I've never liked chemical removal methods.
Herbivores are nice, but often times, we cannot use them for other reasons, and learning more about algae and why it appears, is induced and grows well, without herbivores.....is a critical question/s.
Basically we can learn to do a better job growing plants without the herbivores than relying on them.
But for times when we do slack off, they do the work that we would rather not, and they do add a layer of security and resiliency to the system.
I have whimple piranha, yet they do not bother the Amano shrimp, yet in a larger pleco tank, they eat them asap. Fish behavior plays a large role, I like Altum angels, but they will hunt th Amano's down, same with some discus.
So trying to figure out more broad based cures for various types of algae and why they occur, so we can set up layers of redundacy and stop it before it can get a chance to grow seems the wisest path for control.
This also tends to provide better growing conditions for plants.
Thread algae and most green algae in generally seems to do quite well when my CO2 is reduced/declines, Amano and several others using the full line of ADA have also mentioned this.
I've seen it perhaps 30-50X over the years in good otherwise algae free tanks(the control) and then repeated it to reduce and remove the hair algae.
Plants will still grow etc with the Amanos and no algae, which is generally what folks want, but you can still improve and be even better off by learning more than the immediate issue/urgency through better plant growing conditions.
This stops the issue at the root.
Herbivores, even these, are icing on the cake so to speak.
They also are good at Riccia and other fine needle/fine fronds.
When you have dramatic growth rates also...the plants outpace and bury the algae. I recently did this with a couple of species.
Regards,
Tom Barr
