# Thread algae?



## karen99 (Feb 20, 2006)

I am still fairly new to planted aquariums - just set up my first a few months ago. It is a 29 gallon, heavily planted, with 4 ottos, 2 SAE's and snails plus some other fish.
In the last week or two I've started to notice a network of very very fine algae filaments growing among my moss. I think it is thread algae.
Are there any fish or shrimp that would eat this algae? None of mine seem to eat it.
I don't know all my tank parameters - nitrites are zero, nitrates very low (think I should dose nitogen?), pH 7, hard water. It has 2.6 w/gallon - and has one bottle of diy CO2 plus I dose flourish excel and fertilizer.
Thanks.


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## Sully (Nov 11, 2005)

Probably best way is to manually remove it. The SAEs are suppose to eat that stuff.

Moss kinda attracts thread algae quite a bit if there isn't alot of flow or things to clean it off with. How about getting some Amano shrimp? Those are fun little creatures. Oh, and are you dosing any ferts at all? If yes and no, maybe the tank still needs to be balanced out with it's current lighting.

-SULLY


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

*Remove as much by hand as possible, ever other day. 

*Do a 50% waterchange, weekly.

*Keep your nitrates at 10ppm and phosphates at 1ppm.

*Keep a steady flow of C02 at 30ppm.

*Be consistent and have patience.


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## BryceM (Nov 6, 2005)

There are zillions of varieties of thread algae. If it's cladophora, you need to jump on it very quickly. If you let it get out of hand it will be almost impossible to get the genie back in the bottle. Amano shrimp are supposed to eat this stuff. My SAE's don't touch it at all. I'm pretty sure algae issues are greatly helped by my currenlty heavily stocked tank.


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## karen99 (Feb 20, 2006)

Thanks for the ideas. I will try the shrimp and dose nitrogen if that doesn't help.
I tried removing all the algae I could. It doesn't really quite look like the thread algae pictures I can find. It is very long, very fine bright green filaments. It looks very delicate, but when I tried to remove it, I found it was strongly adhered to the plant. By pulling on just one thread of the stuff I was able to pull out a fairly large clump of it plus pieces of my java moss it was stuck to. It's easy to remove - problem is just that there's probably plenty of algae hidden deep in the moss which has grown pretty thick.
Are Amano shrimp the same as wood/bamboo shrimp? I've seen these guys that look like Amano shrimp but one store calls them wood shrimp and another bamboo shrimp.


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## neil1973 (Feb 23, 2006)

You could try rosy barbs.


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## 247Plants (Mar 23, 2006)

Amano and bamboo are two completely different shrimp........Bamboo have fans to use to feed....amanos have claws......maybe someone can elaborate more?


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