Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

My tank has some horrible black hairy sort of algae in it, whcih none of the inhabitants wish to eat....

I cant see any ingredients on the algae remover, although it says it 'may' harm aquatic snails.

Do i use it on a tank with two african filter shrimps in, or not.... (if i cant that means moving the shrimp again though)....

Em

Personally, I don't use any chemical means to get rid of algae, however, I'll let others chime in.

Hair Algae
Could be caused by, Over feeding, Poor water quality, to much lighting.

Or a combinnation of all.

I would try removing as much as possible by hand , Vaccum the gravel , do a 20% water change a day for a week , Reduce the hours of lighting or no lighting. And reduce feeding.

Anything that kills algae, kills shrimp. Newjohn is correct about the cause.

I used a bunch of young Cana snails and fed them nothing for a while. They ate all the black beard algae, but unless you clean up the tank, it just grows back.

Hmm

Tank inhabitants are 2 x shrimp, 2 x zebra eels (small-ish), and 10 x silver tip tetras.

Tank has a sand substrate an oversized internal filter, some live planting, and some bogwood.

Lighting is more off than on due to both the shrimp and the eels preferring a dimly lit tank.

Tank is if anything underfed as i am trying to get the eels to eat something other than bloodworm, the silvertips will explode before they would stop eating and will happily pick food from anywhere in teh tank.

There is a small amount of green 'spot' sort of algae on the tank side nearest the window, the black hairy stuff is on the vallis leaves at the back of the tank, furthest from the natural light.

Most of the food that does go into the tank is meaty except for a bit of flake very occasionally for the shrimp (twice in teh last week since they have suddenly started coming otu to play again)....

I do have an apple snail i could add to the tank, will taht be ok wtih the sand substrate.

Oh, tank also has a bubble disc in there as the eels like very airated water/moving water.

Em

ps ive been trying to reply to this for two days now, does this forum not 'like' firefox??

If the apple snail is a brigs, and not a cana, it won't touch the black algae, especially if there is anything else to eat.

Your problem may be coming from your tap water. I'd get it tested.

Nurk...... this is so very straaaaange, the other tank (i have three), one has no algae at all, one has some blackish fuzzy algae but not much and its totally different (apart from colour) to this stuff.

Em