Hair Algae treatment recommendations please

I had a BAD case of hair algae in my livebearer water tank. It made my mossimo moss balls look like chia pets (I added some pictures of the algae on two of the moss balls before they got really hairy), it was growing off of all of the leaves of my live plants, off of my fluval heater, and in patches off of the glass. I got fed up last week - I found two fish had gotten stuck in it and had died.... I proceeded to throw out every plant with any sign of algae on the leaves, took a look at the gravel and scooped out all of it that had ANY green and tossed it. I'm starting from scratch, and hope for some advice on how to stop it from coming back. I am pretty much open to anything that won't kill the fish.

I do have some otos and some black mollies in the tank, but all of them tend to ignore the hair algae (or so it appears).

Suggestions?
Maybe a U/V sterilizer? If so, what's the recommended type for the setup below. I have enough $ in the tank I don't mind getting a decent one if I need a decent one.
Less light?
Less Thrive?
Something else instead of Thrive?
Add additional iron to help the plants grow faster and outgrow the algae?
Panic???

Some particulars of the tank:

• 46g Bowfront that gets NO direct sunlight and practically zero indirect light (the onlight windows nearby are covered by curtains 100% of the time.) It does have some interior regular recessed lights pointing at it from the ceiling for 6-7 hours a day.
• Fluval 3.0 light on every day for about 5 hours at about 60% brightness.
• I do a 33-40% water change pretty much every 1 - 1.5 weeks.
• I use root tabs for the live plants that are in there, and give use five squirts of Thrive all-in-one twice a week. For ease of reference, the makeup of the Thrive is at the bottom
• Fluval 405 canister filter
• Fluval m50 heater set at 78 degrees
• The pH in the area tends to run about 7.6 and is fairly hard.
• When I do water changes, I use Seachem Prime

Thrive:
Total Nitrogen (N) 2.5600%
2.5600% Water Soluble Nitrogen (N)
Available Phosphate (P2O5) 1.5800%
Soluble Potash (K2O) 9.7400%
Magnesium(Mg) 0.3200%
0.3200% Water Soluble Magnesium(Mg)
Calcium(Ca) 0.0200%
Sulfur(S) 0.5400%
0.5400% Combined Sulfur(S)
Boron(B) 0.0080%
Copper(Cu) 0.0002%
0.0002% Water Soluble Copper(Cu)
Iron(Fe) 0.4200%
0.4200% Water Soluble Iron(Fe)
Manganese(Mn) 0.1680%
0.1680% Water Soluble Manganese(Mn)
Molybdenum(Mo) 0.0006%
Zinc(Zn) 0.0038%
0.0038% Water Soluble Zinc(Zn)

But.... you know that moss balls are literally made of algae right? Those green strings is probably the way wild moss balls make baby moss balls when a bit gets stuck on a grain of sand or whatever. The moss balls being "hairy" wasn't just them growing really really well in the the lovely conditions you are providing for your plants? I read somewhere that squeezing moss balls out like a sponge is a way of exporting nitrogen - maybe there was too much nitrogen inside the balls.

Maybe the moss balls think they are at home in a huge Japanese lake and are trying to create babies.

I think I went overboard squeezing mine though. They eventually fell apart and sort made a symbiotic relationship with normal moss and the root system of some of the stem plants until eventually I just ditched a whole lot and bought some new plants. I wonder if CO2 levels are limiting the amount of nitrogen removal the plants can do? Maybe, like you suggest, it's iron. From what I've read on here over the years (mostly Byron I guess lol) algae may be caused by not enough ferts, but maybe by too much. Are there too many nitrates in you tank? That will be main cause of algae as plants don't use them unless they have to (you learn so much lurking on these forums). Do you test for nitrates? If there are too many nitrates it may be because you are overfeeding or overstocked (being overstocked necessarily forces you to overfeed in effect). Are your water changes frequent enough? That George Farmer video someone posted on here talked about using large water changes to dump out the elements from ferts the plants didn't need because there was plenty in the fish food (and therefore fish poo) and start again weekly. Are there fertilizers you try with smaller amounts of nitrogen compared to the other elements? (Most people find they have enough fish poo in the tank to provide more than enough N).

