Haircut in my tank?

[PETERBRANDES at cs.com]

Greetings to all. My first post to the list, though have lurked off and on 
for a few years. I have garnered lots of great info from this list and first 
want to say thanks to all who put in so much time here. I've always been able 
to muddle through problems on my own before, but this time I need help with, 
you guessed it, algae. Tank info as follows: 29 gal set up for about a year 
and a half. Various incarnations (high maintenance/low maintenance, CO2/no 
CO2, none right now) and fish combinations over that time, but currently has 
7 gouramis (T. trichopterus and leeri), 3 danios and 3 cory cats. Fish are 
all thriving and are fed live, flake, freeze-dried, etc. The tank is lightly 
planted (by this groups standards) in 4-5 ins. Flourite; one large sword, a 
big driftwood with Java fern and bolbitis. Water is pH 7.2, KH 5, GH 20, 
Nitrites <0.3, NH3/NH4+ undetecable. That's all I can test with my laborette 
test kit. Light is 55 w of CF for 13 hours a day and filter is a Whisper 3, 
no carbon but use peat granules for pH and hardness control (tap water is pH 
8.5). Seachem Flourish twice a week per instructions on the bottle. I've been 
fighting blue/green algae in a minor way the last few months or so, but a few 
days ago woke up and found my tank full of what looks like green cut hair, 
like what's on your shoulders after a haircut, really short. I've been doing 
30-40% water changes every other day and running the diatom filter daily, but 
doesn't seem to have any effect so far. I've never seen anything quite like 
this in 15+ years of fooling around with fish. Any hints on what it is, and 
how to cure?  Thanks again.

Peter


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/html
---