around at the very top of the tank on the dwarf val leaves, but now it is getting on my glosso, too. After my bout with blue-green algae, I laugh at hair algae, though. HA HA!!! Hair algae will go away if you tighten up your maintenance routine a little and check your water parameters. If worst comes to worst, you may have to shorten your lighting period for a bit. Not so with blue-green. Turn off all your lights and it will be the last green thing living in your tank.
-Aphyosemion


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Thanks for all the good information! I really appreciate it. Ill step up the water changes to reduce the wastes, stop dosing fertilizers until i reset the water in my tank, and shorten teh photoperiod a bit. Im running 12 hours which now seems too much.
It seems I may have OD'd on iron since iron can cause manganese deficiency.
Time to kill off this hair algae!


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## Momotaro (Feb 21, 2003)

> I have a 3 month old 100g tank.


That says a lot too! 

You really need to give things a little time. It can be hard, but when starting a planted aquarium, patience is a key ingredient. Give the aquarium a little time to settle in and achieve some balance. Don't be too quick to tinker with fertilizers. Just give things a chance.

Mike


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## sn8k (May 24, 2004)

shalu said:


> Dealing with heavy load discus tank is a little different than other planted tank, because you have high Nitrate and organic waste content.


I couldn't agree more... and feeding beefheart is going to cause you a LOT of grief (algae/high nitrates). That's a big "no no" in a planted discus tank unless you are vacuming the gravel/feeding area daily, and/or using a feeding net to reduce the amount of beefheart falling to the gravel along with using a lot of corys and a few brisle nose plecos as a clean up crew. 

Having medium discus in a planted tank is a very tuff road to walk down mainly because if you don't feed them high protein foods 2 to 3 times a day, they will become stunted and never reach their full size potential (the too large eye size as compared to body size thing). Adult Discus are a much better choice for the planted tank because they don't require that amount of protein needed for growth, only enough to sustain them (1 feeding per day). Reguardless, IMHO you are going to need to do more tank maintainence to keep the bio load in check (vacuming the gravel for food waste & more water changes) and/or start to supliment feedings with some high protien flake food (like Ocean Nutrition Formula One which is 55% crude protein).

You see, beefheart is high in proteins which are very rich in Amine Groups (NH2) and Posphorous. Our plants are able to use the Ammonia produced by the fishes feces, but I don't think they're able to compensate so much for the increased amounts of Phosphorus - so regular vacuming is neccessary. Also, the blood in the beefheart has a lot of iron in it - which makes for a lot of bad algae problems.

If I were in your place, I would reduce the tank temp to 82 degrees F, add at least a dozen corys, either start using a feeding net for feeding beefheart or better yet - stop feeding beefheart alltogether, supliment feedings with some high protein flake food, and finally start doing 30% to 50% water changes twice weekly along with regular gravel vacuming (where you can). 

HTH


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Wow thanks for all the great replies. I didnt know that discus tanks need special conditions. Someone should really start a discus planted tank discussion. 
I added more cories today and picked up 7 SAE's (only 2 bucks each at Nippon in SF). I did two 30% water changes over two days. My nitrates are at 20ppm. Which means my first test wasnt really accurate. I probably didnt wait the full amount of time for color to develop. 
I took a tooth brush and cleaned off the algae. 
I am starting to train the discus to eat more flake food.
Ill cut back on light, beefheart and step up more water changes. I'll let you all know how it goes.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Ray, I told you about the NO3 testing :icon_bigg Any chance you also use AP test kit? Here is a link where I discussed this problem with Tom Barr:Organic content affecting test kits


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

About those SAEs: they are very useful when small. However, after a while, they learn how to catch discus food and grow fat really fast. As they grow larger, they become lazy and much less effective, just add more bioload to the system(more water changes :icon_conf ). The only clean up crew I like LONG term are some cories and lots of ottos.


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## AlgaeHater (Sep 4, 2004)

That is very true about the sae's. I have two and they both eat the fish food which must be better than algae. They definetly grow quick when they constantly have full bellys. I have found ottos to be good and they dont eat like they saes. Also I have found other species of ottos which look cool Like the niger, red-fin, zebra, and the large otto. Im sure they all vary in there algae eating, but It makes the tank look more diverse.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Those other ottos sure are nice to have, but if they cost an arm and a leg compared to $1.5 for regular ones, then I will pass :icon_bigg After all, one of the reasons I like them is they are small and almost unnoticable  .


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Thanks for the heads up on the effect of organic matter on nitrate testing. I'm using a tetra test kit. I'll switch over once I place an order online again. You were definitely right. Nitrate shouldn't go up after 2 big water changes unless the first reading was off. 
I also had to bump up my CO2. All my KH was consumed so my pH controller set my co2 way too low. The tank is doing much better now. Someone mentioned i should check the co2 also and you are right too.
The big water changes made a dramatic difference. THe algae is definitely growing alot slower if at all. It would take 2 days for it to cover my plants and i see very little growth at the moment. It seems to be working!
THANKS EVERYONE!!!!!!


