Out of control hair algae

I'm still hardcore on the struggle bus with this hair algae it's driving me insane. I haven't dosed any ferts in weeks. My light is on for 2 3 hour intervals with 3 hours off in between them. So I really don't think it's excessive lighting. It's growing just as much just as fast as when it was 8 hours straight of light. My light is a finnex stingray 2. Currently I'm resorting to blacking it out but really that's going to be a temporary fix. My nitrates are at about 10 give or take a little bit. My only thought is if I have low CO2 in the water. I have thought about getting into dosing CO2 but wanted this problem to be under control first. But if it's low I'll hurry it up and get on that. Does anybody know how to test CO2? Any sort of easy test strip or something to guage it.

And no I'm not introducing more fish to the tank thank you. It's very much fully stocked and already has shrimp in it eating stuff. They don't seem to bother with this hair algae though and it's growing at an incredibly fast pace, I pull huge strands of it out every other day. It's literally everywhere, on plants closer to the light, growing out of the substrate, you name it.

 

Oh no! Sorry to hear this.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things - the only other suggestion I can make is to syringe in some Hydrogen Peroxide, ( I have done it before to treat black hair algae, which was successful) but you want to be careful and half the dosage to not harm the shrimp. Otherwise, a complete blackout for a couple of days might help.

I got the h2o2 idea from TheCineScaper, who made a youtube vid on his algae recovery. I think he included the dosage units too, that was pretty helpful.

Best of luck!

 

I second the hydrogen peroxide. I finally broke down and did it and it has worked amazingly well!

I tried everything else before resorting to that but it is the only thing that worked.

I did have one ghost shrimp casualty.

 

Thanks you two! I'll still check CO2 levels to see if that's imbalanced, and if it comes back after the blackout I'm definitely wacking it with some H2O2.

 

As everyone has said, looks like you are doing things right. If you don't have this, here is a link about algae and how to identify the algae and eliminate the cause. I've found it to be very helpful.

 

As everyone has said, looks like you are doing things right. If you don't have this, here is a link about algae and how to identify the algae and eliminate the cause. I've found it to be very helpful.

That is super helpful thank you! I love how they actually break down each type specifically and don’t generalize. Every other website or article I’ve put up lumps a lot of different filamentous algae together. Just a quick read through of that I think has helped me pinpoint the issue.

I’m thinking of a new course of action. I only started the blackout today. So I’m going to quit that. And then I’m going to dose ferts but not iron. The problem started picking up when I was dosing ferts but has accelerated since then. A lot of the algae I have seems to succeed with nutrients too low or too high and low co2. So I’ll dose and see what happens. If worst comes to worst I black out the tank for a few days while I get CO2 online. I didn’t think about it at the time but my plants started booming the first few weeks I had the tank going. And then the hair algae started to kick in after a while. So at first I think I got an excess of nutrients and a lack of co2. And now I’m lacking both or at a minimum co2.

 

Glad this helped. It's amazing how steep our learning curves can be but isn't that what makes this hobby so much fun?

I hope you are able to figure out what's causing your algae bloom and remedy it all.

 

Glad this helped. It's amazing how steep our learning curves can be but isn't that what makes this hobby so much fun?

I hope you are able to figure out what's causing your algae bloom and remedy it all.

It really is. There's always something to learn. There's a ton of information out there too, articles, youtube videos and forums are awesome. I've only been in the hobby for about 6 months. Every day I'm learning something. I feel like I've picked up a ton of knowledge already but there's so much more I keep learning and so much more to learn. And it's forums like this that help bridge the gap of knowledge and experience. It's such a fascinating hobby.