I think we all have algae problems to some extent. But there are so many things we can do alter the "balance", I reckon most of probably make things worse when we try to fix things. How I fixed mine (or at least reduced it till I don't care) was the use the liquid carbon. But I don't suggest you try that yet... as it's technically toxic (although not necessarily at the concentrations we talk about here) to fish. Also my algae was black brush which afaik nothing will eat. Smaller outbreaks of green or brown algae seem to be controlled by shrimp, otos and snails - but not if you are creating it faster than they eat it.

If you have torn down and started over with new plants and stuff (be careful of your cycle/silent cycle; ammonia will be toxic in your tank) I would assume you have learnt by teaching yourself a lot about overfeeding and the need for water changes, in which case the lack of rookie mistakes might mean you will be fine this time round.

Algae in general is good for the fish, it's only a problem when we don't like to have to look at it, , that is in the eye of the beholder though. I've seen people on you youtube suggest using a long stick, an old (cleaned) toothbrush, or your planting tools to remove that hair algae during weekly maintainence with a sort of twirly twirly motion.

That's not hair algae, it's just the algae from the "moss" balls growing. You can trim them like a bush if you wish.

PheonixKingZ said:

That's not hair algae, it's just the algae from the "moss" balls growing. You can trim them like a bush if you wish.

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I agree

I originally started to write a short reply similar to yours, but then I read the OP again that the photos were taken before the the algae became a problem.

IMO the hair we are seeing in the photos is quite pretty and no problem at all

PheonixKingZ said:

That's not hair algae, it's just the algae from the "moss" balls growing. You can trim them like a bush if you wish.

Click to expand...

PheonixKingZ said:

That's not hair algae, it's just the algae from the "moss" balls growing. You can trim them like a bush if you wish.

Click to expand...

Those pictures were months old. I had the same stuff literally growing all over the tank (driftwood, heater, other plants, glass). Even if the moss balls were ok back in the beginning, by the end they had the same sticky stuff on them as was everywhere else.

Myraan said:

I agree

I originally started to write a short reply similar to yours, but then I read the OP again that the photos were taken before the the algae became a problem.

IMO the hair we are seeing in the photos is quite pretty and no problem at all

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Problem with the hair algae is that it is sticky. I found dead fish stuck in them in the last week, and say even my yoyo loach was having some trouble swimming through a patch of the stuff.

I only have a single smallish tank about 3.5 years old, so my first hand experience is limited. I wonder if the stickiness means it is slime/blue-green algae which is bacterial? I suspect the root causes and prevention are similar, but maybe there are alternative ways of getting rid of it that may help?

jonatheber said:

Problem with the hair algae is that it is sticky. I found dead fish stuck in them in the last week, and say even my yoyo loach was having some trouble swimming through a patch of the stuff.

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Actually finding dead fish stuck in what is definitely hair algae suggests one possible cause for the issue...too much organic waste in the tank for the algae to feed off.
(The moss balls don't send out hair-like threads of themselves to reproduce. The moss-ball algae is very different).

So...suggestions for control;
Less light...duration, not intensity or colour. (Algae can usually perform better in some spectrums).
Less organic waste.
Less plant fertiliser.

Get yourself a bottle brush, or similar, such as a toothbrush, to twizzle the hair algae out of the tank, best you can.
DON'T be fooled into thinking you can buy an 'algae eater' fish to sort out the problem...very few will touch hair algae and would most likely ignore it whilst there's other stuff to eat. Snails seem to ignore it as well.

PheonixKingZ said:

That's not hair algae, it's just the algae from the "moss" balls growing. You can trim them like a bush if you wish.

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^^^ this

This is why I don’t want moss balls in my tank, they literally are algae that form into a ball shape and infested every thing in the tank.

Barry Tetra said:

^^^ this

This is why I don’t want moss balls in my tank, they literally are algae that form into a ball shape and infested every thing in the tank.

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No, they don't.

Bruce Leyland-Jones said:

Actually finding dead fish stuck in what is definitely hair algae suggests one possible cause for the issue...too much organic waste in the tank for the algae to feed off.
(The moss balls don't send out hair-like threads of themselves to reproduce. The moss-ball algae is very different).

So...suggestions for control;
Less light...duration, not intensity or colour. (Algae can usually perform better in some spectrums).
Less organic waste.
Less plant fertiliser.

