Out Of Control Hair Algae

I am having massive problems with green hair algae in my 105 litre which is 61% stocked. It is covering live plants, ruining ornaments, fish are even getting caught in it. I am having to manually remove it daily and I can't get it fully off the plants and ornaments without damaging them.

The lights are only on 6 hours a day, it is not in direct sunlight, pH is 7.6, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate close to 0 (I think the surface plants are using up the nitrate as it started dropping after I got those a few months ago), kH 3dH, gH 7dH. This aquarium has always had some algae since I set it up in September, initially I thought it was because the lights were on too long (10 hours) so I dropped them down to 6 hours, but months later the algae is still getting gradually worse and it is becoming unmanageable.

The strange thing is that I have another aquarium right next to it with next to no algae, so I don't think it is anything in the tap water or anything to do with the lighting in the room. The aquarium with no algae is 80 litre, coincidentally also has a 61% stocking level, has a slightly lower pH at 7.2 (probably because of the driftwood) and it does have nitrates at around 10. It does contain a bristlenose pleco, but I don't think he eats that much algae!

Does anyone has any suggestions as to what could be causing this and how I can get rid of it?

I had never thought of keeping shrimps to reduce algae. I had considered keeping shrimp in the past, but there was always I reason I decided not to, it might have been the high nitrates, which are no longer an issue. I would be happy to try keeping shrimp if my aquarium is suitable.

In that aquarium there are harlequin rasboras, ember tetras, neon tetras and an elderly WCMM. There is a gravel substrate, a sponge filter and the water is very soft. Would this be a suitable set-up for shrimp?  My other concern with keeping shrimp is temperature, I do keep that aquarium at 23-24 degrees, but that temperature can rise to 28 degrees in heatwaves, can shrimp tolerate higher temperatures?

Thanks

I have ammano shrimp in my tank and there great for keeping algee under controll , I had a burst of algee a few weeks ago (to much sunlight) the ammano,s soon made short work of it once it was added , there a bit bigger than cherry shrimp and not afraid of slightly  larger fish .
My tank has plenty of hide holes for them but there regularly  out and about going to nose to nose with my peppered Cory's for some pellets etc

Thanks for the replies. It seems like shrimp should help with the algae, and that they are suitable for my aquarium  . There aren't too many hiding places in my aquarium though, but I have a cave I can add. 

I will see what type of shrimp are available at my local fish stores.

I've always found nerites to be good algae eaters. And I've always had one with my bettas. Only one ever noticed the snail - he used to flare at it when it had crawled up the tnak wall but ignored it everywhere else. I can only assume that when it was on the glass it looked like something swimming in 'his' tank.


Wood shrimps are filter feeders - they use those fans to grab tiny particles floating in the water. Many of them like to sit in the filter outflow to catch bits in the fastest moving water in the tank. Many wood shrimp starve to death when their owners keep the tank too clean.
This link will take a while to load as the page no longer exists so we have to access it via Wayback Machine
Wood shrimp

Have you spotted any eggs laid by the nerites (little white dots) - you may have got lucky and got two of the same sex. Either way Uluru could move one over to the other tank once they are on top of things

Just been reading up about feeding your shrimp and have learnt that one option is to add some of the liquid from squeezing the filter media back into the tank - thought it was a good idea and so wanted to pass it on

Whilst I can’t find a specific scientific resource to quote on this, I suspect you snails will be fine at those temperatures - certainly if it is only for a few hot days. i do know for definite that they can also cope a lot colder than the standard tropical tank temperatures most species profiles recommend.

I'd say snail eggs. Some articles suggest that a female will lay eggs even without a male present. I have multiple snails, so can't confirm that.
As far as shrimp go, I only have amanos and they tend to release eggs into the water rather than deposit them on decor.

That's interesting, no idea snails could do that. Will they actually hatch in freshwater?

That's good, was worried my aquarium would be over-run with hundreds of nerite snails!