Hair algea (I think heeeeeeeelp!!!)

French51

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May 9, 2013
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Norfolk UK
Hi all lately I seem to have lots of this growing in my tank I think it's hair algea is there any way to remove this the lights are on in tank for about 6 hours aday and I do around 35% water change per week which includes gravel cleaner and in running internal and external filter all levels are perfect i just don't understand how it keeps growing :-( please help me get rid of it!!
 

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pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Belgrave, Melbourne
In fresh water systems as opposed to marine systems, phosphate is generally the limiting nutrient for algal blooms. You could try reducing the phosphate concentrations by getting some of that phos gone stuff. Or out compete the algae with more plants. Or dose with more iron if you have a fair amount of susbstrate to trap the phosphate at the anoxic/oxic interface. Or get some red cherry shrimp (they keep my hair algae right down). Or feed less. Theres a couple ive forgotten...
 

beencees

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Nov 5, 2011
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If you're dosing with ferts you need to reduce the amount. If not then you can double dose with Seachem Flourish Excel or another liquid carbon which will kill it although probably not permanently. You can also use 5 or 10% hydrogen peroxide directly on it which will kill it and not harm the other plants or fish. You can do this in the tank or if the affected areas are removable, eg on driftwood, then you can just take them out and do it and then put them back in.
Cherry shrimp wont normally do much unless they have absolutely nothing else to eat.
HTH.
 

French51

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May 9, 2013
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Norfolk UK
If you're dosing with ferts you need to reduce the amount. If not then you can double dose with Seachem Flourish Excel or another liquid carbon which will kill it although probably not permanently. You can also use 5 or 10% hydrogen peroxide directly on it which will kill it and not harm the other plants or fish. You can do this in the tank or if the affected areas are removable, eg on driftwood, then you can just take them out and do it and then put them back in.
Cherry shrimp wont normally do much unless they have absolutely nothing else to eat.
HTH.
I dont use ferts as iv only got java fern in the tank so i didnt think it needed it to do well, so i read that if u blackout tank for 3 days this helps so iv covered tank this morning and will leave it covered for 3 days then try some flourish excel, will my apple snail be ok if i use flourish excel?? thanks for you suggestions i will give them ago. Fingers crossed:yes:

Also i think pauldoit had good idea about adding more plants gonna grab some more plants after tank blackout
 
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Irene0100

UK Support Team
May 14, 2009
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when i get a lot of furry algae I add easy carbo which allows the plants to absorb the nutriants and leaves less for the algea so it dies out.
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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Algae is NOT caused by phosphates in any way/shape or form

Killing it / stopping it growing means you need to make your normal plants grow faster than the algae. The limiting factor for plant growth is 99% of the time CO2! Either injected or added via liquid carbon (easy carbo etc) as already mentioned.

If not you can scrape/trim it off but its a loosing battle. I personally put in a c.siamenses let it eat all the algae then put him back in his normal tank. The algae is kinda ugly lucking but won't harm anything.

Suggest you go read some of the planted tank forums there's some massive discussions on algae, causes and research etc by lots of people with lots more knowledge about plants and algae specifically not just fish keeping. http://www.ukaps.org/forum/ is probably your best bet
 
