my 20 gallon tank has been infested with hair algea. what is the best way of getting rid of it? is there a certain fish that eats hair algea that wont eat my baby cherry barbs or cherry barb eggs?

where is this hair algae on the gravel or the glass?

You can use an old toothbrush to get rid of the algae.
just roll it on there.
Don't wait to long or your tear out the plants with the algae.
Hair algae are a symptom of a healthy tank, opposite to other algae,wich are mainly due to overfeeding or to many lighthours,imo.
Filtering through peat could help too, but I wouldn't advice that, unless you want a blackwatertank with an altered pH..

my pleco, and snails both eat it. i have a nice carpet of hair algae over some flowerpots and a fake tree stump. but thats the only place it grows. i dont have on my substrate or glass. i think it looks pretty the way it waves around in the current. its certainly not hurting anything being there. i look at it like a solid form of the nitrates that were in my tank water better solid on a pot, than liquid in my fish's gills i kept trying to scrub it off for a while, i just gave up on that lol, its gonna be there in my 55 for sure lol. i have put javamoss in there, and tied it ontop of the pots, and now its using the hair algae to anchor itself to the pot. its pretty cool how that is working out. its thriving

Algae like on these stones, and on Win's flowerpots, is a different sort of algae than the hairalgae,IMO.


My plecos ate the hairalgae if it's short.
When the threads become to long they cannot or will not eat them anymore.
The hair algae i've had kept growing.

in the fish pond i worked before, i love those hair algae... king prawns
love to rest over it....and once they are there....it is very easy to
scoop them with net...they could not jump that much in it....
yummy king prawns

don't you know that those hair algae were being harvested, dried and used
as seedings in producing algae blub for milk fish

I had to rehome a school of carp i had when i started out in the hobby.
We put 8 of them with some goldfish in the pond.
That pond was so infested with the hairalgae that some of the carp could hardly move when i put them in there.
Had to pick them up and put them in an open spot.
I returned some weeks later and ALL the algae had been consumed by the carp.
The pond looked very clear and i allmost didn't recognize it.
It had deffo too little fish in there.
So i guess carp like it too...

lol well noddy i can honestly say ive never had any algae grow on anything solid in my koi tank lol. its just gravel in it tho.

geeza2006 wrote:


its growing on top of the plants on the leaves.

my 2 bristle noses eat it!

Best bet m8 is do what noddy said too do, get a tooth brush and twirl it in the brush too remove it.
If left it can become troublesome, alternativly you can get fish that eat it.

Hair algae is a bugger to get rid of, I had it years ago. To remove it you have to physically scrub it off and remove it- it was on the filter, plants and even on some gravel. When i had it i tried taking out what i could but it came back. I eventually got rid of it by putting my fish (and filter and heater in another container) and i drained the tank. I removed every bit of hair algae i could and i let the tank completely dry out for 3 or 4 days