Hair Algae problem

[Lenimph]

No matter what I seem to do this hair algae I have ( I even took out all my fish and plants out of Hawke's tank (5gal) rinsed out the damn gravel and did a 100% water change ) and it came back.

And today I found Hawke with his tail fin all torn up and stringy. It was very sudden.(Shame too because he was just fully healed from another tear) So I did another 100% change and took out all his ornaments but I just know it's going to come back. I can feel it. In fact I think it grew after doing partial water changes.

What do I do to get rid of this stuff? Should I just get rid of all my live plants (which it was growing on) and just do a low light set up? Kill it with some chemicals? I haven't tried chemicals yet because I don't want to give up on my plants.

I have a borneo loach in the tank with him (I know I know they're supposed to have high aeration and fast currents but I didn't know when I bought it and I've had it for over a year now in there with Hawke and it's happy as can be and has even grown. Perhaps I have found a more adaptable subspecies?) and it normally eats the other algae that has grown in the tank but it wont touch this stuff.

[shellieca]

Have you tried adjusting the time your lights are on? I've found that if I only keep my lights on about 8 hrs, in certain tanks, I have less algae.

[asukabetta]

Does algae eaters nom on hair algae? Also, marimo moss balls help decrease the growth of algae as it eats the same nutrients but faster.

[aokashi]

you can dip all the hard scape in hydrogen peroxide (after taking them out of the tank of course). or you can spot treat with a syringe at 1 ml/ gallon

[ChoclateBetta]

Nerite snails.

[Oldfishlady]

Hair algae can sometimes be caused by old light bulbs, wrong color temp light, light on too long or not longer enough, lights too close to the water, dirty partition between light and water.

Very few fish or inverts will eat hair algae and you don't want to add other livestock for algae problems anyway. You add more livestock because you want them and can house and care for them properly.

Cleanup and algae removal is our job.....

It is normal and expected to have some species of algae in a container of water that has light and nutrients, some species can be a sign of a healthy system, help make the tank look more natural by softening edges and provides area and food for microorganisms that the Betta can graze on for added nutrition. Not all algae is bad, however, since this is a closed system it is our job to keep it controlled and manually remove it on a regular basis along with our regular water changes.

You can limit/control some of the algae to a degree.

I use an old tooth brush and twirl it around my hair algae to remove on a regular basis.

[kfryman]

In my case when I had horrible algae issues (I got them resolved!) for me, it was having too much light, too close. Once I raised the fixture by hanging it from the ceiling from the hardware the company provided, my issues were sort of fixed. I had to do tests to see why I was getting algae. It took patience and trial and error. Now after all that my troubles are gone since I found out how to take car of it and the balance you need.

What kind of lights do you have over the tank? Is it just the stock lights that come with the tank? How long do you keep the lights on for?

The best algae eater is amano shrimp, but depending on where you live and where you buy, they can be expensive or cheap. However it is a hit or miss with shrimp and bettas, also usually bettas will eventually tend to hunt shrimp out, these shrimp do not breed in freshwater. The other option that is also great are nerite snails. With snails usually population will get out of hand, but these snails cannot breed in freshwater, they can lay eggs, but they won't hatch.vWith bettas I would recommend the nerite snails since they have almost nothing that a betta wil be able to grab and kill them (antennae).

[ChoclateBetta]

Algae scrapers and more water changes help.

[aokashi]

manual temoval of algae sometimes spread the spores... which is usually soemthing you dont want to happen XD

[ChoclateBetta]

I did it with a water change after it helps.