Recurrent over-run

[crashnburn55]

I am still left scratching my head after many weeks.  

I have a 60 gallon tank about 14" depth, with Eco-complete substrate and dwarf hairgrass planted in the distribution as seen below.  I put root tabs in about 1 month ago and have been dosing with Easy green liquid fertilizer weekly (6 spritzes).  I have about 10 (put in 15 but can now only find 10) amano shrimp and 4 nerite snails as my "clean up crew" so far.  I have one guppy and 3 glo-fish tetras.  I do about a 20% water exchange every week.  If I go much longer time period between vacuuming up the algae it gets REALLY BAD. 

I have a Fluval 2.0 light that I have on about 80% for 6 hours.  During the water exchange I try to vacuum up as much of the hair algae as possible, but yet within about 1 week, the hair algae comes back with a vengeance.  With that much algae on the hairgrass, I'm not sure that they will spread and are even looking like they are dying.  I put in the hairgrass about 2weeks before Thanksgiving and am in this repeating cycle.  They seem to have a more difficult type rooting, possibly because of the bigger substrate size but also am concerned the algae is blocking their ability to get the light.

I am considering using the Flourish Excel but was wondering if there is a way to control the algae more "naturally."  

What am I doing wrong? Lower light time? Less intense light? Just try to Flourish Excel? Add in another member to the clean up crew?

What do you guys think?  HEEELLLLPPP!!!!

 

Algae Infested Tank Owner

 

[Jack.of.all.aquariums]

Your grass looks like it's doing okay to me. It takes time to get established and happy before it will really start to spread. It's pretty normal for some of the existing leaves to die off when after planting algae likes that as it gives it some nutrients to take advantage of. Do you have other plants in the tank? I'm wondering if you could dial back on fertilizer until your plants are growing more. Are you testing nitrates?

Also no reason to use excel in my opinion.

[crashnburn55]

Thanks for the thoughts.  I had some Scarlet Temple but they aren't doing so well. . .  . . had about 10-12 individual stems. . . but they got WAY OVERGROWN with the hair algae and now I am left with a few semi rotting stems.  I added the root tabs in hope that that would spur the Scarlet Temple's growth. . . but maybe they were too far gone.  I tried to wipe the leaves a bit but the hair algae wouldn't come off.  When I was a bit more aggressive wiping, the leaves came off.  

Are Scarlet Temple more challenging to grow?

 

 

[crashnburn55]

My nitrates are about between 40-80 ppm, I would say closer to 60 ppm.  I was thinking of getting some floating plants to help re-process the nitrates but didn't want something that blocked out the light from the grass since the grass hasn't actually taken "root" yet.