# Healthy plants and Hair Algae



## voshod (Mar 22, 2007)

Hi !

I guess this happens to everyone  and here it happened to me - hair algae.

I read quite alot on this problem and two most repeated things are:

1. Healthy plants = no algae
2. algae = probably nutrient imbalance = probably un-healthy plants

Both of these seem not to hold for my tank.**The plants appear to be healthy - growing like crazy, I have to trim every week.**About a week ago I started getting lots of hair algae, first on the glass and then it spread on the plants.**The plants are still growing and seem to be healthy by my assessment.**Have you ever seen this - plants are healthy and hair algae is attacking.

So, my plan of attack was:

1. Reduce light to 8 hrs/day
2. Measure NO3 and add if low

So, I reduced the light few days ago and it didn't have a big impact either on plants or on the algae demons.**My next step is to buy test kits and start measuring the macro elements to detect any deficiency.**I doubt this would be a problem since pretty much every plant is growing quickly and does not show the signs of deficiency.

What appears to have triggered the algae problems is me adding Seachem Flourish Comprehensive.

Do you think it can still be nutrient imbalance even tho plants are growing with out a problem ?

Here are the stats:

10 gallon tank
DYI CO2 ~ 30 ppm according to CO2/KH/PH chart
Lights: 28 Watt 50/50 Coralife + 2x10W Lights of america aquarium bulb ~ 4.8 wpg (or less)
Adding Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Leaf Zone (potash and iron) above recommended doze
Plants:**hygro, red ludwigia, glosso, hairgrass
6 small fish, including Chinese algae eater


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## voshod (Mar 22, 2007)

I looked at few posts with algae pictures, and it looks more like fuzz algae and not hair algae. Little hairs (few mm) grows on glass and plants.


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## freydo (Jan 7, 2006)

some observations... i would replace the 50/50 bulb with a full fluorescent bulb, the actinic portion is not providing any benefit to a planted tank. but this would increase the amount of light your providing.

you're dosing flourish, but do not mention NPK, you might want to start adding that. also depending on how established this tank is, the majority of your plants aren't that fast growing, so lots of whatever nutrients are in the tank, are being taken up by algae.

another option is adding some platties, they like to nibble on hair algae. at least the ones i have do, and after setting up my tank i had lots of hair algae everywhere. regardless of what i did with ferts, they stuck around. after adding the platties, it's pretty well gone.

also... the chinese algae eaters, will be pretty well useless algae eaters in a few years, as they move from algae eaters as juveniles to cranky/territorial commercial food eaters. i would look at replacing them with ottos if you can.

hope this info helps.


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## voshod (Mar 22, 2007)

Thanks for the reply !

My red ludwigia and narrow leaf giant hygro are growing very fast as far as I can judge - they totally take over the tank in about 1 week after a good trimming. But perhaps that's not fast enought. I am pretty happy with my selection of plants so far and will try to deal with algae by means of ferts and algae eaters.

Do you think algae can benefit from actinic light, but plants can't ? Even if it's not use for the plant I'd leave it as long as it doesn't contribute to algae.

I was not adding any macro elements, because I thought that plants are growing very fast anyway, but I guess I should start.


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