Get yourself a bottle brush, or similar, such as a toothbrush, to twizzle the hair algae out of the tank, best you can.
DON'T be fooled into thinking you can buy an 'algae eater' fish to sort out the problem...very few will touch hair algae and would most likely ignore it whilst there's other stuff to eat. Snails seem to ignore it as well.

Click to expand...

Seconding all of the above!

My two year old tank here often gets hair algae since I started it two years ago;


The only way to beat it is to stay on top of manual removal and tank maintenance, and to resolve the underlying imbalance in your tank that is causing it to thrive.

It is NOT caused by moss balls.
Otos, mollies etc don't eat hair algae, and most fish won't eat problem algae.

A bottle brush is the easiest way to manually remove it, as Bruce recommended! I use a large one to search for and check for wisps of it, and a small brush to get down among the tall and thick plants and manually remove any, before it gets thick enough to pose any threat. The bottle brushes are also great for cleaning filters and tubing.

In my experience with it in this tank and the garden pond - hair algae isn't usually sticky, and doesn't pose much threat to fish unless it's been allowed to get out of control and has become very dense. Then those fine strands can potentially get wrapped around fins or gills, trapping a fish. But the only time I had that happen was as I was manually pulling a dense spot of it out from behind a plant, and a baby pygmy cory had got caught in it as I pulled the mass of algae out. I'm positive that it must have only become trapped by my pulling it out because once I gently freed it, it was absolutely fine, so can't have been caught there for very long. I've also seen the photos and experience @CassCats shared here where a tiny fry had accidentally got wrapped up in a strand of christmas moss - so freak accidents like that can happen with any fine plant too (her baby lived as well!)

I'd suspect that your dead fish (I'm sorry for your losses) may have just hidden among the plants/algae while dying, rather than dying as a result of being trapped in it. But that is just a guess, and I admit that it could happen as a freak accident - but two freak accidents makes me think that it's unlikely to be the cause of death.

That experience reinforced for me that it's essential to stay on top of tank maintenance with this stuff. This tank has a lot of botanicals and plant matter, so getting the light and nutrient balance right is a constant balancing act. Tank not cleaned and maintained often or well enough means lots of organic material breaking down, and algae thriving on those extra nutrients. Not enough ferts and the plants start to fail, taking up less nutrients themselves equals more nutrients for hair algae, and it starts reappearing again. My light on this tank is too bright and without floating plants, hair algae returns, so I know I need enough floating plant cover in here.

It does grow fast, but it thrives best and only poses a risk to fish if it's allowed to continue forming dense little areas, often in untouched or shaded areas. In my tank, that's behind the dense planting at the back, and attaching itself to the driftwood. Substrate cleaning is essential, because decaying plant leaves and botanicals leave organic waste that algae seems to thrive on if there's too much for the tank to handle.

So weekly maintenance has to include a sweep with a bottle brush, and manually removing any I find. It's an easy quick task in here now and just part of the routine, provided the balance of light/ferts/organics is right.

The only tank I ever had hair algae in was mostly from too much light (right across from a window and I like to leave my tank lights on most of the day) and not enough plants. I would remove it manually as much as possible. I used a plastic fork and aqua scaping tweezers in the hard to reach places. Most "algae eaters" you will see in fish stores typically eat soft algae, not the hard or hair algae that are usually a bigger problem.

I eventually turned that tank into a flag fish tank, so it turned out okay since they love the stuff.

More on Moss Balls...

I've learned that you need to keep on rotating them, otherwise they grow out of shape and to the light.
They don't send out tendrils or hair-like algae, the sphere simply becomes less spherical.
(Don't ask me how I know this ).

I am so glad you all corrected my thinking out loud about moss balls causing algae problems. Not least because I am now tempted to try again and get myself one or two.

Myraan said:

I am so glad you all corrected my thinking out loud about moss balls causing algae problems. Not least because I am now tempted to try again and get myself one or two.

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Go for it!

I've had moss balls in my tank that gets hair algae, and one place I never have to remove hair algae from, is the moss balls... lol!

I did end up collapsing two of them ever time though, whoops! Not really balls anymore. But I've kept them intending to superglue them to some wood or a coconut hut or something.