Hair Algae? Newly planted aquaria

[Chaz]

So my tank is about 3 weeks old now, it's planted with stargrass and dwarf hairgrass. I've had a massive algea bloom of stringy, easy to remove brown algae, It's everywhere. I spend an hour cleaning the tank and removing as much algae as possible, doing a 70% water change and then the next day, it's creeping back again. it's hard to keep on top of. I was wondering if anyone new why? I'll list my tank stats below.

Also, some of the dwarf hair grass has some yellow strands, and the very tips and sides of my stargrass are yellow brown, just a very small rim around the leaf. Anyone know what this is? What deficiency?

My tank is 30L, 22W of light (lights are on for 9 hours), I'm using tropica 60 plant growth system and dosing 0.75ml of Flourish excel daily. my filter is ehiem classic 250, my subsrate is ADA aquasoil amazonia. I'm not currently fertilizing. tank is not cycled.

Thanks.

 

[tim]

Too much light on startup 22w is a lot for a 30 ltr & 5-6 hours maximum for the first month or two is plenty IMHO, I run 6 hours permanently on most of my high tech setups.

 

[Michael W]

Tim is right, the lighting is overkill. My 30L shrimp tank uses a 14w tube and on top of that it is covered with a blanket of duckweed, it is also on for 6 hours a day. I did experience some algae even with this as my duckweed had died off at some point but now they made a great recovery and the algae has slowly decreased.

Consider reducing your lighting with the use of floating plants/ elevating the lighting unit or switching it out. Don't be afraid to use ferts, I've noticed a reduced appearance of algae when I used ferts with my tank which also helped with the duckweed recovery. Also water changes and manual removal of the hair algae will help.