black fuzzy fungus

Question
I have this black hair growing on the edges of my live plant, my tank is full of live plants and 1 plastic plant, its not growing on that one, i do take the plants out when it gets bad, I put some of the tank water then pull the stuff off, its real hard to get off so i have had to cut the ends off. is there anything i can do to rid my tank of the stuff?

Answer
Hi Candace,
Sounds like black beard algae. Or BBA for short. This is a tough thing to get rid of and often occurs most in planted aquariums.

An overabundance of algae typically means the aquarium is out of balance. A few extra water changes, removing affected leaves, maintaining a consistent reasonable light schedule and adding some very fast growing plant species to out compete the algae can help a lot in combating this stubborn thing.

Read here for more info -

http://www.aquariumslife.com/uncategorized/brushalga/

Hope this helps!
Karen~