Cant get rid of hair algae, please help

[marekm]

Tank parameters:
1.5 years old
ADA amazonia substrate
200 L
filter: Oase Biomaster 600 thermo - loaded with 4L of seachem matrix and 200ml. of seachem purigen
Eheim skimmer for added flow and surface agitation
Chihiros wrgb2 slim set currently at 68/31/40 (r/g/b)
Lights are on from 12:00 till 18:30
CO2 injection enabled from 8:15 till 18:30, controlled by a PH controller aiming for 1 PH drop (7,6-7,7 in the morning, target PH is set to 6,5) - this has been added 3 weeks ago, previously its pretty likely that I had low levels of CO2
CO2 is injected via an inline atomizer
Fertilization using dry salts / EI, adding 16ppm NO3, 16ppm K, 2ppm PO4, 0,5 ppm FE + micros weekly
Also added some root tabs a month ago

Water parameters:
Temperature ranging between 24.5 - 26 C
KH 4
GH 7
Water changes@50% 1-2x per week

Crew:
4 keyhole cichlids - 1 of them hatched eggs couple of days before
4 gold mollys
10 rasboras
~6 nerite snails
~3 otocinclus

Plants:

• echinodorus - doing generally ok, but the oldest/biggest leaves seem to get hair algae after some time
• cryptocorynes - similar as echinodorus, new leaves looking fine, but the older ones are infected with hair algae, so I keep removing them
• vallisneria
• limnophila sessiliflora - this one helps a lot with the plant mass, it grows quickly even when the conditions are suboptimal during summer
• rotala bonsai - this has been added about a month ago, seems to be unable to establish itself, it keeps rotting in the bottom and then the upper part floats up. i keep replanting these upper parts but seems like its happening again and again
• hydrocotyle tripartita - added about a month ago as well, so far its not doing very well
• ludwigia sp. white - added about a month ago, this one is causing me a lot of headaches, its a beautiful plant, and seemed to be doing great, but the hair algae is slowly starting to grow on this one as well
• eleocharis - added a month ago, seems to be doing ok, new side shoots are starting to appear
• Alternanthera reineckii - added a month ago, seems to be doing ok, even if some leaves have holes in it(probably hungry fish), and a few leaves start to have hair algae

I must admit during summer the aquarium was in pretty bad shape - very few plants, very few water changes, temps around 27 C. I have been trying really hard to improve plant health and overall tank balance, and especially get rid of the hair algae for last 2 months, I have focused on 3 things mainly:

• dialed in CO2 - added a ph controller, made sure the filter is clean and has optimal flow
• added new plants to improve the plant mass
• remove as much algae from leaves/hardscape as possible

The frustrating part is that the hair algae is showing on new growth as well, so I am wondering if there is anything obvious that I am missing. I was thinking that perhaps the biomaster 600 is not enough for the tank and adding a 2nd filter could improve things?

Many thanks for any advices

 

[PARAGUAY]

A couple of observations some plants look slightly nutrient deficient ,this might be your flow needs improving or/ and look at your dosage, CO2 comes off as the light do ,try an hour before lights off ,maybe the lighting too high? You could add some floating plants and more fast growing stem plants, keep manually removing algae and try 2 or 3 water changes a week,?

 

[Zeus.]

You need a clean up crew

I had 50+ amamos and thousands of RCS and snails in my 500 litre tank and never hair algae was never an issue. In my Pot scape I use to get hair algae on some plants and put them in bigger tank for 24hrs and it was all gone. Amamos and RCS had a feast on them.

 

[marekm]

You need a clean up crew

I had 50+ amamos and thousands of RCS and snails in my 500 litre tank and never hair algae was never an issue. In my Pot scape I use to get hair algae on some plants and put them in bigger tank for 24hrs and it was all gone. Amamos and RCS had a feast on them.

unfortunately I cant have shrimp in this tank because of the keyhole cichlids and mollies :/

 

[G H Nelson]

Algae
Your lighting period is too short....reduce the intensity to 50% and increase the photoperiod to 8 hours!
Increase the plant mass....use some of the stem plants as floating plants as per the tutorial below.

Thread 'Using stem plants as a filtering aid at Start Up!'

19 Nov 2020

The subject of using fast-growing stem plants as part of a filtering aid has cropped up a few times recently.
This idea has been around for a long time so not new, it has benefits, especially for a new setup.

