Low light plants are also slow growers. To combat algae it's better
to have fast growers like water sprite, aponogeton, frogbit, and most
other floating plants. There is some nutrient that you either have in
excess or too little of. Most commonly it will be an excess in
phosphate, nitrate, or iron. It could also be too little or too much
light (depending on the other nutrient levels). All your nutrients
have to balance along with plants that can use the nutrients before
the algae can.

Cris


On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 05:07:10 -0500, Dick
wrote:

I purged out a message that suggested adding more plants and more
water changes would minimize algae. I had my tank full of plants and
changed water once a week. While the green algae on the glass was
tolerable, the black hair algae continued to thrive.

Next week I am getting a shipment of low light plants and plan to
remove all existing plants and as much from the gravel as possible. I
don't know the source of the bha. It has only taken root, ha, ha, in
one tank, the largest of 4 of course.

I recently added Siamese Algae Eaters, but they seem to have no
impact. I am going to add more SAEs next week.

To my eye the bha is very ugly. Has anyone successfully rid their
tank of the stuff? I will have to live with it is my fear. I am not
going to strip the tank of fish, gravel, plants and fill it with
chlorine to solve the problem. I disturb my fish enough with trying
to control bha by removing the obvious leafs and pulling the hairy
gravel up.