How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

Hair algae tends to bug folks more than others, good nutrients alone often cannot eradicate it. But good nutrients can prevent it from infesting your tank. The problem: how to get rid of what's there.

Prevention:
Sterile techinque: Dip everything in H2O2/Bleach etc, prevent any water, fish waste from allowing any spores into the tank.Thuis can work if you do not plan on adding, removing plant species from this or other sterile tanks. All it takes is one forgetful moment. This has some benefits, but also has trade offs, most fail in this apporach over time.

Once the algae does make it past this line of defense:

Rapid response:
This is where many fail, they hope it'll just go away. Seldom does that occur. Many think it'll be taken care 5 days from now when they do a water change, that typically works. But if you see algae, that means something else is wrong, something that affects plant growth. Algae will respond first to these changes, so it's wise to check things when see the algae and do the water change later that week. This is my main method.

Negelected tank with bad infestation:
Okay, so you have slacked off, now you have a nice infestation. Hair algae that infest gravel pieces: rotate the gravel's top 1" under, no light, no growth, bury the algae alive(think cheesy horror film). This is fairly easy.

You can do sections of the gravel each week if the tank is large and spread out the work and disturbance to the tank.

Plants: prune the stuff off, pick and preen. If this is bothersome, remember the rapid response next time, it's easier to deal with a small patch rather than ignoring a problem and hoping it goes away. Uproots the plants and give them a good inspection, work each section of the tank, perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 of the bottom surface at a time each week, after a couple of three weeks, algae will be gone. Adding good nutrients during that time will select for the plants even further.

Ebnd result from this: the plants have good healthy growth and leaves/roots/stems etc left, no so so looking plant leaves, the tank looks well groomed!

Now no herbicide or snake oil will ever do this for you, the end result looks better and you target ONLY the algae and decay on the plants, no herbicide will ever do that either 100%.

Pull up everything from each section(say do 1/2 or 1/3 sections) of the tank at each water change-always prune first then do the water change at the end.

This stresses the algae that's there, then they produce spores in 1-4 hours and then these spores can be removed before having a chance to settle and attach to a plant. Also a good idea to run a UV the first 24 hours after a water change/pruning. Also clean glass top to bottom, this will prevent glass scratches and is the way you clean your home (hopefully

Clean the filter, net out any dead leaves, fluff the plants, and any dirt that's around the tank after you are done trimming. Get everything out of there. Use a fine brine shrimp net to get things out. Clean your equipment,driftwood and rocks. Bleach and H2O2 are good for this. H2O2 on wood, the rest: bleach. Add some Amano shrimps etc.

Now if you remove all the algae or most of it, then you add good nutrients, after a few repeats of this, algae will not do very well no matter what.
You have totally reduce the biomass fo algae, increased the ability of the plants to grow and be healthy, removed the algae from surfaces, only young wimpy zoospores are left looking to grow on surfaces. They take a while to grow up into harder to eradicate adults, so by the next 3-4 days or week, you hit them again, they will die off and only very resistent seasonal spores will remain. These spores are not like the zoospores, they need a large change in the conditions to thrive and bloom/activate their growth.

Generally things like a decline in CO2 or O2 levels, increased light(with no increase in CO2/nutrients etc), NH4 and temperature.
Of course neglect helps these things occur in our tanks.

If you keep up on it, then things go well, if you do not want to keep up on it or find you don't... even if you want to, try less light, then if that's still not enough, go non CO2.

Hair algae is much like duckweed or other plant like weeds. Cladophora is a lot like a plant and is in Plantae: this species possesses: Chl a and b, starch as a storgae product, same chloroplast type as vascular plants and pigments. Green spot algae and Chara are both green algae that are highly evolved and do well in most plant tanks. Hair algae is not far behind. Now what does ahir do to smaller algae that can live on less nutrients? It blocks the light below, same deal with plants, they out compete algae for light, so at lower lighting, the plants do very well. Rather than breaking the light cycle up, it's a question of competing for the light itself.

You can run a UV after a good pruning/cleaning, you can run a diatom, you can add Excel, you can add H2O2, you can add copper at lower doses(just like H2O2).
Once you get things settled and do this the following week, these are not needed. I don't need them and simply don't use them any longer. I know the tank will balabce out and in favor of the plants.

Folks that have done reworks and teried this know things will be okay and you do not need to use other things other than pruning, water changes, good nutriernt levels. It's the same old thing 1000 times.

If the issue is bad or you are motivated, do this routine every 3-4 days and you can knock out about any algae issue inside a 2 week peroid and have a very nice looking tank quickly.

Keep up this effort for 8 weeks, and you can have an Amano tank.


Enjoy

Tom Barr

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Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

Depends on what you are calling the fast growers and which specific plants you speak of.

Some might not be considered fast growers, eg, Aunbias roots often become infested. Any type of fine needled plant also entangles algae and moss etc is classic.

Also type of hair algae plays a role, short hair algae will grow on some leaves if the tank is out of balance with NO3/CO2 etc.

Hair algae does not grow on plants well if things are set correctly.

One could argue however, that the faster growing plants leech out more nutrients to the algae, but if the water column has plenty of nutrients already............... this no longer makes any difference........

So........not much of any arguement.

I do not find that the hair algaes grow on the faster growers first personally, just the plants that can easily catch and retain the filaments......

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

I mean try everything else 3x first(CO2, Nutrients, then maybe.........)

H2O2 still has some issues to work through, I found low dosages killed Egeria and Lagorsiphon madagascarensis and Hydrilla and did nothing for the algae.

It is good for spot cleaning things you do not want to remove.
It will and has killed fish to about each post that is placed on the web, someone over doses it.

Seems to occur often.
Excel seems less on an issue. The Initial dosing rate done 3-4 x a week might be plenty to do the job, I've done it with no effects on a Tiger pleco. Those are tough animals though. Other species maybe much more sensitive.

Excel will add some buffer if you have trouble with CO2.
Fix the CO2, then the BBA is gone.

I have not found any green algae alagae response to Excel to date.
It's still growing after 3 weeks of dosing.

These are not miracle cures either..............

Stop looking for them. Go in and prune the sucker, add nutrients routinely, make sure the CO2 is good enough to have high pearling rates.

Prune is plant and algae specific and does no harm to the things you WANT to grow well.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

Sounds like Spirogyra to me.

You need to pick it out, it's very much like bladderwort (U gibba).
It's very much like higher plants. Toothbrush and removing the fine needled plants that it always gets entangled in.

Take them out and trim them and preen them. I've not tried a blackout, my guess it would take 4-5 day and plants don;t like 5 or more days in most cases(the species you have).

There's a couple of other options.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

Actually algae rule, 75% of the earth, virtually all of the O2 produced etc.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

If you rotate it, then the pieces that are infested, will be underneath.

If you correct the issue to begin with........ then there should not be any new growth.

Until that is addressed, you will keep having algae grow on the gravel.
Pruning, rotating the gravel under, blackouts, bleach, H2O2, whatever.........that simply removes it, what you need to do is focus on the plants and growing them better.

Then once the algae is stopped growing, then removing it will help and it will not return.

If you are still getting algae, I can tell pretty much that something is still not right environmentally, algae never lies.

You can vacuum the gravel also, that can help and replant it a few times and use tough cheapy plants till things get more balanced then return the hairgrass back.

Hair grass loves high CO2 FYI and KNO3.

Regards,
Tom Barr



Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: How to get rid of hair algae and keep it away

Amano shrimp.

Regards,
Tom Barr