I don't think the tap water is the source since 3 other tanks do not
have a problem. In fact I started all 3 with some water from the 75
gallon.

Plecos and SAEs and Clown Loaches do head for the food at eating time.
It was fun to watch the Clowns "learn" to catch the food. I am afraid
they are so good at catching the flakes as they float on the surface
or as they fall cutting back, I would only starve the other fish. I
bought the scavengers as work horses, but now find them more
interesting to watch than my decorative fish.

I must admit I am afraid to do many things for fear of upsetting an
otherwise healthy tank, clear water and active colorful fish. I have
added all of the scavanger above in an attempt to solve problems.

It is mystifying why I have 3 tanks without Black Hair Algae and
haven't been able to get rid of it in my large tank. My 29 gallon
tank has more light and more dense fish population. The 29 gallon has
decorative blue and white gravel. It seems as though a trail of the
same gravel used to simulate a stream in the 75 first became infected
the the BHA. I have removed this gravel over the months, but it now
is established in the plants. I have removed the plants and replaced
them once already. I don't like chemical additives as a solution.

On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 13:33:46 +0100, "Iain Miller"
wrote:


"Dick" wrote in message
news
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.

When you change weater you are replenishing nutrients - it may actuially be
better to slow down the water changes a bit. Also, test your tap water for
Nitrates & Phosphates - I get about 50ppm Nitrate out the tap which is
hardly going to help keeping any kind of Algae at bay. You might consider
getting some kind of ion exchange Nitrate filter to use on the tap - not
that expensive.

Lastly, do you have any pieces of wood in the tank? I had one a while ago
that got covered in Algae & was clearly giving off Nitrate - I hauled it
out.
The SAEs will only go to work on the Algae when they run out of other things
to eat - if there is fish food about they will generally eat that instead.
You might try slowing down your feeding a bit too.
I.