# Thread? Hair? Staghorn? What is this stuff?



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

So I have this vicious algae in two of my tanks, I've been able to keep it out of the third for now, but I'm positive it came in on some plants I bought. It grows relatively quickly in thready, branched clumps and attaches itself to things. I fertilize regularly and add CO2. Light is 8 hours a day. One of the tanks it started in is very balanced and there are no other forms of algea. The other is an iwagumi that seems to get green water outbreaks whenever I add a fish and has some dust algae on the glass. I tried a 6 day blackout with no results. The stuff didn't even look weaker. I tried an Excel overdose, which made it brittle, but did not kill it. It is so strong that it rips out whatever it is attached to when I try to remove it by hand. It also seems to break easily and has spread EVERYWHERE due to me trying to remove it manually. Siamese algea eater won't touch it. Cherry shrimp won't touch it. Snails of all kinds won't touch it. What is it and how the heck do I get rid of it?!


----------



## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Can you post a pic of your algae? That will help everyone give you a more positive ID on what it is.


----------



## snowhillbilly (Mar 29, 2006)

Sounds to me like you have Cladophora. A picture would be very helpful though.


----------



## bugs (Jul 19, 2006)

I've been doing battle with this stuff. Flourish Excel does not seem to touch it. I just keep hauling it out manually in the hope that it will eventually give up. If anyone has any better ideas, please share...


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Odd...I did post a picture, it seems to have disappeared though. Here's another try:


----------



## snowhillbilly (Mar 29, 2006)

Yep you got a good case of Cladophora. Also in the first picture it looks like you have some bladder wort in there to.


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

How do I get rid of it?


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

:bump: 

Anyone? I'm desperate!


----------



## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Manually remove as much as you can. Then turn of your filter(s) and spot treat the areas with Excel. I use a syringe to do this...a child's medication dosing syringe would be great and are easy to find at most pharmacies. 

Make sure the filters have been off for a few minutes and the water is still before beginning the spot treatment. The idea is to keep the Excel in contact with the algae. I do believe Gomer found cladophora to be sensitive to Excel treatment.

To keep it from coming back,you need to make sure your CO2 and nutrient levels are good.


----------



## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

MatPat said:


> ... I do believe Gomer found cladophora to be sensitive to Excel treatment.
> 
> ...


This is good to know. I've always found this to be one of the hardest algae to get rid of. I had it in a tank a while ago and it eventually went away by itself after a couple of frustrating months of removing it manually  !!

Hopefully I'll never see this evil stuff again but if I do, it's good to know that Excel may be effective against it.


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

The only problem is it's everywhere throughout my HC...little strands of it poking up all over. Is it better to just overdose the whole tank? It would have to be quite a heavy overdose, since I've tried 2-3x before and it just made it brittle but didn't kill it.


----------



## siliconcarbide (Mar 8, 2006)

I followed the advice I saw in another thread a while ago and did the following and it has worked very well for the algae I had in my tank. After a water change, use excel at the rate suggested for first use on the bottle (5ml for 10 gallons) wait four days and repeat. Do your regular weekly water change and start the process over. I have been doing this for about three weeks and the thread algae I had is in full retreat.

Alan


----------



## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

DJKronik57 said:


> The only problem is it's everywhere throughout my HC...little strands of it poking up all over. Is it better to just overdose the whole tank? It would have to be quite a heavy overdose, since I've tried 2-3x before and it just made it brittle but didn't kill it.


A heavy overdose of Excel would kill your HC. Get Amano shrimp. They'll pick at it.


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

I actually have amano shrimp in the tank. They do nothing to combat it. Cherry and tiger shrimp don't eat it either. Nor do snails. Excel does nothing but make it more brittle. Physically removing it just spreads it around further, no matter how careful you are. Black outs don't harm it at all. Bleach is about the only thing that kills it, and even that takes a long time. I'm beginning to think that breaking down my tank, throwing everything out, and starting over from scratch is the only way I'm going to be rid of this stuff.


----------



## turtlehead (Nov 27, 2004)

H2O2 DJ and then after that get press. CO2, I did that and now it's gone. It appears because of low co2. I changed fert dosing, and lighting before that. Nothing worked except high CO2 not DIY.


----------



## Felf808 (Mar 21, 2006)

Rosy barbs cleaned out my clado in a matter of hours but they bullied the rest of my fish and uprooted everything in the same amount of time.


----------



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Are there any other fish that might eat it? I'm willing to try anything...I actually just blacked out one of my tanks for close to a week, killing all HC in the tank in an attempt to get rid of it. It was a tangled mess of clado and HC and it just wasn't attractive anymore. It's still there.


----------



## azfishguy (Jul 1, 2005)

I had it once for a long time. It's a tough one. Blackouts do nothing to it. I put a clump of it in a bucket of water in my dark garage. It looked green and fresh after a month of darkness.. I got rid of it with peroxide spot treatment. I turned off my filter and injected peroxide in the middle of a big clump in my tank. It started to violently bubble within seconds of the application and continued for a couple of hours. I restarted the filter after half an hour. The next day Clado was dead. The green clump turned into a white clump at which point I removed it from the tank. It never showed its ugly face in my tank again.


----------



## ilgt (Feb 7, 2006)

I had similar problem. Last week I introduced a siamese algae eater and those nuisance is gone now. Hope this will help.


----------

