# Killing cladophora...



## CannaBrain (Oct 3, 2008)

Hehe... may not work for you, but recently I put some rainbow cichlids in a tank that had some hair-like, clado-like algae, and they ate it all up w/in 3 days. Now I'm having trouble trying to culture more for them to eat!


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## Zoomy (Sep 13, 2014)

Lowering my light output (easy with my Satellite Plus Pro) and time really helped. Plus adding amano shrimp. No sign of it, now.


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## c9bug (Feb 15, 2015)

I had clado in my hairgrass. It was a pain to get rid of. I ended up manually removing as much as possible and spot treating with H2O2 and then glutaraldehyde (used metricide 14) the day after. It is kind of like the "one-two punch" referenced a lot on this forum. The two solutions seem to work synergistically. I also vacuumed up a lot of the mulm in my substrate to reduce the nutrients available to it. After doing this regularly for a couple of weeks the clado has become difficult to find.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

Spot treatment is difficult if the clado isn't on the bottom. Not at all impossible.
But it sits(more or less) where you put it on the bottom. But it sinks down past the
clado if it's up on the top of plants or on a deco like wood.
I happened to buy an e-bay syringe that I think is originally made for filling ink in
printers. It holds 20 ml and has a 20" long nozzle/tube that is 1/8 inch diameter.
This works great in my 10g tank for dosing HP on clado etc. But just a regular syringe or Pipette is fine. Best not to use more than 2 ml per gallon in one dose per day for
the total amount you use on one day. Just turn off anything that makes movement in the water when you do this. Squirt it on a section of the clado and let set for 30 min before turning back on the current.
Agter 20-40 seconds it should start bubbling up around the aria where you put it.
Does not work very well on GSA. But the clado should be a different shade of color the next day. Usually a lush dark green it will be much lighter and dull in color.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

This was the result of this dummy thinking I could "control" it/w 100 PAR and no injected CO2.

















The dates on these are fairly accurate BTW. This is it in May of this year.
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/images/pGallery/pg_11553e.jpg

What you see in this picture on the walls is either Fissidens or Java moss. And yes that's DHG without injected CO2.
And yes that is mulm on the bottom. "Others" call it fertilizer. Some finds it's way into the sub and actually
becomes ferts and the rest disolves in the water to become the dreaded "high organics" but I do 50% water changes per week so not an issue.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Raymond S. said:


> Spot treatment is difficult if the clado isn't on the bottom. Not at all impossible.


That's all well and good.. but what do you treat it with? My tests suggest that the algae I have resists both H2O2 and Excel in very high concentrations...

I used 2ml per 8 *ounces* of water.. That's 1 cup of water, with enough H2O2 to treat a 2 gallons, and enough excel to double-dose a 10 gallon tank.


So in my "cup experiment" I exceeded tank-dosing levels by a factor of 16 in H2O2 and a factor of 80 for excel...


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## g4search (Aug 10, 2014)

Matt,
killing cladophora selectively in a planted tank is nearly impossible. Cladophora are the most plant like of all algae (if you can call them that) and you have to treat clad basically as a plant [moss]. (Remember, Moss Balls are a species of cladophora -_Cladophora aegagropila_)

There are a number of fish that eat them, but they are not specifically targeting just clad. SAE may be your best bet, if you want to go with fish.

I have a hair algae infestation in my Christmas Moss and I am using the "manual" method to remove these. It is the only safe method that works! 
Fortunately, cladophora does not attach itself to anything, so you don't have to yank any "roots" out. Just slowly tease the "hairs" out of whatever jungle you have until they are gone! And you will WIN this battle.

If you DO want to use chemicals, remove all plants and critters, and hit your tank with bleach. (it works, but I would not recommended it).

BTW, in most cases a tooth brush works well to capture the strands.

good luck!


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Looks like manual removal is my only real option, paired with lighting adjustments to try to control regrowth.

The tank in question is my 10 gallon tank... I'm not going to put a SAE in there, the tank is way too small.

Tank-safe chemicals like excel and H2O don't really seem to do anything to the stuff.. My original hope was to use manual removal, and then some kind of chemical spot-treatment to clean up the last bits.

I might try to grab some chunks and give them dips in bleach or potassium permanganate this weekend to see if those work, as I already have both on hand. 

While it would be a bit of a hassle to remove the afflicted plants, doing an out-of-tank dip on them seems like good insurance against it coming back.. Assuming that one of them actually kills the stuff.

Right now I've been repeatedly removing all the algae I find, but there's always some hiding between the leaves on the rotalas and Myriophyllum mattogrossense...


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## Herku (Jul 25, 2015)

In this case I'd try to introduce something that will out compete that stuff. Algae mats have high success in dealing with a lot of algae related issues. Maybe even horn wort. I've always been a fan of algae eaters but a hang over the back tub with loads of algae in it will filter the water so that you shouldn't have that issue anymore.

The algae mat is the plastic grid with a line of bubbles underneath. Vertical so to create a lot of movement.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Algae mat? You mean like the algae scrubbers that reef tanks sometimes do?

https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/algae-scrubber-basics.264/

I'd have to it in *much* smaller scale, since this is a tiny little 10 gallon tank.

I think I'd rather do it with in-tank plants in the out-competing department

Currently for fast growing plants, I have several fast growing species in there.. 
-Hygrophila. Polysperma (still getting established)
-Hygrophila. Corymbosa var 'Angustafolia'
-myriophyllum mattogrossense, 
-Ludwigia Sp. Red 
-hemianthus glomeratus

I may need to change some things around to give the fast growing plants more space, as the tank is currently dominated by 2 large crypts...

I still think one of the keys is going to be tweaking the light level.. the stingray I have on there is just a tad strong, even with a glass lid..


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## Herku (Jul 25, 2015)

Yeah that's the one. I see you've got frog bit too. I've heard of doing blackouts but never did one myself. I'm not sure if that would have been an option against clado


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## Hmoobthor (Aug 15, 2011)

I deal with this for well over 3-5 month. Spot treating is not going get you anywhere, you can add excel as much as you want but its going nowhere. You need a fish that will eat it such as SAE. By adding a few of them plus 3+ amano will you clearly clear out the algae for good. 

I don't clear wat others say about treating the symptoms, when its gets in ur tank its a fight to get it out. If your going treat the symptoms you might as well dump everything out of the tank and start new because that is the only way.

Once I got it under control, I change the whole substrate out.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Sae is still not an option. This is a 10 gallon tank folks... Might try some shrimp, but the high gh needed by the other residents is not shrimp friendly.


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## Doppelgaenger (Jul 20, 2015)

I found when spot treating BGA that the key was to come back and hit the problem spots with H2O2 repeatedly over the course of a day, this was much more effective than doing it just once a day. Of course the real problem was that I was over-fertilizing like crazy.

lower your light and try amano shrimp. And remember to drip acclimate them to your water.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

At 450ppm tds I will have to be careful with shrimp. 

That said, the tank already has mollies in it, which are algae grazers.


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