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Re: Hair Algae
Jeff Vamos asked:
"I've been reading the archives, and Paul in central mississippi has me
worried. Is there any way to get rid of hair algae besides tearing down
your
tank and bleaching everything? I hope so."
I had a similar nasty annoying (green) hair algae problem some time
back, and I ended up contacting Tom Barr about it. His response was,
"check for excess ammonia". I reported back to him that my ammonia
levels were reading at or near zero, yet I still had a hair algae
problem. He insisted that the algae had to be getting ammonia from
somewhere, and so I thought about this for the next two weeks while I
daily yanked out hair algae. :)
Then it hit me in a flash one night about 2:00 A.M. The sudden
introduction of hair algae in my tank coincided with the day that I
removed my fluidized sand bed filter, thereby removing the biological
filtration. The ammonia readings, it seemed, were still low because the
algae was getting the ammonia before anything else was. As soon as I put
the fluidized sand bed filter back on, the algae began to disappear.
Within one week, it was never to be seen again.
So my suggestion to you would be, check out the level of biological
filtration in your tank. Consider upping this one way or another and see
if that fixes your problem. Most conventional filters can add some
components, such as BioMax balls, to increase biological filtration.
They are cheap and are worth a try.
Ed