Black hair like algae

[Mawade1984]

Anyone know of a good way to get rid of the black puffy algae? Kind of looks like hair, kind of reminds me of bio balls, lol. I have taken the decorations out and the one plastic plant, but the rest of my plants are well planted and I don't want to disturb them and possibly damage them trying to rinse. Anything I can do besides some careful elbow grease???? Will post photos.

 

[Mawade1984]

 

[Mawade1984]

Anybody have any ideas?

 

[OrangeCones]

That is what is commonly called Black Beard Algae. The SAE is known to eat it, but it gets too large for a 20 gallon tank. Some have good success with applying Seachem's Excel to the plants directly or using hydrogen peroxide. It indicates an imbalance in light, carbon, and other nutrients in your tank.

 

[Mawade1984]

Ok thanks! I will do some research now that i know what it is!!

 

[exhumed07]

flourish excel will get rid of it. if u do a double dose for a couple days and then back down to a normal dose the black beard will go away. but keep in mind some live plants will melt with this treatment. anachris and jungle val that i know of as mine did. but it does work very well. in my 20 gallon i used 10ml a day for 3 days and then backed down to 5ml a day for the remander of the week and now i use recommended dosing of 2.5ml a day. there are many videos on youtube and many articals about usung flourish excel to remove black beard algea. all the siamese algae eaters do is keep the blackbeard in check. they do not remove the algae. also if well fed the algae eater may not even touch the blackbeard.

 

[Mawade1984]

Ok question. Will flourish hurt my inverts? I will have to check about plants, I have anubias and swords. I can pick the stuff off the plants but prefer not to. It would stress the fish out to much. The stuff comes off pretty easily, I washed all the plastics so far, but not plants. I had a Chinese algae eater till the other day when I found him mysteriously under the drift wood (weird)

 

[exhumed07]

i was doing the excel with cherry shrimp and snails in the tank with no issues. black beard is really hard to get rid of and i've given up trying to rid my 55 of it. don't seem to bother my africans though and i kinda like the velvety look it gives my rocks. but in my planted tank it was getting kinda bad but after i used the excel as stated i have not had any of it come back.

 

[Mawade1984]

Awesome! I will definitely have to try it! I kinda like how it looks on my volcano but everything else it looks bad. On the volcano it kind of looks like bushes haha. Thanks for the advice!

 

[exhumed07]

In my African tank the tops of the rocks get that black velvet look and where it's shaded I have all the white rock showing through with the black sand and it looks good. but a planted tank is no good to have blackboard algae