Ok, so I had a week were I was so frigging sick from pregnancy that I ended up on three prescription medications just so I could keep food down. They actually gave me a drug they give to chemo patients to keep me from throwing up. Anyways, enough of the sob story, I didn't do a water change in my nano that week to say the least. Well now I have attack of the killer hair algea, because I started to feel bad for the fishes but I didn't have the energy to go to foodlion and buy distilled water so I did a water change with tap water. Big mistake, not sure what happened but I assume it's high in nitrates and I lost my two shrimps and my emerald crab and now my tank has hair algea. This was my first loss of any kind in this tank and now I have been back on a regular schedule of distilled/ro water changes and cleaning but the hair algea keeps coming back. Whatever should I do?
Help me with Hair Algea
- Thread starter discus4everGrl
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They're products to help kill hair algea that you'll find in your LFS, i don't have any to recommend seeing as i've never used it - and perhaps it doesn't even work, but in a situation like this, i'm guessing you'll want to do anything nessarsary!
I highly recommend getting a snail - or two, they clean tanks so well! Other than that i'm not really sure, other than doing regular water changes, and perhaps buying one of those 'by hand' things so you can clean the hair algea off yourself.
I highly recommend getting a snail - or two, they clean tanks so well! Other than that i'm not really sure, other than doing regular water changes, and perhaps buying one of those 'by hand' things so you can clean the hair algea off yourself.
I would reccomend testing your tap water to see what its levels are. I dont see how one water change would cause such havoc, but you wont know until you test the tap.
As for the hair algae I currently had some on some of my rocks and my emerald crab took care of it within a day. I have some on my sand and he doesnt seem to be touching it (he prefers my coraline I guess, the bastard). When you had your emerald did he eat any of the hair or was he not in the tank when you had hair algae?
I dont suggest any chemicals to try and combat the algae problem, but instead find its source and take care of that.
sorry you lost your crabs and shrimps, I know the pain. What kind of shrimps did you loose? Cleaners?
As for the hair algae I currently had some on some of my rocks and my emerald crab took care of it within a day. I have some on my sand and he doesnt seem to be touching it (he prefers my coraline I guess, the bastard). When you had your emerald did he eat any of the hair or was he not in the tank when you had hair algae?
I dont suggest any chemicals to try and combat the algae problem, but instead find its source and take care of that.
sorry you lost your crabs and shrimps, I know the pain. What kind of shrimps did you loose? Cleaners?
well...that depends on how much she did. i think its only a 10g tank so if she did 2 or 3 gallons that is a significant volume of water. testing your tap would be a good plan just so you can hopefully find out if that is what caused the problem. i would also test your tank water to make sure nothing nasty is still in there. in all honesty it sounds like heavy metal poisoning simply because you lost your inverts and not your fish. First thing I would do is take out the rock with the hair algae and remove as much as you can with a toothbrush. then from there big water change with good water
yeah I think it was a combo of long time with no water change plus using my tap which I now know is high in nitrates and phospates. I won't be using any of that algea killing stuff because as I understand it, it will kill my hermits and snails that are in there now. My emerald crab never ate hair algea because I never had any until he died, and the shrimps I lost were peppermints that I got to eat that damn aipistia anemone I had, I know i spelled that wrong.
Will cleaner shrimp eat hair algea? I plan on doing water changes 2-3 times a week hoping to deplete the system of anything that may remain which may be feeding my hair algea. I still have a little nitrate in the system from the tap water change, but I feel it may be just enough to keep this algea going so i will try to get that gone and maybe get another emerald crab when that goes down to unreadable. Funny enough the nitrate spike didn't touch my hermits - go figure, they were the cheap ones.
Will cleaner shrimp eat hair algea? I plan on doing water changes 2-3 times a week hoping to deplete the system of anything that may remain which may be feeding my hair algea. I still have a little nitrate in the system from the tap water change, but I feel it may be just enough to keep this algea going so i will try to get that gone and maybe get another emerald crab when that goes down to unreadable. Funny enough the nitrate spike didn't touch my hermits - go figure, they were the cheap ones.