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pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Excellent, some debate on the role of phosphates and algal growth.
I've been taught by some of Australia's experts on freshwater chemistry and ecology and they summarized the broad and current knowledge on algae blooms by saying that phosphate was the limiting factor. If you effectively remove or drastically lower the phosphate concentration to the point where there is competition between the algae and plants, the algae cannot compete with the plants for it and die out. No mention of CO2 being the limiting factor. I imagine that boosting plant mass by CO2 injection actually gives the plants an ability to grow rapidly and much faster than algae and out compete the algae for nutrients, such as phosphorous. But if you have some scientific literature available I’d love to update my knowledge, after all learning is, I find, one of the most rewarding things in life. I subscribe to the scientific reasoning behind controlled experiments and the process of peer-reviewing scientific epistemology, and perhaps the scientific literature is the best place to look rather than internet forums. If I’ve got it wrong and Monash University has it wrong, then I’ll go and have a chat to the lecturers and say you’ve got it all wrong and because of that I looked like an idiot on the plecoplanet forum.
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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UK
Excellent, some debate on the role of phosphates and algal growth.
I've been taught by some of Australia's experts on freshwater chemistry and ecology and they summarized the broad and current knowledge on algae blooms by saying that phosphate was the limiting factor. If you effectively remove or drastically lower the phosphate concentration to the point where there is competition between the algae and plants, the algae cannot compete with the plants for it and die out. No mention of CO2 being the limiting factor. I imagine that boosting plant mass by CO2 injection actually gives the plants an ability to grow rapidly and much faster than algae and out compete the algae for nutrients, such as phosphorous. But if you have some scientific literature available I’d love to update my knowledge, after all learning is, I find, one of the most rewarding things in life. I subscribe to the scientific reasoning behind controlled experiments and the process of peer-reviewing scientific epistemology, and perhaps the scientific literature is the best place to look rather than internet forums. If I’ve got it wrong and Monash University has it wrong, then I’ll go and have a chat to the lecturers and say you’ve got it all wrong and because of that I looked like an idiot on the plecoplanet forum.
They've got it wrong I'm afraid :) One of the moderators on here (Darrel) is quote a specalist in water chemistry who can no doubt provide links to the actual peer reviewed scientific papers.

http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/baffled-and-in-need-of-help.27730/#post-288373
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/search/1581752/?q=phosphates+cause+algae&o=date

Hundreds of posts many containing proper scientific papers by people who research and work in the water and horticultural environments.

People mistakingly put it down to PO4 because algae does better in poorly balanced conditions and so out competes the normal plants for growth.
If we assume the plants have enough base minerals in the water column to grow at whatever rate they want to then the limiting factor becomes CO2.
Limit CO2 the plants use up what minerals they need then stop growing. Algae requires less CO2 and so uses up all the excess minerals. Algae will always out compete normal plants!

Now in your normal low tech undosed planted tank with no CO2 injected/added then the plants will hardly grow at all but the algae will grow like a trooper. All that plant food your fish are putting out has to go some where, the plants don't have enough carbon to grown themselves but the algae has more than enough so floods the tank.

Load the tank up with CO2/liquid carbon and then plants will start growing and the algae will vanish.

(Note: marine environments are slightly different which is probably what your teacher friends are talking about when they talk about algae blooms rather than freshwater)
 
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pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Belgrave, Melbourne
Thanks for the info. We are all on different parts of the learning curve. The best scientists once thought that the earth was flat.... They were wrong.
Maybe you can help me fast track my learning. So when you load up the plants with CO2 why does the algae vanish?
 

pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Belgrave, Melbourne
Ok now I'm getting confused... I've been spurred on to procrastinate on doing an end of term take home exam and do some research on why phosphates get blamed for algal growth and I keep on coming across stuff like this
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/uoa-uoa082212.php

Published in a high impact factor journal... what is going on here. Is there an argument in the research community over the role that phosphorous plays?
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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UK
Its mostly the difference in open and closed systems. Our tanks are closed systems with finite volume of water.

CO2 loading alone wont solve the problem 100% however it solves the majority of it as in a typical tank you have excess nutrients and not enough CO2 for the plants to use all the nutrients. The less CO2 demanding organisms like the algae then flourishes in the excess nutrients.

So we use the 10x rule to make sure that there's good CO2 distribution throughout the entire tank and we're overloading on CO2. Now the plants will use up all the nutrients in the water column and grow (quite fast in many cases) the algae will then have no nutrients left to use up and die off. If you're putting in plenty of CO2 but getting little plant growth then you need to consider dosing ferts into the tank to compensate for the short fall in nutrients for the plants.
If you're putting in plenty of CO2 and dosing ferts (not too much else algae comes back again due to having more ferts than CO2 available for the plants) the limiting factor becomes input energy ie: lighting that the plants need to photosynthesis. Its a careful balancing act.

