HAIR ALGAE TREATMENT

"Gill Passman" wrote in message
.. .
Koi-lo wrote:
OK, I just looked close. There may be two kinds. The stuff on the glass
and what's spreading on the plants looks sooty black - not brownish or
reddish. What's spreading on the bottom stones looks a brownish red
color. I'm afraid this crap is going to smother and kill my swordplants
and water-wisteria. :-(
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Think I have the same stuff in my Malawi tank - it's the only one that
suffers from this. Reddish/brown/purple stuff on the glass - comes off
easily and is powdery.

Yes, exactly, except this stuff is sooty black - no purple, but then
everyone's lighting and eyesight isn't the same. It's only in one of my
tanks as well, a 55g with goldfish. The other tanks are not affected (or
is that effected?).

Then darker stuff on the rocks and the plants - I
suppose sooty could describe it.

That stuff isn't as sooty as what's on the back. It's more like a
"coating."

I've always put it down to the lack of
plants and the hardness of the water from the Ocean Rock leeching
limestone into it.

That's ANOTHER thing I noticed. None of my hornwart is really thriving like
it's done for so many years. Instead of growing like mad it's staggering
along or actually starting to disintegrate. :-(((( What the heck is going
on? The GF don't bother it and even in the platy tank it's not doing well.

Plants are nigh on impossible to grow in this tank as
their leaves get covered in the stuff although I have noticed that the
Plec is starting to clean them up a bit.

While the GF are nibbling some of it off the back glass, they're not doing
that on the plants.

I also sometimes move them into
another tank and the otos lap the algae up...seen them clean an anubias
to as good as new in a couple of hours that I had despaired of before.
Have you got any algae eaters in the tank? Might be worth trying....

I can't keep otos alive. Once the algae is gone they are too! :*( Also,
I would wreck the tank trying to catch them to move them to another tank.
You can't easily catch these AEs in heavily planted tanks. I've given up on
them. As for plecos. I like them, but after a few weeks they *ALL* would
wait for the fish pellets and did little algae eating. Probably because my
tanks don't have much algae. What they do have is usually a light coating
of green algae on the glass and rocks that I remove myself. I haven't had
much luck with algae eaters. Another AE I tried liked fish-slime-coat a lot
more than it liked algae..........
--

Koi-Lo.... frugal ponding since 1995...
Aquariums since 1952
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