hair algae and tannins

[Simon]

My mother's tank has a big problem with blackish hair like algae. My tanks
did not. When I was given a couple of pieces of java fern I began having
problems with this blackish hair algae despite having washed the plant. I
split the fern into pieces after the initial piece developed plantlets on
its leaves and transferred these small pieces to one of my other tanks. This
tank is fairly heavily stained with tannin and I have not had any outbreaks
of this algae in this tank and I had heard that tannin is meant to help kill
this black hair type algae. I've added a couple of pieces of wood to leach
tannin in the water of the affecetd tank - do you think this will work to
kill an established colony of this algae ?

Regards,

Web @dvantage

Simon Voorwinde

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sva...@hunterlink.net.au
http://thecichlidtank.cjb.net
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[x...@y.com]

Simon:

I do't know about tannins....

But I try the H2O2 treatment as described on the Krib:

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/hydrogen-peroxide.html

Three applications of 4fl oz of 3% drugstore H2O2 in a ~29 gallon
tank worked well for me. The algae turned pink/red, then
silver-grey, and after a fortnight, is gone entirely. You can
tell that the H2O2 is working my the fine coating of bubbles on
most surfaces (at least those with hydrogen peroxidase or other
catalyst to degrade the H202 to O2 + H2O).

BTW, I have several large chunks of old grape vine (nicely
contorted and textured) in the aquarium which stain the water
with tannins after a week. Didn't matter to the black beard algae
though. In fact, the BBA colonized the wood extensively.

Michael

In article <38ba...@news.hunterlink.net.au>, "Simon"