Dwarf hairgrass problems

[Gotyoulooking]

Hi guys, new to planted aquarium and I have a 40 breeder with a 3 ft. 2-Light 45-Watt White Integrated Utility LED Shop Light from home depot. I ordered some dwarf hair grass from the co op and it was doing well until two weeks ago it developed or exploded in algae. Idk what type it is but I’ve been hitting it with 5ml excel every day right after light goes on. I keep water steady at 0 NH3-4, 0 NO2, and 5-20 NO3. Weekly 25% water change and I house 8 mystery snails, multiple pond snails, 2 SAE and 21 neon tetras. I only feed em in the am before work and when I get home late pm, only what they eat in 2 minutes. I did add a small branch of broccoli for the snails and they devour it in 24hr period. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. 

[lefty o]

how many hours a day is the light on for? my first thing would be to cut down on how long the light is on for.  secondly, take an old toothbrush, and use that to clean some of the algae out of your hair grass. just gently wipe it through it, and it should pull out a bunch of that stuff.

[Charose]

my co-op dwarf hair grass did the same, think it's just the stress of it getting used to your tank. in my case, i had cut it back to promote spreading. i used a dropper to spray the affected areas with 3% hydrogen peroxide which killed it off after two treatments. on water change day, with the lights and filter/powerheads off, slowly discharge the H2O2 on the algea, let sit 30 min, then do your water change. the treated areas will bubble, including the substrate if you get some on there. when stag horn dies it turns red, so you can easily see where you need to focus on if you need to treat again. the dead algae will decay and you can vac it away or in my case shrimps and snails ate it up.

[Charose]

1 hour ago, lefty o said:

how many hours a day is the light on for? my first thing would be to cut down on how long the light is on for.  secondly, take an old toothbrush, and use that to clean some of the algae out of your hair grass. just gently wipe it through it, and it should pull out a bunch of that stuff.

staghorn is pretty sturdy, hard to use the toothbrush method in my experience, though that does work well for hair algae and diatoms.

[Charose]

also, if it were me, I'd ditch that pot and spread your plantlets around in small clusters to promote carpeting. you can pull the plantlets apart, gently roll a small group of them into a little bundle, use tweezers to plant down deep into the substrate.