# Staghorn problem



## Mnemia (Nov 23, 2004)

Hi,

I've recently run into a moderate problem with staghorn algae. It isn't too bad (I've never had a really bad algae outbreak) but it's infesting the substrate and my Lilaeopsis sp. foreground. It seems to cling to the fluorite granules so tightly that it takes a ton of substrate with it when I pull it out. I've never had much of this stuff in any of my tanks before, so I'm not really sure how to deal with it. My young SAE doesn't seem to do much more than pick at it occasionally.

I've seen suggestions on the forums mention that it can be caused by excess nitrates. I have a low fish load (3 fish in a 20 gallon), and my tank tests in the 7.5-10 ppm range, right about where I'm trying to keep it with regular dosing. I think the whole thing started when I cleaned out some overgrown stem plants and cut down on the rate that my tank chews through nitrates (before I was having trouble dosing enough to keep them up even when adding more every day). BBA, which had been my biggest problem previously, is virtually gone. 

Corrective steps I've tried (about 2 weeks now with little change):
1) Checked my CO2 levels. Assuming that my pH and KH kits are testing correctly, I have 25+ ppm. I'm using an internal power reactor.
2) Started adding double the normal daily dose of Excel. This may be helping to keep it in check but I think the staghorn is still growing slowly.
3) Cut down on feeding my fish a bit, both to reduce nutrient levels and to give my SAE a little more incentive to eat algae (he's quite the hog for flake food).
4) Daily physical removal of the staghorn, as best as I can.
5) Increased phosphate doses to try to bring things back in balance.

Any suggestions? So far the steps I've taken haven't seemingly helped much.


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Maybe a bit more info:

- what's your lighting like?
- What is your fert dosing schedule?
- What are you dosing and how much?
- Water change schedule?
- Heavily planted?

At first glance you probably have an nutrient imbalance of some type. Excess Nitrate levels in themselves will not cause algae problems. However, excess Nitrates and a lack of any other nutrient is a problem.

You might actually have a *lack* of Nitrates. It may be an idea to double check your Nitrate reading by asking your LFS to test a sample of your water. Alternatively, make up a solution of a known NO3 concentration and test your test kit with that.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

I consider staghorn easy to get rid of but in a recent chat I was surprised to find out that I've gotten rid of it doing the opposite of what seems to be the common way to fight staghorn.

I reduce the NO3 to practically zero, by not dosing, allowing the plants to use up the NO3. Any other means to remove the NO3 should help - water changes, chemical media to remove Ammonia or Nitrite. When I had staghorn my tank was very lean (NO3=1-2, and PO4=0.1). For 2-3 days I had dosed a little more NO3 and the staghorn appeared everywhere. That was the only different thing that I did to the tank that week. The tank was fishless. Letting the plants suck the NO3 got rid of the staghorn in one day, but it took the NO3 about 3-4 days to get down to unreadable test kit levels.

What others do is the opposite - raise the NO3. I heard that from very relable sources.

Whatever approach you take to fight staghorn make sure it is really staghorn. Here's a good picture of it.

--Nikolay


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## Mnemia (Nov 23, 2004)

My lighting is 1x65 W PC over a 20 high.

I'm trying to follow the EI method for dosing (I use Flourish/Flourish Iron/Flourish Trace for micronutrients and dry KNO3, K2SO4, K2PO4 for macros). I dose quite a small amount (only about once weekly) for all of the macros except KNO3 which I dose more often in order to try to keep my tank in the 7.5-10 ppm range for nitrates (I don't have a test kit for phosphate). I've been moderately successful at keeping the algae down this way but this has come up. Before this it was looking really good with very high growth rates even for my Anubius which is putting out new leaves nearly weekly.

Weekly water changes of 50%.

Re: heavily planted: It's fairly moderately planted right now. The whole thing started shortly after I cut out a fairly large amount of stem plants which had been overgrown and floating on the surface (and choking off light to the foreground plants). I can't be 100% certain about my test kit for nitrates, but I do believe that what happened when I cut out some plants was that the tank stopped using nitrates as quickly as when there were many stem plants at the surface (when the top was overgrown with fast growers I had to dose huge quantities of KNO3 just to maintain any measurable level in the water at all). At the same time, the prevalent algae in this tank (not very bad) shifted from BBA to staghorn. The BBA is virtually gone now.

It might be something else, but I think it looks like the picture posted. It's certainly more branchy than most of the hair algae I've seen in the past. The only thing that puzzles me is that it forms on the bottom rather than the top. Perhaps it's some type of cladophora or something instead? Sorry that I don't have a picture of it.

I don't think that the tank has a very high nutrient load from fish, debris, etc either. Actually it's been looking cleaner than it has in a while.

Now, questions:
My impression was that the BBA thrived in situations with an excess of phoshate and low nitrates. I was dosing very little phosphate and struggling to maintain a decent nitrate level before since my plants were using it up like crazy.

Now, is the staghorn caused by the opposite situation? An excess of nitrates and low phosphates? The reason I believed this to be the case was that I saw some GSA form on the glass at about the same time as the staghorn.

BTW, I think that things may be improving. Several days ago I dosed a fairly heavy amount of phosphates and I've been upping the amount of Excel. I think it may be slowing or stopping in growth (the GSA certainly has not returned after I scraped it off at the same time). In any case, neither of these algaes are growing as fast as they had been. Any suggestions on which of the things I did above were most effective and which I should continue?


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