# Battle against Cladophora(Blanket weed)/ staghorn Algae



## Absntmind (Jul 16, 2012)

If you are planning on tearing down the entire tank then you might as well start over with new plants as well. Why go to so much trouble just to introduce the problem again? 

As for the algae itself, lower your lighting (time and/or intensity), increase maintenance, and dose ferts. You might look into dosing excel as well to help combat the issue, but you still need to find the cause. Typically it's high organics, overfeeding, and high light. Purigen might help as well.


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## clayk85 (Jun 19, 2014)

I had a terrible issue with the Cladophora algae myself the last few weeks (maybe longer). I had no clue what it was at first. The way I got it is actually kinda comical, in a pathetic newbie kind of way lol. I have been wanting to get some nice moss that actually looks like outside forest moss, you know, the stuff that grows in the woods on rocks. Well,I was at my lfs and saw this stuff in their tank and it looked similar (as close as I've seen yet at least) to that so I got some. Turned out to be this algae crap and took over everything. 
To get rid of it though, first turn off all filtration and circulation then manually remove as much of it as you can and spot treat by syringe Hydrogen Peroxide directly onto the remaining strands. Leave filtration off for a bit,I waited about 30 minutes the first treatment. I did that about 5 nights ago and the next day everywhere I had got with the H2O2 was definitely dead. I did have some remaining pieces I didn't see the first time so I waited two days to treat again just because I was a little paranoid about putting too much in with the fish/shrimp/snails since I treated probably 10+ spots and used a 5ml squirt on each one in my 40G tank the first treatment. I ended up letting it sit about an hour the second time before restarting filters. The plants it was on are doing just fine and no issues with fish. I would recommend trying that before starting over. 
If it's excessive and unreasonable to do that because of a full takeover,I also read about a more drastic means of killing it. You would need to take out all fish though, but if you're too the point of redoing the entire tank it may be worth a shot if spot treating doesn't work. You basically dose the entire tank with H2O2 with no fish in it, making sure to take out any filter medium but keep filters on this time to ensure circulation and compete contact with all corners of tank. If you decide to go that route, I'll find the ratio of how much to put in for you again.


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## lamiskool (Jul 1, 2011)

had a problem with this algae a while back, I would literally take out baseball sized chunks out of the tank every other day and it would always come back no matter what I did, increased co2, decreased lighting, added/decreased ferts, none of it worked and it grew like crazy, decided to restart the whole tank and yes I would never risk re introducing it to my tank either so I started with brand new plants even though I had a huge mat of UG and a huge portion of fissiden moss growing in that tank at the time.


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## brandon429 (Mar 29, 2003)

No aquarium fish marine or fw are known to be peroxide sensitive so dose in tank as you prefer


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## lamiskool (Jul 1, 2011)

brandon429 said:


> No aquarium fish marine or fw are known to be peroxide sensitive so dose in tank as you prefer


Do not dose a ton of h2o2 it will kill off your fsh in too high of a concentration. I believed it wa harmless after watching a youtube vid of someone dosing there tank with it so I sprayed it directly into my tank everywhere I saw algae, it killed the algae but also killed all of my fish


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## Invincibal (Jun 21, 2014)

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions!
I eventually decided to tear down the tank considering the quantities of algae I was removing. (was bit impatient too... :icon_roll )
However, I didn't throw away all the plants... I tried removing as much of the affected portion as I could and then gave the plants a Potassium Permanganate treatment. I will be replanting them soon in a spare tank, just to see if I can defeat the Cladophora.

My guess for the reason it occured would be overfeeding of fish and low CO2 dosage. I have now installed a DIY CO2 reactor for the tank.

Once again, thanks a lot everyone for your valuable information. Helps a lot for newbies like me. :icon_bigg:bounce:


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## Solcielo lawrencia (Dec 30, 2013)

Cladophora is not affected by overfeeding or low CO2. It's independent from these variables. If you have it in your tank, it will grow in the same conditions plants do, hence the reason why it's such a hard algae to get rid of. Manual removal appears to be the only way to get rid of it, but even then, the smallest pieces, often invisible, will still make a come back so it requires constant removal from the same places you last removed it.


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