mjordan

the battles on bettween me and this mutant black/brown hair stuff growing on my plants. its clmping them together and i dont know wat it is. get it out of my tank.

Jess

Sounds like black beard algae (really red algae). I understand its from overfeeding and high phosphate in your water. (Hopefully an expert will see this and give you advice.) I've had it in my tank as well and took apart the tank and cleaned it off the plants. Some I just threw away. Very few creatures will eat it. Siamese algae eaters and amica splendins will eat it. But then you're introducing more creatures to take care of something that may just be caused by too many nutrients in your water.
Found a site that describes what to do, its not very encouraging.

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/doc.../tonealg.shtml

mathas

Does it look like any of the pictures here?

pepetj

Hi mjordan: I got this uninvited guest in my Rainbowfish tank. I ended up removing all the substrate and replaced it with Eco-Complete -in fact I noticed it shortly before planning to do so since it was not the hairy-black algae that took me in that direction but providing optimal substrate to my plants.

It's too soon to tell if substrate replacement will solve my black algae bloom or not. But I will perform a thorough cleaning of my plants now, just in case. Thanks for the link Jess.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

Jess

You're welcome!

Butterfly

Both good sites. Heres another with pictures also
http://www.plantgeek.net/article_viewer.php?id=9
Carol

Jess

Carol, you're right, thats another great source for information on algae. Thanks.

mjordan

mathes it looks similar tothe middle pic. but it is much longer 3 inches mabey and it ties all my plants in a knot