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## VaporFlowers (Jul 13, 2004)

Wow, this couldn't have come at a better time, so I extend a thank you as well! My hair algae actually killed my Clown Loach. I'd been taking out hair algae constantly but there was some I didn't see. He got tangled up in it and by the time I freed him, he was in bad shape and didn't make it more than a day. 

My otto (the only one left) seems to ignore the hair algae completely. As far as hair algae eaters, should I pick up more or are there better consumers? Just curious, I'll be taking everyone's advice but it'd be nice to have some live-animal help.


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## John P. (Apr 10, 2004)

IME ... Otos don't really touch it. Cherry Shrimp either don't touch it, or don't make a noticeable impact on the stuff.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Ottos are mainly useful to keep the plant leaves clean. You need to find a balance of nutrients to minimize growth of hair algae.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

UPDATE: The hair algae invasion has stopped and is actually receding. Thanks for all the help and great suggestions. 
I think the large water changes really helped to reset the nutrient balance in tank with such a large bioload. My nitrates have dropped to 10ppm. Plants are doing great too with vigourous growth. Fish are very happy too and vibrant. 
I cut back on beefheart and I am using more flake food.
You all rock!


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

that's great news roud: Now you can fine tune your nutrient dosage to get the best growth/color out of the plants. How do your fish like the flakes? I have not trained my fish on flake food yet, they only eat frozen blood worms right now, and ignore the flakes I throw in the tank occasionally.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Thanks Shalu. 
The colors of my plants were getting a bit yellow and white. I added more trace elements and iron. The colors perked up back to normal. 
The discus are actually eating more and more flakes with each day. THey seem to like the wardley spirulinia flakes. I havent been able to get any OSI ones yet. I think they are so happy and vigorous from the clean water that their appetite is soaring. 
I probably don't have to dose phosphates? (since there is such a high bioload)
What are the symptoms of phosphate deficiency?


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

one more question shalu, do you know where i can get some nice metallic blue discus? I like the blue scorpions or red turquoises but I havent been able to find any with a strong metallic blue color.
Do you have any yellow colored discus? How do they look in a planted tank?
Thanks!


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

Since I increased PO4 dosing, the green spots on the glass are decreasing. Do you have green spots on your glass? If so, you might want to try some PO4.

Have you visited Sunrisetropicals in Daly city? It is a LFS specializing in discus, they have different strains available at different times. You can also check out the website.

Here is a picture of some of my discus:








The blue one on the right is a blue diamand from Sunrise, raised from 2inch. The blue one on the left is a violet reflection(from Cary). The best yellow I have right now is a golden leopard snakeskin I got from Cary(imported from Roy in Singapore), not in the picture. It is starting to show spots on a clear yellow/golden base. I also have a goldensunrise from Sunrisetropicals, in the middle of the pic. It does have a little black peppering as you can see, but it looked quite clean in the store with a light tank background. Top right in the pic is a red spotted green from Sunrise, also raised from 2inch. It actually looks more like "red striped blue" :icon_bigg


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

Those are some nice discus that you have there shalu! roud: That blue diamond reminds me of the blue cobalt that I raised awhile back. Definitely brings back some fond memories. I might have to reconsider discus again w/the new tank, since I'm gonna deworm the altums anyways.

BTW, any of you guys know where I can pick up some royal blues (looks like the red spotted green in the picture)?


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

ibn, Sunrisetropicals some times had royal blues, for mail order, try Cary Strong @ Great Lakes Discus. Which LFS did you pick up Flourite for cheap(you mentioned in another thread)?


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

My friend owns a LFS in the Central Valley. He sells them for either $11.99 in the store last time that I checked. If you're interested, let me know and I can pick some up for you. I'll be seeing him this weekend and see if I can get a cut on the fluorite, since I'm picking up the tank from him as well.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

I was thinking about future tanks, don't need it right now. Will keep your offer in mind when I setup new tank


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

Hey Eric, I checked out sunrise's site. They seem to have royal blues listed in stock. I am thinking about going down there to check it out.
-Ray


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

Wow, they have some awesome discus there, just by looking at their site. They're actually pretty close to you Ray.


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## Crs2fr (Sep 22, 2004)

can you post that sunrise url>? my lfs sells em for 50+.. arrgg

chris


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

Sure, here it is:
http://www.sunrisetropicals.com/index.html

BTW, the discus on the site is by no means cheap, but for the smaller specimens ($25-50 depending on strain) isn't bad at all; plus they look to be high quality as evidence by shalu's pictures and others on the site. Definitely gotta stop by when I'm around the area.


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## rayhwong (Aug 6, 2004)

When are you free Eric? We can go..hehe.


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

Soon hopefully. I'm picking up the 90 this weekend and hopefully the stand will be completed in time so that I can get it up and running.


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## shalu (Jan 16, 2003)

If you guys want to buy small juvs. from Sunrise, try to go there shortly after a new shipment comes new. Once the fish are in the store, they can't be fed heavily(too much water change) and usually don't grow much. So if you buy some fish that have already been there, say, for a month, they would be slightly stunted already(though may not be too bad). Wish I had figured that out sooner.


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## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

That's typically the case. I'm used to staking out the store when fish orders come in, especially if they have what I'm looking for, or if the fish I'm getting is of any value.


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