Brown Hair Algae In Tank

[Tearie]

Hey guys, recently had a problem with brown hair algae appearing in my 30 gallon tank.
 
http/i.imgur.com/QUWqqYY.jpg
 
It's quite tough to remove and is brown in colour.
 
Tank parameters are:
 
0 Nitrite
25 Nitrate
0 Ammonia
7.8 PH
 
Tank has been running for 7 months now, no CO2 is being used, lights are on 6-8 hours a day, no ferts used. Two T8 bulbs.
Weekly water change of 30-40%.
Could it be related to my walstad sand+soil? Sometimes the soil leaks through to the surface as shown here, http/i.imgur.com/0TS1Kuz.jpg
Could too much surface agitation be a cause?
 
Let me know if you need more pictures or details.

 

[BerryAttack]

i would say the cause is because you have too much nutrients in the water and the plants aren't using them. you can do a 3 day black out, your plants will be fine and also any fish you have in there. then after the 3 days algae should be gone, and what is left you can remove easily. you can repeat the process, but allow your plants at least one day of light before doing it again.
also if you want, you can throw in a bunch of snails. they will breed like crazy and eat all the algae, but then you will have a snail problem which just doesn't look nice and your plants will be fine.
i personally like snails, so in my tank it doesn't bother my. helps keep the algae etc under control.

 

[levahe]

It looks like you need to add ferts, that's quite bad algae. If your plants aren't healthy algae will attack, just like if you don't feed your fish he will become sick.
I would recommend less light until the algae improves
And add some ferts, something like seachem flourish or tropica plant growth premium would be fine
You could try a blackout

 

[Tearie]

It looks like you need to add ferts, that's quite bad algae. If your plants aren't healthy algae will attack, just like if you don't feed your fish he will become sick.
I would recommend less light until the algae improves
And add some ferts, something like seachem flourish or tropica plant growth premium would be fine
You could try a blackout

 
Ah, actually I used to douse flourish excel and regular flourish but stopped a few months ago as my other plants were growing way too fast without the ferts and so I didn't want them to grow even faster with. So am I right in understanding a lack of nutrients/ferts in the water results in the plants becoming weaker, allowing the algae to attack it? If so I'll try to restart my fert dosing cycle and see if anything improves.

 

[snazy]

Hair algae is CO2 related mate. Cut away all affected leaves/dying plants. Damaged plants are algae magnets.  Clean your filters and collect any debris you see. Do a large water change.  Decrease the light period to 6 hrs max for now to preserve CO2. Introduce floating plants to block the light.
 
How is your surface agitation?

 

[Tearie]

Hair algae is CO2 related mate. Cut away all affected leaves/dying plants. Damaged plants are algae magnets.  Clean your filters and collect any debris you see. Do a large water change.  Decrease the light period to 6 hrs max for now to preserve CO2. Introduce floating plants to block the light.
 
How is your surface agitation?

 
I'm going to try resuming my fert dosing schedule again and hope it makes an improvement. A lot of the affected leaves still look relatively healthy so I'm slightly reluctant on removing them completely but will definetely consider it as a last option if there's no improvement. I've been messing with the surface agitation recently, I have a HOB filter attached to the left of the tank and an internal filter with a spray bar attached to the rear wall. There's slight, small bubbles from the HOB filter but nothing too fast. Both filters combined create enough movement to have a slight ripple on the surface.

 

[tmoney7]

Yea honestly i had green hair algae in my tank and i just made sure there was more flow from my HOB filter so that there was more CO2 in my tank and then did a black out for 4 days and it was gone.  Its been about 3 weeks now and haven't seen a trace of it since.