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Old 20-04-2003, 06:09 AM
Dave Millman
 
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Default persistant hair algae

jgreene wrote:

I have been battling what has been diagnosed as hair algae from my
local fish store, for several months now. I have a 55gal with 2X55W
compact fluorescent on 7hr a day. I dose daily with PMDD, but I am
careful not to dose too much, only about 7-10 drops. I have tried
algaefix for several weeks making sure all of the activated carbon was
out of the filter. I have used phosphate remover several times and
nothing works. I am spending over an hour a week removing the algae
from my frill and a few other plant species but it just keeps growing
back. My local store always suggests turning on the lights less, but
I have never heard that anywhere on the internet and I am afraid that
my plants might not be getting enough light if I turn them down any
more. For some reason the algae has only invaded certain species of
plants, so I am about ready to rip up all of the infected plants and
get more plants to replace them. Is there anything else I can try?


Bump the light to 12 hours per day. Plants need light. Keep PMDD up.

In my case, I was able to eliminate hair algae by reducing IRON. My Java
Moss was so thick with it that any handful of Java Moss was approximately
40% algae if you took an hour to separate it all out with tweezers (which
I did a couple times as part of an experiment).

I separate Iron from traces by using Flourish Iron and Flourish
separately. This is what works for me. Good luck.