The Puffer Forum

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=25484&hilit=+hair+algae#p274510

So I had hair algae festoon the bottom of my 500 gal. The reasons how and why aren't important. I tried shutting off the lights... nope, removed the CO2 and no lights for a few weeks.. nope.. Manual removal was recommended, as was hydrogen peroxide.

When I ripped out the mass, I put it in a bucket and tried the hydrogen peroxide (along with 70% of my plants that were festooned with it also). The peroxide should have killed it in 3 days. It has been a week now and it is still as green as ever.

I have a feeling the answer eagerly greets me at the tank ever day! I don't know why I didn't think of it a long time ago... My Koi! I should have just ripped apart the algae and fed it to that demon plant destroying beast. DUH!!

... and feel dumb with just reason

If you want to save the plants and wipe out the algae, set a spare (no fish) tank and use untreated tap water, with 50-75% partials ever other day. The chlorine/chloramine will hit the algae but most (not all) vascular plants and mosses will survive it just fine. It is not as fast, but it is pretty effective. Folk forget that chlorine is a better algacide than peroxide. Just because you can't use it with fish does not mean that you cannot use it at all. Common pond snails are not bothered by it much either. They seem all but eternal.

I usually use very low light 12 hours per day - about 1 WPG for the duration of the treatment.

Koi are a final solution - but they will destroy most aquatics period.

always insightful!

I am on well water so I'd have to add a partial cap of bleach to the bucket.. or possibly iodine?

RTR wrote:... Common pond snails are not bothered by it much either. They seem all but eternal...

Are you saying that common pond snails aren't affected by chlorinated tapwater? This would make things easier if they are not. What about ramshorns? What about the eggs? I would almost consider making some type of drip water changer for a feeder snail tank if this is the case.

I have used common ponds to cycle tanks back when i had so many F-8s that i was generating hundreds of snails routinely. So they do withstand both chlorine and ammonia. I kept the ramshorns at lower density (to get bigger snails) so never tested them against the disinfectants and unoxidized metabolites.

I have not played much with iodide other as a molt0death preventative for some shrimp with high requirements for such.

Drip/pressure water changes are standard for lazy folk (modesty forbids me naming names), but that slow feed goes through carbon blocks in series to absorb the nasties. I'm not brave enough to risk it without the disinfectant adsorbtion up front.

The pond snails in tap water were stand-alone trials, I think in 10 gallon tanks. Just little stuff for play time. The disinfectant algae treatment has been known forever (even before chloramine), but has been largely forgotten in today's quick-fix world. It is not a quick-fix. It takes some time. Bot it rids Java Moss of algae, which nothing else i know will do, and I use it for infested Anubias petite - which is glacially slow-growing and still (and likely forever) expensive.

Remember that back in the days of many puffer tanks, the large volumes of my snail rearing tanks were also veggie filters for little fish like T. mbu and fahakas - hundreds of gallons with my prize specimens were linked to those tanks.