# brown hair algae new tank (PICS)



## howard (Oct 8, 2012)

This is my first high tech tank. I thought I had all my bases covered when starting this a month ago, but algae hit it bad right after setup. It started on the driftwood so i thought it would go away, it just got worse though. Algae in this tank has consisted of brown hairy looking algae, green dust algae and green dots on the glass. I do 3 water changes a week and plan to do so till the algae is gone. During the water changes I clean out as much as possible on the plants, rocks, wood, and glass. Next week my algae crew is going in 20 amano's, 10 nirite's and 4 oto's. I added some old media from another filter to help with the cycling this week so hopefully no deaths and I'll be able to get my money's worth out of them. 

I think my problem lies with my EI dosing. In my last setup I was using 1/4 dose. On this set up I have been sticking to the 1/4 to 1/2 the recommended dose, the plant mass is still rather low. 

So what would you guys do? Am I missing something what's putting the system out of balance?

TANK SPECS 
3 weeks old 
Lighting: 2x24w T5HO 1x18w T8 for 8 hours
Filter: ehiem 2217
Co2: misting


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## howard (Oct 8, 2012)

Update. Now I have also found a few very long fine green stings.


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## ChadRamsey (Nov 3, 2011)

ok you have Rhizoclonium and thread algae. Both are common with new tanks. I actually just got control of the same two issues myself. 

Here is what i found that worked:

1) I manually, EVERYDAY without fail, removed as much as possible.
2) HIGH co2!!!! (maybe the most important step), mine comes on 30 min before my HIGH lighting.
3) I dose excel 2x the daily reccomended dose about 2 hours BEFORE my co2 comes on. *DAILY*!
4) IE dosing of ferts, this is a MUST! Both of these algaes are due to low nutrients
5) Nerites, amanos, and ramshorns. (in a 125g i have 5 nerites, 10 ramshorns(ATM), and 22 amanos)

I have very little of either algae types now.


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## howard (Oct 8, 2012)

Chad thanks for the reply. I bumped up my EI dosing and will keep up with the algae cleaning. I have 2L of excel I'll have to start dosing again. For some reason I thought excel wouldn't do anything with the high amount of co2 I'm running. The algae so far comes up easy when I manually remove it, so I should be able to keep on top of it.


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## happi (Dec 18, 2009)

this algae is common in new tanks, it will eventually start to fade away. just hang in there, remove manually till then.


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