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#1
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Algae
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. |
#2
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Algae
"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. |
#3
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Algae
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. |
#4
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Algae
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. |
#5
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Algae
Won't the floating plants cut the light getting to the bottom. I have
less than 1.5 watts per gallon now and that is the reason I have ordered low light plants. This is all very confusing. Why have my other 3 tanks not had the Black Hair Algae problem? On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 21:41:24 GMT, Cris wrote: 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. |
#6
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Algae
Well, yeah the floating plants will cut some of the light to plants
below, depending also on how large you let them grow. My tank also has only 1.5 wpg and I have the plants I mentioned, I just make sure that the floating plants don't cover very much of the surface. They usually collect around the sides of the tank, because of the water current, where they block even less light. There are several fast growing rooted plants - aponogeton and water sprite are the ones that I'm most familiar with. You can get aponogeton bulbs at Walmart - half of them won't sprout, but at least they're cheap. You need to fiddle around with the nutrients to see what's missing. Try adding a little co2. You don't have to rush out and buy a co2 system yet, first you can try adding some Flourish Excel. If they're lacking in co2 you'll see a difference in growth within 1-2 weeks. Have you tested your water for nitrates? How large is your fish load? Do you tend to overfeed? Do you have snails and/or other bottom feeders to clean-up? Do you add too little/too much fertilizer? My tank has probably been through every type of algae. But it only gets out of control when I get lazy and don't make the attempt to balance the nutrient levels. When you strike just the right balance the plants will take over and the algae will start to dissappear. Cris On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 04:44:01 -0500, Dick wrote: Won't the floating plants cut the light getting to the bottom. I have less than 1.5 watts per gallon now and that is the reason I have ordered low light plants. This is all very confusing. Why have my other 3 tanks not had the Black Hair Algae problem? On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 21:41:24 GMT, Cris wrote: 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. |
#7
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Algae
I tend to have heavy fish loads in my tanks, 75, 29, 10, 10. Same
water, same feeding, similar light. Black Hair Algae is reported to be very difficult to elimenate. I have only had the Siamese Algae Eaters a couple of weeks. They do seem to be nibbling at the hairs. I am expecting an order of 10 more SAEs to distribute in my 4 tanks. They are an appealing fish to watch and have a reputation of conquering algae including BHA, I am putting a few in each tank and adding a couple more to the 75. I have snails in all my tanks. About a month ago I got 3 Magic snails. Unfortunately, one like plants and I was finding large cuts in the leaves. It took awhile to decide on a culprit and I moved him from the 10 to the 75. I isolated him with a plastic cover over a patch of bha during the night and he did eat it, but when I took off the cover he would go back to the plants. I couldn't keep him covered all the time so I finally destroyed him. On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 16:44:02 GMT, Cris wrote: Well, yeah the floating plants will cut some of the light to plants below, depending also on how large you let them grow. My tank also has only 1.5 wpg and I have the plants I mentioned, I just make sure that the floating plants don't cover very much of the surface. They usually collect around the sides of the tank, because of the water current, where they block even less light. There are several fast growing rooted plants - aponogeton and water sprite are the ones that I'm most familiar with. You can get aponogeton bulbs at Walmart - half of them won't sprout, but at least they're cheap. You need to fiddle around with the nutrients to see what's missing. Try adding a little co2. You don't have to rush out and buy a co2 system yet, first you can try adding some Flourish Excel. If they're lacking in co2 you'll see a difference in growth within 1-2 weeks. Have you tested your water for nitrates? How large is your fish load? Do you tend to overfeed? Do you have snails and/or other bottom feeders to clean-up? Do you add too little/too much fertilizer? My tank has probably been through every type of algae. But it only gets out of control when I get lazy and don't make the attempt to balance the nutrient levels. When you strike just the right balance the plants will take over and the algae will start to dissappear. Cris On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 04:44:01 -0500, Dick wrote: Won't the floating plants cut the light getting to the bottom. I have less than 1.5 watts per gallon now and that is the reason I have ordered low light plants. This is all very confusing. Why have my other 3 tanks not had the Black Hair Algae problem? On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 21:41:24 GMT, Cris wrote: 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. |
