Algae management in a puffer tank

Here's the situation:

I'm starting to have a small amount of algae issues in my Pea Puff tank. A small amount of hair algae here and there, and some small sheets of what I think is Cyanobacteria? Normally I would adjust the light cycle to compensate, but due to space constraints this tank has a shared lighting timer with my 27g. I can't really use any other livestock to deal with it, because puffs are jerks like that.

I have been dosing with a commercial algaecide once every few weeks, something I don't really like doing, but it seems to work moderately well.

Here's the tank in question:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Browsing some other forums last night I stumbled upon the twinstar aquarium sterilizer which looks like a neat little tech gadget that has seemed do do it's job well if the price weren't so dang expensive. It's interesting to check out though.

I would use excel or hydrogen peroxide method.

Is peroxide safe for scaleless fish?

Yes. Follow what other aquarist have done here at
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Trouble shooting Cyanobacteria in my 30 gallon tank I played around with flow, water chemistry,  lighting.  None of this seem to work. This is the process that finally killed it back and maintained it at low levels until it completely disappeared.  I shook all the plants to knock loose the bacteria.  Gravel vac to pick up as much as I could. Dosed with anti bacterial med. , and followed instructions. Sometimes I got lazy and left the medication in there until my next water change. At the next water change I repeated the above process until it was all gone! I have not seen this bacteria in my 30 gallon for many months.

And by medication, you mean EM Erythromycin aby API, ya?

Ya!

And I should add my experience with hydrogen peroxide didn't turn out well. Fish DO NOT like it...

This was black hair algae on fake plants, lace rock, and on driftwoods. It's no longer black hair algae, Grey hair algae. And fishes are ok. Made sure I did 40% water change at end of the week. Till BHA was gone or dead. My 3 ABN plecos should be snacking on the dead BHA.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Ps. This was BHA. BLACK.  Not cynobacteria.
Now grey hair algae hopefully dead hair algae.

I made boo boo and used to much I think....

careful with hydrogen peroxide, I killed a few hundred $$ worth of fish by being careless  . . and it don't even dent the thread algae.

I highly recommend getting 3 or 4 SAE's (like $4/ea), the puffers will have to be fast to keep up with the SAE's and if they start to do damage, terminate the experiment and your not out much $$.
I found that by using SAE's they brought my thread algae issue completely under control and then my plants started to do much better because they weren't having to compete with TA for nutrients.

2 cents

oops, BBA not thread algae . . oops . . SAE's are less effective on BBA IME but double dosing Excel has always done the trick for me with any losses . . had cherry shrimp in the tank too.

honestly ive just fought it the old fashioned way, boil water and add it and decor to a bucket and let soak. then ill take a razor blade to any on glass and vaccum out w.e i get loose. then every single leaf with any at all gets cut, it sucks but this seemed to be the only way to legitimately fight it off. the boil decor should turn it a redish color then it just cleans right off. kitchen brushes of a rough quality have worked well for me also. GL to ya.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I've used h2o2 plenty of times in the past, but was thinking more along the lines of longterm management. I started dosing RidX again, and I've already seen a noticable decrease in the amount of cyano. I think it may time to pony up for a CO2 tank and plumb in the manifold onto my regulator though...