What kind of algae is this? And how do I get rid of it?

[HeatherB]

In the last 5 years of fishkeeping I have never had this in my tank.

Tank specs: 5 gal. Running a Petco 20g. size filter. Black sand substrate. Planted. I ran Co2 in this tank up until about 2 months ago. Lighting: 10 watt compact fluorescent. Tank only gets light about 8 hrs max/day.

Water changes every week to week and a half.

The only thing living is this tank is a female betta.

The algae is confined to just the heater and the filter. HMMMM.
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Any ideas what it is? How it got there? And how should I get rid of it?

[Surfdog]

I had the same growth in my 33 gallon years ago, covered the back wall near the heater and cannister's outlet. It did not harm my fish... I eventually just scrubed it off and ran my Diatom to polish/filter the water...:22:

[Lady Hobbs]

Oh boy! I check my tanks out every day like the tank police. I'd faint if I saw that! LOL

[HeatherB]

Yeah....I took it off and now it's back!!! Within a span of 2/3 weeks.

Will something eat it?

[Surfdog]

My Pleco ate it but could not keep up with it. I had to scrub (with Can off) and get it all out of the water with my Diatom, ran it for 3 hours...Never did come back and I never knew where it came from originally. My back wall was painted dark blue as well and the tank had been exposed to direct sun for an hour in the mornings...(blush)

[sphingo]

From the pictures it almost looks like one of the bacterial types of algae that we have in kansas creeks and rivers. Is it real gelatinous, like you can't pull it all out it just kinda falls apart? Hope that isn't to confusing of a question.

[toddnbecka]

Looks like hair algae to me, probably dropping the CO2 allowed it to thrive with 2 watts/gallon of light. The good news is, it's harmless. Bad news, you'll likely never get rid of it completely unless you sterilize the tank and restart it from scratch. Even then you'd probably have some sort of algae turn up sooner or later.
Not much will eat hair algae, but a flagfish would be the best bet.

[Taurus]

Reduce the photo period (amount of time your light are on) and intensity since you've eliminated CO2. You could do a black out on the tank for a few days after you've removed the algae by hand. Don't overfeed the tank.
Cherry barbs will eat hair algae. Like Todd said, you may never be able to eliminate it without breaking the tank down and and sterilizing it. But you can control it.

[Cermet]

You might want to check your phosphate levels - even with large water changes every other day, my phosphates are high (and I have a reactor and my water (in) measures zero!) :devil: