# Hair algae RUINING my tank!



## johnnywales (28 Jan 2013)

Beauiful tank turning to ruin.

3 watts per gallon, co2 injection, daily/weekly tropica ferts.

Localised around mosses.

External cannister filter. 

Please help, its taking over






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## Matt Warner (28 Jan 2013)

Hi, too much light and not enough flow and co2 would be my guess. 3wpg of light is too much light. How long are you having the lights on for and how much co2 are you adding. Do you have a drop checker to measure the co2 level?


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## krazypara3165 (28 Jan 2013)

Size of tank? 
Are you dosing ferts? 
Lighting period?
Injecting co2? 
Type of lighting?

And how long has tank been running?

With the answers to these questions we can help you out. However, most of the time youll find algae is simply  the cause of too much light.


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## Iain Sutherland (28 Jan 2013)

Hey, hair algae is caused by insufficient co2 so you need to either increase the amount of co2 available, increase flow and distribution of co2, reduce lighting, add liquid carbon, increase maintenance or most likely all of these. Its a pain in moss as you cant spot dose with liquid carbon as it will kill the moss and its pretty hard to manually remove it with a toothbrush as it will pull all the moss with it.
Personally i have always ended up removing the moss to get the upper hand with quantity of algae then apply the measures above.
Reduce your light intensity should always be the first thing you should do. If you give a little more info on lights, duration and filters it will help to advise more accurately.


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## Arana (28 Jan 2013)

johnnywales said:


> 3 watts per gallon, co2 injection, daily/weekly tropica ferts. Localised around mosses.


 
3 watts per gallon - sounds like far too much
co2 injection - are you injecting enough and is it being distrubuted efficiently?
daily/weekly tropica ferts - are you dosing enough?
Localised around mosses - mosses are notorius for collecting gunk

most probably a combination of all the above factors


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## johnnywales (29 Jan 2013)

The tank has been going for about 12 weeks, the tank is 65 litres and im running a xp2 Rena external cannister. Co2 being dosed until drop checker green.

Since mosses being effected, photoperiod reduced to 4 hours and co2 4 hours. 

Ferts im using edis mixture from here, maybe 10ml a day now.



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## johnnywales (29 Jan 2013)

Lighting is x2 t5 bulbs. 
Injection co2.


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## flygja (30 Jan 2013)

I'd personally get rid of all affected moss ASAP. So far I've not been able to kill hair algae once they've taken hold. I like your tank by the way, the middle white sand part is interesting!


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## ceg4048 (30 Jan 2013)

You have too much light and not enough CO2. Increase CO2 and reduce the lighting intensity by 50%. Hair algae is cause by insufficient CO2 for the lighting level. Increase the injection rate and make sure that you turn on the gas at least an hour or two BEFORE the light is turned on. You can also supplement the CO2 by daily addition of any of the liquid carbon products.

Cheers,


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## johnnywales (30 Jan 2013)

Thanks guys.

The gas is on an hour before already. the gas and lights at the moment are only running 6 hours each.

In terms of the nutrient dosage, im using Tropica Specialised Green, however the "3 pumps a week" is too inaccurate. Is there a rule of "too much dosing?"

I took one of the T5 24 W bulbs out today, so it now just has the one. Not as bright but if it will cause a balence id be happier.

This now reduces my light from 3wpg to 1.5.

The plants that are in now (excluding my red leafed ones) will be coming out as they are easy brush specimens. I want to get a balence before i introduce nicer ones. I want to kill off this algae asap.

Its definately the lights, ive run co2 and high filtration before on plants with ADA sub. The lights is the only new equip im not used to.

The co2, i am using as much as i can before the Rasbora and Tetras rush to the surface to breathe. The drop checker is always green during the photoperiod.

If the moss is the biggest area of issue, would you advise to cut it all out and dispose?

I can get new moss, but i fear it will re occur!

Any advice is welcome!

The off the shelf products im assuming are a waste of money, and the toothbrush is pulling the algae into the water column and thus onto other plants.

Thanks!


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