[APD] RE: bad Hair day

["Pete" <peteal at sympatico_ca>]

> Hi ... a couple of questions.
>
> I've been battling a bad case of hair algae. Finally, I decided to
> cover the tank for a week. Most of the algae is now gone. So I'll be
> starting back on the weekly water changes, and eventually turn the CO2
> back on. However, instead of dosing the water column with PO4, K2SO4,
> and Mastergrow like I usually do, I inserted some old laterite balls
> and Seachem Flourish plant tabs in the substrate (and bought more
> Seachem tabs to add). The idea was to feed the root system more, and
> minimize nutrients in the water column till I have the algae situation
> completely under control. Does this make sense? If it doesn't please
> tell me why.

I've gotta agree with Tom who's posts way back got me try it.  I've gone the 
fert limiting way and it doesn't work, even if you slow the algae down your 
plant growth also slows down.

One other thing you might want to do (on top of toms suggestions) is a large 
gravel vacuum.  I have a larger fish load than all the pics you see of those 
beautiful algae free tanks that use the CO2 and plenty of ferts method, 
something that is funnily enough not talked much about when comparing tanks 
to see what the algae problem is. So going on the theory it's ammonia/NH4 
(fish waste and rotting garbage by-products) that causes algae, I was 
wondering if my old tank and the waste in the gravel, on top of a larger 
fish load, was causing algae problems for me (a range of algae that grows 
slowly but enough to ruin the plant looks) .  So I pulled all the plants out 
and into a bucket and did a huge and deep gravel vacuum until it was clear 
(and a 80% water change with the vacuum).  I did the 1 part Chlorine 19 part 
water treatment for the plants and a good prune to give them a head start on 
the algae.  Replanted, filter cleaning and good dose of ferts and the impact 
was awesome. Algae is still there in those hard to reach corners and on the 
driftwood so I'm not running a sterile environment from the chlorine 
treatment  (even had a little hair algae come back on my java fern after 4 
days), but it doesn't spread and the hair on my java just vanished one 
night.  I've done the whole plant treatment thing before without the gravel 
vacuum and the algae has always come back, but with the vacuum the plants 
are clear.  It's in my books as an every 6 month treatment I'm going to be 
doing from now on.

BTW it also shows that you don't need lots of ferts in your gravel.. mine 
was gravel only after the cleaning and plants were fine, better to have the 
plants take the nutrients out of there water column where the algae gets 
it's food from than the roots and leave more ferts in the column for the 
algae.

Luck
Pete. 

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