Algae and plant leaves.

[fishfanatic2]

Title says it all. I keep having algae grow on the plant leaves, and I'm not really sure how to get it off. It's either dark dark green algae on the leaves or the wonderful thread algae tangled up in everything. Tank is 20 gallon, 45 watts of light (NO), I add flourish iron, potassium, and excel every water change. Plants are a survivor crypt, tons of java fern and bolbitis (stuff keeps growing), hygrophila, some amazon swords, 1 aponogeton (sp?), and some myphrobilium (i forget the exact name, something like that). The thread algae is especially bad since it clogs the filter and tangles the plants up. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

get rid of your phosphates (the cause) :wink:

otto cats and flying foxes will take care of the algae (the symptom)

 

[Anonymous]

I have a small amount of hair algae on my leaves also. I have found manual removal is the best. After awhile it can be conquered. but in the mean time I just remove what I can each month or so. My tank has been set up about 4 years now. Just noticed the hair about the last year or so.

I feel it is much less maintenance to remove the hair then the normal filtered type FW aquariums which seem to need algae cleanings every couple of weeks or so. Not counting the filter that is not existant on my planted tanks.

 

[fishfanatic2]

When I try doing it manually I end up chopping the leaves in half or uprooting the plants, not fun since they've all been recently replanted (30+ stem plants-UGH!).

I'll see if adding a poly-filter or other phos-x product works.

 

[Anonymous]

I hope it works.

Actually, I remove the affected leaves. But grab all the hair I can before removing the leaves. Only have to do it every couple of months or so and the leaves grow back in that time.