In an open system it may well be excess phosphate as the water source gets unlimited energy in from the sun, unlimited CO2 from the atmosphere and regular fresh water changes when it rains.

Personally I think the PH4 causes Algae theory comes mostly from marine tanks and has carried on to freshwater as reefers insist that PO4 is the cause of their algae issues (its not but don't go telling them that as they seem to enjoy spending a fortune on phosphate remover for no reason)
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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Here's a good read for you http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/good-algae-article.905/

Here's an interesting comment for you too.

I find it amazing that, having read this article, I took a Biology exam yesterday. The biggest exam board in the UK, and I had to write through gritted teeth that excess phosphates result in algae in aquatic environments.
That's all that's credited in mark schemes, absolutely zero mention of ammonia. Purely phosphates.

No wonder there's such misconception :rolleyes:
http://www.aquariumalgae.blogspot.co.uk/

Something like paragraph 4 sums it all up nicely :)

In the past many believed that NO3 and especially PO4 can induce algae. It has been proven numerous times that these nutrients (even if overdosed) can not create algae issues. Actually the more we dose the less algae we get.
Rule of thumb if they teach it in university its at least 7 years out of date / behind actual research.
 
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pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Thanks for taking the time to compile that info. We were taught about closed and open aquatic systems and went right into the movement of various nutrients throughout different compartments and states in the system, and still the emphasis was on free bio-available forms of phosphorous in the water column being one of the main players. Obviously it is a very complicated field and much needs to be done to figure it all out, and there may be some fundamental differences between large scale systems, like lakes and small systems, like our aquariums, and extrapolating knowledge from one to the other may have clear caveats.
It might take me some time for me to digest and understand that an open system with continual feeds of nutrients (ie fert dosing and CO2) primarily results in plant growth only (and not algae) as has been seemingly experienced by the bulk of the plant focussed aquarists throughout the world.
Do you reckon anyone has put forward the idea of combating blue-green algae by dumping a load of aquatic plants and nutrients (including CO2) into the system? I can imagine the scientific establishment laughing themselves silly.
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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Thanks for taking the time to compile that info. We were taught about closed and open aquatic systems and went right into the movement of various nutrients throughout different compartments and states in the system, and still the emphasis was on free bio-available forms of phosphorous in the water column being one of the main players. Obviously it is a very complicated field and much needs to be done to figure it all out, and there may be some fundamental differences between large scale systems, like lakes and small systems, like our aquariums, and extrapolating knowledge from one to the other may have clear caveats.
It might take me some time for me to digest and understand that an open system with continual feeds of nutrients (ie fert dosing and CO2) primarily results in plant growth only (and not algae) as has been seemingly experienced by the bulk of the plant focussed aquarists throughout the world.
Do you reckon anyone has put forward the idea of combating blue-green algae by dumping a load of aquatic plants and nutrients (including CO2) into the system? I can imagine the scientific establishment laughing themselves silly.
Some of the threads linked have done exactly that experiment and proven that excess nutrients (including PO4) are not the cause of the algae and simple addition of CO2 the algae cleared up quite quicly and plant growth resumed at a decent rate. Now I'm not a biologist or a botanist I only go on what others have tested and proven and what works.

Take the time to read the articles and the threads and the entire Algae section on the ukaps form. Also read Tom Barr's stuff. There's an awful lot of chemical equasions and calculations around it all most of it way above my head (you may have more luck) but the long and short of it is that PO4 doesn't cause algae of any kind, neither does FE or any other nutrient input. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong / working on out of date information and research.

