# Help Brown Hair Algae taking over my tank !!



## candymancan (30 Mar 2015)

I have never seen this algae before in my 20 years fishkeeping..  I've delt with green spot, red algae, BBA, and green hair or string algae but not this brown stuff..  Its in my 44g Pentagon discus tank..  Its different looking then BBA or other hair algae I have seen.  You cant see the strands its like really fluffy and like cloudy almost.

It grows on every single plant in my aquarium but doesn't touch the rocks or filters or anything like that..   In fact its nearly killed off my once big watersprite and same with my telethara cardinalis.   It grows on their roots and smothers the leaves.

Since its my discus tank I feed the fish 3 times a day at least..  2 times with freeze dried blood worm and once with tetra flakes (plus shrimp).   I change the water in this tank every 2 days sometimes 3 and I change about 50-70% of it when I do.  I have an Eheim 2217 canister filtering it, and I use a single slot tetra 30 Whisper HOB which has a sponge on the intake and I use 2 bags of 100ml purigen..  I do this to try to keep nitrates are there lowest if possible since purigen sucks organics before they turn into ammonia and ect.

Water temp is 82-84f, PH is around 6.8-7.2, Phosphates which I thought was odd was 0..  My tap water has at least 1.0-1.5ppm of phosphates in it.. and all of my planted tanks usually are around that..  But this tank it was 0 and I don't have many plants in it, which leads me to believe this algae is eating all the phosphates.  My lighting is Orbit 2x 65w Power compact light.  It has a 6700/6700 light and a Actinic 420/460..  I never used the actinic though when this algae started, I always just used the 6700/6700 light.  So I figured maybe the lighting is too low so I started to keep my actinic on ( I like actinic because it makes my discus and electric blue rams really pop out)  The light is also on stands so its like 6 inches above the water line and the tank itself its what 24 inches tall..  So it isn't like my lighting is super high.. its deff in the medium range but not really high..

I don't dose ferts either, mainly because my discus I noticed act extremely weird when I use flourish.. And I don't want to kill $400 worth of fish in my tank..


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## tam (30 Mar 2015)

I got similar algae when I swapped out my lights, they were too bright. Removing as much as I could manually and then lowering the light level got rid of it for me  I added floating plants so I could reduce the light getting through to the tank but still have the lighting period I wanted to see the fish.


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## candymancan (30 Mar 2015)

That's weird..  I wouldn't think one 65W Power compact 6700/6700 on a 6 inch stand in a 24 inch tank was that much light, I didn't even have my Actinic PC on.. I heard this stuff grows from too little light that's why I have my actinic on now with my 6700 light trying to kill this stuff lol.

I mean I know Power compacts are really bright.. Pretty much equiv to t5 high outputs..  I also have custom made reflectors on then.. they bend like this /-\ on the light vs a flat metal back so maybe it is my light...  Im not sure what floating plants to use though.. I have plants in the substrate im trying to carpet so I dunno if I want to block the light either lol but this slimy brown hair stuff sucks.. It comes off really easily and its slimy too but grows so fast as well


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## Nelson (30 Mar 2015)

Looks like Rhizoclonium to me.


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## candymancan (2 Apr 2015)

Well I tried looking that up.  does seem like a form of that but there is no way to really get rid of it..  I only had 1 Power compact light on in my tank and it blew up and that lighting was very high so I dunno...  its still growing in my tank.. thankfully its very easy to get rid of.. just wave my hand in the water swirling around it literally falls off the plants..


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## candymancan (3 Apr 2015)

Do you guys think Seagel from seachem would work kill this ?  Since this algae seems to feed heavily on phosphates because its the only tank I have 0 phosphates in and the only tank I havbe an algae issue in...   Well I figure maybe seagel would work..  Its suppose to remove silicates, phosphates, and organic waste..   Although im going to sift the carbon balls out because I don't wanna use carbon with my discus what do you guys think ?  Removing the phosphates and silicates would work ?


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## dw1305 (4 Apr 2015)

Hi all, 
Just syphon it out and add a few more plants, eventually it will go a way. 

cheers Darrel


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## candymancan (6 Apr 2015)

I will, Its my discus tank so I change the water every 2 days anyway, and since this stuff literally falls off from waving my hand in the water its easy to remove but still...  I found another guy who changed substrates like me..  To original Carbib sea floramax.. which is what I got 3 weeks ago and he too now has the same EXACT algae... this cant be a coicedance  (spelling)


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