# Hair algae in new tank



## airbaggedmazda (Apr 27, 2010)

I setup a new 22long with co2. In the last day I have been seeing a little bit of thread/hair algae. I have been picking it out by hand but I am wondering what is the best course of action to get rid of it before it gets out of hand.


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## Alkatraz (Jul 20, 2012)

Amano shrimp will eat it. I think IPU has them on special right now.


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## Reckon (Jul 25, 2012)

Hm. I've always used livestock to get rid of algae. For example in my two shrimpless tanks I use silver algae eaters. Otherwise I believe water changes and perhaps even some spot treatment with excel will help.


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

A little more information would help. How long has the tank been set up? Substrate/lighting(watts/type/time)/dosing/livestock?

If your tank is new and you are using ADA then as one of the other posters suggested, manual cleanup and lots of water changes to get rid of excess nutrients. If it's established or you're not using ADA then something else is going on.


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## airbaggedmazda (Apr 27, 2010)

After doing some google searches I found some great articles with lot of info. Some of the best ones I found were on barrreport.com

the tank is only 2 weeks old with fluval stratum. I've done a couple of 50% water changes since setting it upand everything was clear and good. then 2 days ago the hai algae started making appearances. I manually removed it for 2 days but seeing last night how fast it can grow and spread got me worried. 

I found a few articles and dosed with kno3 and upped the co2 and it is all gone today. Even the small strands that I could not get last night are gone today. I am going to start a tank journal soon


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## Reckon (Jul 25, 2012)

Good call. It's all about balance. Algae is more adaptive than plants. So if you don't give plants enough to grow, either enough co2 to use the nutrients in the water, or enough nutrients to begin with then algae will start to take over in the tank.

Share the links to the articles you found? Always nice to learn more.


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## airbaggedmazda (Apr 27, 2010)

It is "all about balance" I also read in another article to try to figure out the cause of the algae outbreak, not get a clean up crew to control it. One of the aticles was this one Problem with Thread Algae - Aquarium Plants.


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