Taking care of a plant nursery

[magnosis]

In an ongoing series of mishaps, I've found myself with yet another huge bloom of long string / thread algae.

In short, I bought about 30 plants to restart my 59g fw.  Then realized my stand was going to cumble, started to build a new one that's taking me forever.  In the meantime, plants lived for 3 weeks in 5g buckets under a timed 150W CFL.  Lost about 10 of them.  Moved everything in a temporary tank (that same 59g that was empty) with a bit of wood, and 50lbs of fluorite, my 2x54W T5HO and pressurized CO2.  For the first 2 weeks that looks very good, plants started to get back in shape and regain vivid colors.

This week I've been crazy busy and didn't have time to take care of it.  As a result, I found the tank yesterday massively infested with long thread algae.  Ghhaaaaaawwwwh 

On with the questions:

a) I guess I needed to add ferts.  Should I just start dosing as per EI-Light method right away, or is it better to start gradually (e.g. 1/4 dose 1st week, 1/2 dose 2nd week, so on) ?  I don't know if overdosing ferts on day 1 (as per EI) will be too much of a chock for the plants.

b) The tank doesn't house any fish, just plants.  What method is most effective to get rid of this algae ?  Can I add something to the water column, or do I need to extract every single plant one by one and apply <unknown treatment> ?

c) Is there any critter that can help control tread algae ?  I haven't monitored that tank at all, not sure if it's cycled (probably in the middle of, since it's running on 2 fully seeded canister filters)

I will try and hit B&B for dry ferts tonight. Just need to know how much to add w.r.t. the current situation.
Thanks in advance !

[Jeff1192]

I would definitely not start out with full EI dosing. Depending on how heavily planted the tank is, I would start out with half doses at the most. You then need to keep a close eye on things and when you notice that the plants are starting to take off you need to up the dosing. Depending on what you have planted in your tank I would say that you would need to do partial dosing for at least the first week. But if you have faster growing plants it may not take much more time than that. I'm sure some more experienced people might be able to give you more precise instructions.

As for removing the thread algae use a tooth brush and twirl the algae around it. This method is really good at removing it (I should know, I had a thread algae problem when I started out my EI dosing).

As for critters I would use amano shrimp. They are great algae eaters, but only if you don't over-feed. They will eat food before algae if it's available.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

[magnosis]

Thanks Jeff.
I've been working the toothbrush for about 30 minutes now, there's still a lot to clean up especially those attached to the plants.

See, this is quite the outbreak:






This is why I wonder, is there any sort of chemical I can add to the column to kill all the algae ? Then I'll vacuum the most of it and the filters should take care of the rest.
- javex
- permanganate
- isopropyl alcool
- ice cream ?
- 

Or maybe a blackout ?  I've considered it but, the plants have been through a rough time, then moved into this tank for 3 weeks, maybe it's not the best time to stress them further.