how do I get rid of hair algae? or should I?

[Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics]

Ive tried changing my light to less light and ive added more plants and it has made the green hair algae slow down in growth a ton!

 

all my plants are growing well, but even when there is one tiny piece of hair algae it keeps coming back, slowly but still comes back.

what do I do to get rid of it? or should I just leave it and just let nature do its thing?

because Ive heard people like @Cory say algae is good to have in your tank.

 

Ive done as much manual removal as possible but I cant get all of it.

 

(btw the tank does have guppies so I don't know if they will eat it or not)

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Totally your call! I’m cool with a certain amount of algae, but it if becomes too much I definitely try to get rid of it. I’ve scraped algae, manually removed it, spot treated with hydrogen peroxide, dosed the whole water column with hydrogen peroxide (when I was new to aquariums), used shrimp/snails/Amano shrimp… it’s all about finding that balance, what you’re cool with having, and learning how to fix/prevent the things you’re not cool with. 

[Ninjoma]

You could leave it, it's basically a free plant and food source. It may block light to plants if it grows on them, which could be a problem though. It may also go away on its own eventually. If you do want to get rid of it, I would suggest the following:

-Add some amano shrimp (or other shrimp), SAEs and/or flagfish.
-Start dosing easy carbon
-Tweak your balance of light, fertilizer and co2. If you are dosing iron, I would stop or lower the dosage by a lot.

[Tommy Vercetti]

I have successfully removed hair algae  from my small 3 gallon tank by manually removing it and adding floating plants.

Manual removal requires patience because the algae will grow back until the tank finds its balance. I am happy to report that tank is now algae free 

[Lennie]

Get rid of it. Idk how you would do that but surely get rid of it.

I was okay with it too unless it got into a not okay level.

These are the 4 occasions made me really angry in a level I dumped everything to trash with hair algae and boiled my wood and sprayed it with hydrogen peroxide to reuse it as I was taking that tank down.

1- Like most of us here, I enjoy feeding and watching my fish tanks and all 4 of my tanks are in my bedroom so I usually sit on my bed and enjoy them all. One day after feeding, one rummynose trying to pick on food leftover on hair algae got hairalgae stuck to its gills and it was almost dying.

2- I found my rabbit snail got stuck but the hair algae like a dog on a leash, cannot move anywhere.

3- I found one juvenile angel could not swim through, totally stuck inside a hair algae and not even able to move just waiting to die.

4- And the last one, once I saw my berried female shrimp leg got stuck to hair algae and she was struggling a lot. Again I was luckily there to save her.

 

There might me many other cases I have missed and maybe my fish were lucky to save themselves. 
 

I hate hair algae. Definitely destroy it because I don’t believe it is harmless from what I have witnessed so many times.

This is a topic I created about it before:

 

[Schuyler]

When you say you changed your lights. Did you lower the brightness or reduce how long they run?

The way I managed to get it at bay was shortening the length the light was on, lowering brightness, manually removing what I could, adding more plants, and doing more frequent water changes.

Honestly, it feels like lights and water changes were probably the key things. I got lazy about water changes recently and the algae has started cropping up again 

[Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics]

On 4/29/2023 at 11:07 PM, Lennie said:

Get rid of it. Idk how you would do that but surely get rid of it.

I was okay with it too unless it got into a not okay level.

These are the 4 occasions made me really angry in a level I dumped everything to trash with hair algae and boiled my wood and sprayed it with hydrogen peroxide to reuse it as I was taking that tank down.

1- Like most of us here, I enjoy feeding and watching my fish tanks and all 4 of my tanks are in my bedroom so I usually sit on my bed and enjoy them all. One day after feeding, one rummynose trying to pick on food leftover on hair algae got hairalgae stuck to its gills and it was almost dying.

2- I found my rabbit snail got stuck but the hair algae like a dog on a leash, cannot move anywhere.

3- I found one juvenile angel could not swim through, totally stuck inside a hair algae and not even able to move just waiting to die.

4- And the last one, once I saw my berried female shrimp leg got stuck to hair algae and she was struggling a lot. Again I was luckily there to save her.

 

There might me many other cases I have missed and maybe my fish were lucky to save themselves. 
 

I hate hair algae. Definitely destroy it because I don’t believe it is harmless from what I have witnessed so many times.

This is a topic I created about it before:

 

The other day I saw one of my guppies get stuck in the hair algae even though it was such a tiny amount so ill definitely get some amano shrimp to eat it up ASAP

On 4/30/2023 at 1:03 AM, Schuyler said:

When you say you changed your lights. Did you lower the brightness or reduce how long they run?

The way I managed to get it at bay was shortening the length the light was on, lowering brightness, manually removing what I could, adding more plants, and doing more frequent water changes.

Honestly, it feels like lights and water changes were probably the key things. I got lazy about water changes recently and the algae has started cropping up again 

I reduced the light down quiet a bit and made the photoperiod 6 hours instead of 8 also I added some hornwort to help consume extra nutrients.

[Schuyler]

I don't remember who posted this but it's a chart of what contributes to each algae type (along with other stuff...)

[Lennie]

On 5/1/2023 at 8:43 AM, Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics said:

The other day I saw one of my guppies get stuck in the hair algae even though it was such a tiny amount so ill definitely get some amano shrimp to eat it up ASAP

Sorry to hear you face issues as well.

DESTROY IT! GOGOGOGOGOOOOOO! 😄

In my experience, rosy barbs and siamese algae eaters also pick on them quite well

[Nana Finopolis]

I keep a toothbrush handy. It's perfect for removing hair algae. Just twirl the toothbrush and the hair algae clings to it. Voila!

[tolstoy21]

I have found Siamese Algae Eaters (SAEs) to be very effective eaters of hair algae. However, they can get about 6 inches, so if you have something like 20G tank, they might not be a good option.

People say that SAEs stop eating algae once they are grown, but I have seen them nibble on hair algae way into adulthood. However, they like to nibble on it while its still short. Once it gets real long, they don't seem as eager to eat it.