The nutrient overdose method of EI can be scaled up to lake size if required but would need sufficient plants added to a lake which can be difficult but not impossible. Look at the heavily natural planted rivers in south america where our little plecs come from some of them are crystal clear for meters of depth.
 

pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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I just ended up on the barrreport forum. Yep it's a whole other world of information in there. I'm a pharmacologist/analytical chemist by trade and am doing an environmental science course for kicks, am I'm looking forward to experimenting with some interesting plant care regimes.
I'm reluctant to get more aquarium gear in the form of CO2 dosing... would you believe I have a jungle tank (not scaped just jungle, its all for the plecos and shrimp) using just peat moss to provide a mild acid to liberate the carbonate from the coral bones which will result in increased soluble CO2?
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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It will liberate some co2 from the bones not massive amounts as its only a weak base <> acid reaction but yeah you'll get some (though importantly it won't be a stable amount stablity is key) dosing liquid carbon as a carbon source for you certainly wouldn't hurt though if your tanks already a jungle it may make it massively overgrown thats what happened with my last jungle tank :)
CO2 can also be done via a fire extinguisher you can setup a basic setup for about £30.

With your chemist background you should understand the stuff better than most I'm a msci in computer science with phd in artifical intelligence and cognitive reasoning so I understand the testing methodology etc but get lost once they start doing molecule breakdowns etc :) I do trust the people posting the science stuff as its what they do for a living in many cases so they aren't just enthusiasts its their job :)
 

pauldoit

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My PhD was, in part, on the molecular modelling of ligand-receptor interactions using old-school UNIX silicon graphics machines (its all done on PCs nowadays) so I know a little bit about the use of computers in scientific research but very little about artificial intelligence! :) And yet we two PhDs are both into plecos! What is it about these fish we hardly ever see?
 

hinchles

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Feb 13, 2012
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all fish facinate me perhaps I should have been a marine biologist or something :) but pleco's are astounding little creatures so varying and yet all the same species. There's very few other species I can think of with as much variance. My bigger common is more like a house pet too rather than a fish in a tank he comes up for a stroke and to feed from my hand.
 

dw1305

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May 5, 2009
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Hi all,
The algae is a Red algae - "Staghorn". I usually get it when you have a build up of organic matter in the filter.

Have a look here: <http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm>

One of the moderators on here (Darrel) is quote a specalist in water chemistry who can no doubt provide links to the actual peer reviewed scientific papers.
I feel a fraud now, I'm not really a chemist, but I can link to a thread (on the BCA forum) that covers this subject in some detail. <http://www.britishcichlid.org.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=7161>. It is quite a long thread, but worth a read. This is probably the most relevant bit.
This is true on one level, I spend a large proportion of my time trying to reduce eutrophication of natural ecosystems. The whole environment is awash with unnatural levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, and it is a major cause of environmental degradation. Phosphate stripping, using Fe(II) ammonium sulphate as a precipitant (this is very effective removing about 95% of the phosphate), was introduced to deal with problems caused by optical brighteners in detergents, sewage etc. The orthophosphate (PO4---) ion naturally limits productivity (along with NO3-) in many aquatic systems. Add non-limiting amounts of PO4--- creates huge blooms of planktonic green algae (Chlorophyta) "Green water", which then die of in the autumn as PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) and temperature decline. This decay adds a huge amount of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) to the water, de-oxygenating it, killing and/or altering its biota. Once the phosphate is present in the ecosystem it remains bound to clays (they have AEC - Anion Exchange Capacity), and as largely insoluble phosphate compounds, and this reservoir will then supply enough PO4--- (orthophosphate ions) to repeat the whole process again and again. But, it isn't applicable to aquaria. The levels of phosphorus in an aquarium will always be high enough to support algal growth, unless we take extreme measures (100% total RO water changes, chemical adsorption) to remove it.
cheers Darrel
 

pauldoit

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Sep 4, 2012
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Belgrave, Melbourne
Thanks all for inputs to the informative debate. I've certainly learned that mainstream thinking on phosphates and freshwater algae is a contentious issue and that the other camp may not have the bulk of the scientific community behind it but sure does have a lot of evidence in terms of real life cases in peoples beautifully planted algae free aquariums...
French51 do you have some spare time and cash to go get a CO2 unit and a big bottle of fertilizers and show us whether the Barr EI method works? :)