Algae Bases Covered?

[Drklude]

Want to make sure I have all my bases covered. I have what looks like hair algae that is starting to cover the bottom 4 inches or so of the tank. I've had about 5 amano shrimp and 2 SAE in the tank for about 3 months now. About a month ago I stopped easy green and cut light back to about 7 hours a day. This was a bare bottom tank for a couple years before I converted it over to a planted tank about 8 months ago.

Am I missing anything? I try to manually remove as much as I can when I gravel vac, but seems I can never get it all. Any suggestions/input would be great.

Thanks!

[Colu]

Plants need a minimum of 8hours of light a day lack of light and nutrients will encourage algae

[Sapere_Ceta]

Using a fork to twirl around hair algae can help extract more of it, especially in combination with water changes. More consistent water changes might be needed if it could be a nutrient imbalance (especially with phosphates for instance), perhaps too much in the water column since this is somewhat newly planted (especially with new substrate, newer tanks, or dirted tanks). This would also help if the hair algae was from too much nitrate. I would keep the light on a minimum of what the plants require for now. If more frequent water changes didn’t help, the next steps could be seeing if the nutrients in the tank are too low (in that case, supplementing more of what’s lacking). If that’s not it, it could be lighting. Maybe the light it too intense or too close to the tank. 

[Jack.of.all.aquariums]

I would try reducing the intensity of the light. Since you have it hanging that can easily be done by raising it up 5 or 6 inches. As you get more plants mass in the tank you can lower it back down to help get more light to the plants that might be getting shaded. 

[Drklude]

Implemented a lot of these suggestions, thank you. @Sapere_Ceta that fork suggestion was a game changer!