1. Improves water quality.
2. Reduces excess light.
3. Reduces diatoms.
4. Reduces Nitrite.
5. Reduces Nitrate.
6. Helps reduce algae outbreaks.
7. Indicator of a Nitrate shortage.
8. Oxygenates the water column.
9. Increases beneficial bacteria.
10. Plant cover.

Using fast-growing stem plants as a floating plant filtering aid has always worked well for me!
Although every aquarium...

• G H Nelson
• Replies: 0
• Forum: Articles / Tutorials

• 

 

[marekm]

Algae
Your lighting period is too short....reduce the intensity to 50% and increase the photoperiod to 8 hours!
Increase the plant mass....use some of the stem plants as floating plants as per the tutorial below.

Thread 'Using stem plants as a filtering aid at Start Up!'

19 Nov 2020

The subject of using fast-growing stem plants as part of a filtering aid has cropped up a few times recently.
This idea has been around for a long time so not new, it has benefits, especially for a new setup.

1. Improves water quality.
2. Reduces excess light.
3. Reduces diatoms.
4. Reduces Nitrite.
5. Reduces Nitrate.
6. Helps reduce algae outbreaks.
7. Indicator of a Nitrate shortage.
8. Oxygenates the water column.
9. Increases beneficial bacteria.
10. Plant cover.

Using fast-growing stem plants as a floating plant filtering aid has always worked well for me!
Although every aquarium...

• G H Nelson
• Replies: 0
• Forum: Articles / Tutorials

• 

thank you sir for the advice, I will implement it. I will buy a pot or two of limnophila and add it as floating plants.

Did some testing:
KH 5
GH 8
Mg 6 ppm
Fe 0,05 ppm
PO4 0,1ppm
NO3 1ppm
K >15ppm

Seems like the NO3 and PO4 are pretty low, so I am going to increase the weekly EI dosage by 50%:
K 16ppm -> 26ppm
NO3 15ppm -> 24ppm
PO4 2ppm -> 3ppm
The new numbers are according to what the EI supplier recommends anyways.

I have also found an old bottle of Seachem Flourish and will start adding that as well, I have a micronutrient mix included in my EI kit, but seems like there are some extra elements in Seachem Flourish.

There is one thing I am puzzled about, the EI dosage should provide a lot more than enough nutrients, how is then possible that my NO3/PO4 levels are so low, especially considering the pretty low overall plant mass in my aquarium?

 

[marekm]

Some update for the tank: Seems like the hair algae was improving lately a bit, but the overall plant health/growth was very bad, so after a lot of frustration I decided to rescape/reset the tank. The reason was that I continued to remove leaves covered by hair algae, but at one time I have realized this is going nowhere as I kept losing the plant mass.
What I did:

• removed all the hardscape
• uprooted all the plants
• did gravel vac / hand wash the aqua soil in aquarium using bare hands, seems like a LOT of aquasoil decomposed into dust, because I had to do water changes a couple of times, and the day after I had to clean the prefilter and filter because it was clogged with all the debris / aquasoil mud.

I guess it was a pretty major hit to the tank ecosystem, I was afraid that my cycle will crash, but fortunately everything seems to be fine - the fish have calmed down after the shock and are now doing fine, NH4, NO3, NO2 readings are all safe.
So I will now have to be patient and wait to see if the decomposed aquasoil was indeed the problem and the plant health will start to improve.

When I was uprooting the plants, I have found something very interesting - all the plants, except the cryptocorynes have their roots in pretty bad shape, lots of rotting and melting. One of the echinodoruses was so bad that I had to throw it away, the root was almost completely rotten. I am really keen to understand the cause of this, I have a couple of ideas:
1. I have added root tabs 3 weeks ago, I might have overdo it (i used around 30 root tabs, which was in line with manufacturers recommendation of using 1 per 10x10cm), and perhaps there has been an ammonia spike from the tabs that have caused the roots to melt?
2. in the past 1-2 months I have been removing leaves damaged by hair algae, I am thinking that perhaps the parts of the root system attached to the removed leaves did not get any nutrients from the leaves and died off, and this started to affect the healthy parts of the root as well
3. the problem was indeed the aquasoil, which was 1.5 years old, and I must say that I never did a proper gravel vac all the way to the bottom of the tank. The most I cleaned was a couple of centimeters from the top