Hair Algae problem

Hey fellow fishkeepers, I recently obtained a 2 foot with a build in overflow section with filter material, the tank is about a month and a half old and I almost instantly started experiencing this pest after buying some moss and glosso. I think it might be a water quality issue I have been dosing with a algae killer but it doesn't really help at all, I do regular water changes and have a lot of water movement.

The substrate compilation is as follow, plant substrate topped with gravel topped with fine gravel.
Any advice?

I'm also using a 6500K 20W cfl lamp as lighting on a 12 hours a day cycle .

Pictures included

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Cut down to 6 hrs and work back up from there if you have to

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I recently went on holiday the tank was without light for about 2 weeks, this didn't help at all. I will set my timer to 6 hours after this dose and give it a shot! Thanks for the advice

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2 things cause algae light and nutrients if you say its not light then look at your nutrients

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I am using normal tap water, I don't really have the budget for a full nutrition testing kit as I am a student, which nutritions specific? PH ?

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https://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/index.php?threads/29260/

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You can follow along here and see if it helps I update weekly

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Nothing specific realy mostly nitrates


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Looks bad!
Too much light!

What I would do:
Reduce to 8 hours of light, even better 4 hours on, 2 hours off then another 4 hours on.
Remove manually the algae, a tooth brush is a nice tool for hair algae.
Then get some Hydrogen Peroxide 10 volume and a syringe. Stop the filtration system and spray the remaining algae. For this tank size I wouldn't use more than 10ml of 10 volume Hydrogen Peroxide. Wait for at least 3 hours (pump off) then 50% water change. Restart the filtration system after the water change.
You should see some improvement in the following days.
Monitor and repeat if necessary.
Make sure you don't overdose fertilizers.
Also I wouldn't use any other algae killer, it's not the solution.

 

Agree with Oliver reduce light and manually remove algae get your nitrates tested if over 25 ppm its becomming to high you can tolerate 50ppm but thats pushing it and will be the cause of algae for sure

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That's some solid advice there

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Had the same stuff...old tooth brush works wonders and i used the method Olivier described.

No more algae

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Ok thank you all for the advise this is going to be my final try at cleaning it up before trying the peroxide method mentioned above if I see one cm of algae is peroxide time. I removed the glosso (which is now submerged seprately till I figure it out) and I added a apple snail from my other tank maybe the lil guy will help

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Did a water change as well

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Picture

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Every how often can I repeat this process? Will be doing this sunday it seems like even after the huge water change and clean up, it is returning. Thank you for your input

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I only did it once and added Siamese algae eaters after that.

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Just repeat until you're satisfied, wait a few days in between.
Algae likes to fight, so you might need a few battles to win.

 

I find that peroxide does work - the two punch method to be specific. I did this to one of my tanks that doesn't have livestock - some stuff do stay behind like brown pieces of dead algae but you just rub it off and it comes off with no effort. The algae was fizzing for about 24 hours and it can cause your pfs / gravel to generate air pockets, which I learnt recently by stirring the sand with a skewer stick to see if my cube was ready for the corydora fry. I had to wait another day before I could put my fish in to be sure that the tank has cycled properly and that there are no more bubbles coming from the gravel.

If you have shrimps / fish, I would not recommend doing this with the animals in the water. I took my fry out and put them in a glass bowl for 24 hours and they seem to be ok after I released them into the cube.