Hairy Hornwort?

[Nutt007]

I have some horn wort in my 10 gallon, and there had been little green 'hairs' growing off of it, what is it?

[chargers505]

Sounds like you got a hair algae problem!

[chargers505]

I remember reading somewhere that high nitrate levels in your tanks are breeding grounds for hair algae. Hair algae can spread rapidly if ignored. Make sure you do frequent water changes to lower your nitrate levels. You should give your hornwort a good scrub or just throw it out. Also, snails will help eat the algae.

[Nutt007]

Good! I happen to have a whole bunch of them who came along on my hornwort, now I know why.
Is there any cheap water testing kits? I want to make sure that the nitrates are gone.

[chargers505]

If you're tight on money, take a cup of water from the tank and bring it to Petsmart or Petco and they can do a free test for you. What's your cleaning schedule routine like? I would do 50% water changes twice a week.

[LucyLoofa]

I left mine for two days to take care of school to come back to a ruined tank.
:( take care of it as fast as you can. It will suck up everything and the plants will die.

[Littlebittyfish]

I have had horrible luck with horn wort. It made a huge mess of my 5 gallon tank, it shed horribly and clogged up my filter even. D: I took it out and will never buy hornwort again. haha

[LittleBettaFish]

If you have live plants in your tank, you will need some levels of nitrates since it is one of the main macro nutrients plant absorb along with phosphorus and potassium (NPK). Also, limiting nutrients for plants, can cause imbalances that can really give algae a foothold in your tank.

If you can manage to manually remove most of the hair algae, you can purchase some Seachem Excel (if you don't have it already) and squirt it on any remaining algae. This should kill it off, and then you can use the rest of the bottle as a carbon supplement for your plants. Hopefully, once your hornwort starts growing, it will out-compete the algae for nutrients, and you won't see so much of it.

[Nutt007]

Thanks guys! Is it ok to have fish in the tank while putting Seachem Excel in the tank?

[LittleBettaFish]

Yeah it's fine. I overdose my tanks because I have some faster growing stems in them and my fish haven't suffered any ill effects. You just have to use a syringe or something and really squirt the algae itself. I suppose if the plant isn't too established in the substrate, you could just pull it out and give it a bath in excel. Although I'm not quite sure if you'd need to dilute it or not first.