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Permalink Reply by Thomas Kampstra on January 17, 2012 at 3:00am

I just had a huge hair algae problem also. I wrapped a blanket around the tank to block out all light and did not feed the fish for 72 hours (3 days). then I vacuumed the gravel and scrubbed the inside of the glass, and scrubbed all the rocks and decor with a toothbrush to get what algae i could off of it. you will find that the algae is really difficult to get off. so I submerged all the rocks in HOT HOT water in the bathtub and let it sit for an hour. this basically cooks all the algae and kills it. this has cured my problem so far. my main problem was that I only had 2 small fish and a few ghost shrimp in the aquarium and i was over feeding them so there was a lot of excess nutrients in the tank and the algae was thriving off of it. when i vacuumed the gravel after the 72 hours it looked like i was sucking up mud! there was so much nasty stuff in the gravel. also my tank was new (about 2 months) and that was the first gravel vacuuming i have ever done on this tank and only one small water change which was really just filling up the tank. so a fresh tank system and over feeding was my problem.

now the tank is crystal clear and i have about 10 guppies and 2 gold fish with a baby pleco to eat up the food and i also feed them a lot less. things are much better.

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