#8
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Algae
On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 04:15:16 -0500, Dick
wrote: I tend to have heavy fish loads in my tanks, 75, 29, 10, 10. Same water, same feeding, similar light. How much/how often do you do water changes? With heavy fish loads and feeding you will have high nitrate and maybe phosphate levels unless you do lots of water changing. Black Hair Algae is reported to be very difficult to elimenate. It is indeed. Your SAEs may help a bit, but don't expect that they will eliminate the problem. IME, they tend to eat bits of the new algae growth and leave the older stuff, and can't keep up with a tank full of fast growing algae. Cris |
#9
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Algae
In the 75 gallon II change about 15 gallons each week. I change a
similar ratio in my 29 and two tens. No Hair in the other 3 tanks. I have two light hoods on my 75. I am trying using just my lower light hood for awhile. It puts out light more on the blue side of the spectrum. On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 17:50:12 GMT, Cris wrote: On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 04:15:16 -0500, Dick wrote: I tend to have heavy fish loads in my tanks, 75, 29, 10, 10. Same water, same feeding, similar light. How much/how often do you do water changes? With heavy fish loads and feeding you will have high nitrate and maybe phosphate levels unless you do lots of water changing. Black Hair Algae is reported to be very difficult to elimenate. It is indeed. Your SAEs may help a bit, but don't expect that they will eliminate the problem. IME, they tend to eat bits of the new algae growth and leave the older stuff, and can't keep up with a tank full of fast growing algae. Cris |
#10
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Algae
Have you measured for nitrate? I'll bet it's high with a heavy fish
load and only 25% water changes/week. On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:42:06 -0500, Dick wrote: In the 75 gallon II change about 15 gallons each week. I change a similar ratio in my 29 and two tens. No Hair in the other 3 tanks. I have two light hoods on my 75. I am trying using just my lower light hood for awhile. It puts out light more on the blue side of the spectrum. |
#11
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Algae
No, I don't have a Nitrate testor. However, the 75 tank has a lower
fish inch ratio than my 29 gallon. The 29 has no Black Hair Algae. I feed all my tanks the same food. I think the BHA came in with some plants. I used water from the 75 to start the 29, so I conclude it isn't transmitted by water. Currently I am using less light in the 75 and yesterday loaded the tank with low light plants. Also, I am expecting a shipment of SAE to add to the 6 now in the tank.. It was a strange experience planting the tank and having the SAEs nibbling on my arm. Their bites bordered on painful. The only varmit that I have seen eating the BHA is a Magic snail that I limited to a patch of bha with a plastic bowl. It definitely mowed the patch down, but I destroyed that Magic because it had developed a taste for plants. Funny, I have two other Magic snails and I have never found them eating plants. They do get on plants and I assume are eating algae, but they haven't developed a taste for the plants themselves. Thank God! They are pretty snails. I have several younger Magics that I am watching carefully. I am surprised that my Clown Loaches haven't finished the young snails off. On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 17:30:18 GMT, Cris wrote: Have you measured for nitrate? I'll bet it's high with a heavy fish load and only 25% water changes/week. On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:42:06 -0500, Dick wrote: In the 75 gallon II change about 15 gallons each week. I change a similar ratio in my 29 and two tens. No Hair in the other 3 tanks. I have two light hoods on my 75. I am trying using just my lower light hood for awhile. It puts out light more on the blue side of the spectrum. |
#12
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Algae
Chris,
Update and correction. I do have a nitrate kit and tested for both nitrogen and ammonia. Both registered minimum possible on the color scales. I was surprised. I used the "Tetra test" On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 17:30:18 GMT, Cris wrote: Have you measured for nitrate? I'll bet it's high with a heavy fish load and only 25% water changes/week. On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:42:06 -0500, Dick wrote: In the 75 gallon II change about 15 gallons each week. I change a similar ratio in my 29 and two tens. No Hair in the other 3 tanks. I have two light hoods on my 75. I am trying using just my lower light hood for awhile. It puts out light more on the blue side of the spectrum. |
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