Hair-like fibers have taken over my tank overnight

Hello! I have a 10ga new planted tank that has been cycled for about a week and a half, still doing water changes to get the nitrates down. Started at 160+ppm, now I'm down around 40ppm after a small dose of ammonia, so hopefully should be ready here in a few days.

I have noticed this morning that I have a tone of tiny hair like fibers that are all over my plants, and not sure what it is? I use flourish root tabs and last dosed liquid flourish about a week ago and since have trimmed my Frogbit roots and done several water changes. Looks like I'm getting more algae on the glass too, which I know is expected. Just curious what the fibers are and if it's normal?

 

Hello! I have a 10ga new planted tank that has been cycled for about a week and a half, still doing water changes to get the nitrates down. Started at 160+ppm, now I'm down around 40ppm after a small dose of ammonia, so hopefully should be ready here in a few days.

I have noticed this morning that I have a tone of tiny hair like fibers that are all over my plants, and not sure what it is? I use flourish root tabs and last dosed liquid flourish about a week ago and since have trimmed my Frogbit roots and done several water changes. Looks like I'm getting more algae on the glass too, which I know is expected. Just curious what the fibers are and if it's normal?

I think that is algae...

 

I'm going to do a water change and manually remove what I can, and probably cut the light down by a few hours for a little bit and see if that helps. I know Nitrates being higher can cause that too right? If that doesn't do the trick, I guess Excel is next on the list to try?

 

I have the same thing going on. 0 nitrates since day one and 0 phosphates. Tank ain’t even cycled yet.

Too much light is the issue if you’re low tech. For me it’s not enough co2 and a tad too much light. As I understand it, hair algae has nothing to do with Na or Phos but it is an imbalance in co2/light/nutes, with the light being primary factor. Nutes are related to light and co2. So unless your dumping nutes in, for low tech it’s the light.

It is very irritating, I don’t want to feed my plants until it dies down. I started adding excel.

I never get green water, brown alge, BB algae...nothing. But man if this hair algae doesn’t love my tank and is so hard to get rid of.

Pull out any clumps that you can, shrimp if you want them, spot treat with excel and cut back lighting and that should cut it back a bit but for me it never goes away. I can’t even set up a new tank with literally nothing in it and I’ll see tiny bits of it.

Plants are about to go into a bucket and it’s about to be an all out war with black out curtains on tank for a week.

 

Yeah no co2 in my tank. I, think I've been running the light for about 8 hours a day max, it's on a timer. I'm waiting to put my betta in the tank, but I'm guessing now this will prolong that as well. Fortunately he's in a cycled 5ga so he should be fine for awhile till I can get this under control.

What's crazy is it cycled really fast, but trying to get the Nitrates under control has taken a long time. I probably have 10 water changes of at least 75% and it cuts down everytime, but still is 40ppm or higher

 

Yeah no co2 in my tank. I, think I've been running the light for about 8 hours a day max, it's on a timer. I'm waiting to put my betta in the tank, but I'm guessing now this will prolong that as well. Fortunately he's in a cycled 5ga so he should be fine for awhile till I can get this under control.

What's crazy is it cycled really fast, but trying to get the Nitrates under control has taken a long time. I probably have 10 water changes of at least 75% and it cuts down everytime, but still is 40ppm or higher

Yea yours is about as planted as mine. I had mine on 8 saw tiny hairs on tank and went to 7, then 6 and now 5 which is the sweet spot I believe then I’ll slowly ramp it back up. Also I’m not sure the spectrum of your light but blue will grow hair algae profusely. Red/daylight much better.

40 Na isn’t too bad. I like 20 myself. You’re at that new tank algae bloom stage where everything is converting down to Na so it’s to be expected unlike myself so be happy about that!

 

Have you run the nitrate test on your source water? If there are none in the source water the water changes alone should lower the nitrates. Are you adding liquid fertilizer? Some of them have been known to shoot the nitrates up. I was shocked at how high my nitrates were when I started using Thrive all in one liquid ferts. I switched to Thrive C and they are not quite as high when using it.

 

My source water doesn't show any nitrates, but could be some from the tabs and liquid fert? My light is full spectrum so does have some blue in it.

 

My source water doesn't show any nitrates, but could be some from the tabs and liquid fert? My light is full spectrum so does have some blue in it.

I don't know what part if any the color of light plays in the accumulation of nitrates. Hopefully someone that knows more about it than I do will help us out here.

It is good that you have none in your source water. I have to think most of it is coming from the ferts. You can test that out by not adding any after a water change to get them down. Test before and after dosing them and you will have an idea as to how much the ferts are adding. Some may still come from the root tabs but that will be gradual.