Hair Algae

[HayleYoyo]

Hello,

I have 2 planted tanks with a hair algae. one is more heavily planted than the other.

both these tanks have low nitrates, and long lighting periods. The lights are on between 10am - 9:10pm. I want to lower the lighting period, but I'm worried the plants will suffer.

I'm thinking 1pm - 9:10pm

Can plants can go from long periods to short periods like that?

they will still get light from ambient light in the room

Thanks!

[Plants245]

I would slowly reduce your lighting period. I did and it was painful to think that my plants weren't going to photosynthesize properly, but they were fine .

Day 1: 10 AM - 9:10 PM

Day 2: 11 AM - 9:10 PM

and so on ...


My lights run from 2:30 PM - 9:30 PM.

If that doesn't work, then another thought is intensity: if you have too much light for the nutrients (including co2) in the tank, then algae will utilize the rest of it --> I bought a dimmer for my lights and reduced it down by 10 percent daily until the algae stopped growing (I did manually remove some as well).

[HayleYoyo]

So just an update. Cutting the lights pretty much solved my hair algae problem.

It still exists a little, but I am confident it will disappear as the tank matures