Oh NO!

[oside]

I have the worst case of hair algae ever! I went through several "phases" as the tank developed. First was the brown fuzzy algae that covered everything, including the two fake logs. I put a mystery snail in there (helped a little) & 3 otocinclus. I would clean the plants/leaves every few days by hand. Eventually this brown algae faded away & a new bright green/blue encrusting type algae appeared. It never really got hold - seemed slow growing. Then the hair began. at first I would just clean it (by hand) off the plants. It grows back so fast that I can't keep up, & now has completely covered some of my swords & hair grass to the point that they look like a living cousin IT is in the tank.
Any one know how to rid hair algae?




That dark green/brown clump in the middle of the pic is actually Eleocharis covered in hair algae

Current stats:

30 gal tank using Tetratec PF500
15 neon tetras
2 bamboo shrimp
3 mystery snails (soon to be more?)
2 dwarf puffers
1 otocinclus (2 died?)
plants - several kinds
hagen co2
seachem fluorite substrate
dose with seachem fluorish one cap / week (liquid fert.)
130 watts @ 6500K "daylight" cf -(using 2 LOA flood lights)

Please help???

[RAVEN]

Have you checked your phosphates? And have you been over feeding? Are you over fertilizng? Good luck!

[Matt Rogers]

I had the same exact problems in my plant tank until I started doing weekly water changes and added the $20 Hagen Co2 system.

Old bulbs may contribute to this too.

[Olyoxenfree]

Try doing daily water changes to dilute the nutrients. I also mix in a little aquarium salt which algae sometimes cannot tolerate. Also, clean the algae of the front glass, but leave it on the sides and back. If algae on the glass eats up the nutrients maybe it will not grow so much on decor. Also, have you added new lights recently? Cos, that would explain alot. My cousin's tank began to clear up with daily water changes, and some phoso absorbing resin in his filter.

[igotworms]

I agree. Do daily water changes. Also how old is the tank? I went through a hair algae fase that lasted a long time. If you are past that you could try to throw in some Amano shrimp. I would say 5-10 shrimp would help out with your problem.

[oside]

It is a tank that has been up & running for about 1 year, but setup differently. I transplanted the old residents to a bigger tank & added the flluorite substrate (only 1/2 the bottom), plants, Co2, & fish. These were not added all at once, but all have been in now for about 6-8 weeks. I do not feed this tank heavily - main residents are just neons. One of the shrimp molted the other day & appears very healthy (both shrimp "filter" with their hand/nets filters open quite often). All the animal life seems very happy / healthy, it's just that the plants are being over run by hair. They were growing very well until it appeared.
I wonder if I might need more light- this is a"deep" tank. I might attempt at cleaning out the hair, adding some more light & more plants & try to "starve out" the algae - think this might work?

what ever you do make shure not to use any algae killers even the ones that say '' for planted tanks'' it will kill your alage but and either severly harm or kill your plants!