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Hair algae
Another observation,
Karen in one of your articles in Aquarium fish Magazine you mentioned
that some hair algae outbreaks end as suddenly and unpredictably as they
appear. Some people talk of elevated Fe levels, along with increased NO3
and PO4 levels. Now I am coming to the end of my 3 hair algae outbreak in
as many years. At least I hope it is ending. Even with this 3rd outbreak
I have been in agreement with you Karen, I do a lot of things in effort to
alleviate the problem, then one day it is just gone:) This time around I
found what appeared to be a similarity or consistency in all three on my
cases and wanted to see what you guys think. In all three of my cases the
outbreak was coincident to a relatively large die-off in plant material.
Most of the algae was located on old or dyeing growth. In the first and
last cases the dead material was associated with new rather large
plantings. So there was a lot of leaves not acclimated to my tanks and
they were growing new leaves and dropping old ones. The other occurrence
was due to a sudden drop in my nutrient levels causing a die back in the
tank. I mixed up my PMDD and mistakenly cut my ingredients in thirds (Used
teaspoon instead of tablespoon:). The reduced levels caused a fair amount
of the older weaker leaves to die off and Boom Hair algae outbreak. In all
cases once all the old growth was removed and only new growing stuff was
left the algae was gone. And sometimes this can occur in a couple
trimmings. Now also in all three cases I have presented an onslaught of
algae control measures, none of which should be overlooked as having an
affect. The efforts to rid the tank of algae made a better environment for
the plants and I am sure lead to the final algae free outcome, but the
majority of the algae seemed to leave the tank with trimmings. Finally in
all three cases the algae problem subsided once the water conditions were
more conducive to the plants so I do not want to ignore that condition. I
do however feel that getting to that point takes a little while and may be
unavoidable in large planting where a large portions of the existing growth
may die back.
Later,
Jeff Dietsch