Hair algae nightmare.

[Anonymous]

Rover, If I leave it alone it starts to smother the corals. Is that ok?

Keep it trimmed away from the corals, but there is no need to constantly be taking out the rock and scrubbing it. It's a nutrient export/import problem. The algae should eventually "eat itself out of house and home" as long as you aren't overloading it with excess nutrients yourself. With just a few fish in there you could probably get away with feeding them once a week, the extra life on the rock will sustain them just fine. Increasing the flow in the tank seems to make it more difficult for the algae to spread on the rocks. Mexican turbo snails (6 should do) will help more then the other snails that you mentioned. Also has this problem existed since the beginning or is it a recent development?

In a nutshell:

Increase flow as much as possible and reasonable.
Add mexican turbos
Feed once a week
Possibly use carbon or purigen.
Wait.

 

[PeeJ]

just curious..have you always had an algae problem ever since the tank has been set up? or is it recent?

 

[Anonymous]

The algae started about 4 months ago.

I dont see allot of life on the rocks anymore.

I will try and get more flow. Possibly add 3-4 more powerheads. (Ugly)
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[OD-UNICRON]

man, I had very bad, I got slime twice and hair algae like hell, and not to mention bubble, all over my rocks, I scrub like 3 time(over 200 hundred pounds of rocks), the first problem I found was my compacts, the ballast where defective but still lit up, so I got rid of it and bought a 6' MH with 3 bulb (at 250watts each) at 20k, that help alot on the slime issue( i got rid of the slime by some poweder I bought, then i made these change never came back), but the algae was still there, so scrub the rock for the 4th time and remove the 110 pound of sand, ( at that moment my set up was 220 pounds of rock and 110 sand in the tank that mad eit a total of 2.4 pound per gallon, recomended 1.25 to 1.75) and set up in tank 156 pounds of rocks(1.25 per gallon) and 31 pound sand(.25 pounds) so I have a total with rock and sand of 1.50 pound per gallon) that help alot but still was not enough, why i was still getting a bit of hair algae but a lot of bubble(by the way my turn over water is 1000 gallon per hour and my lighting is on 10 hours a day), oh before I for get to mention this, my tank water look very clear from the front , but if you look at it the long way side to side, my water was clowdy green the to the point of changing light and reducing rock and sand , then water turn to clowdy white, then I discoverd a major problem that I found by reading a magzine, it was carbon dixide problem, I have ,\my 125 gallon tank in my bed room as a head board of my bed, my wife and child and I sleep in the same room, and the intake of the venture skimmer waqs sucking the air from my room, so what i did is made little hole in my wall leading to out side, now my skimmer was injecting pure air from out side, wow did it made diferents in a fews days, now I could look at my tank the long way side by side, now it is criystal clear, and no bubble and zero algea, and I do get a bit of a micro algae every 4 days on my glass, but my tank looks beautiful.
if I were you try to make sure your intake of your skimmer is getting oure air, and please let us know if this works for you.

 

[Jolieve]

Rob... I'm with you and I feel for you. I have a hair algae bloom that started back in August and is just now dying off. Some tips I have learned along the way.

Let your RO unit drip water for about five minutes before you use it. Some DI cannisters like to flush themselves when they start up and could be putting phosphates back into your filtered water.

Dose calcium and get your ca levels up to where you would like to have them for your reef tank. Dosing limewater (kalkwasser) helps to bind phosphate into a form that hair algae cannot take advantage of.

Get your dkh sitting somewhere between 9 and 12, then check your ph. If your ph is still low, but dkh and calcium are good, then you need to improve the gas exchange in your tank. You probably have too much carbon dioxide in the water and not enough oxygen. Hair algae thrives on carbon dioxide as well as phosphate. Try improving surface motion of the water in your tank by directing powerheads to move the surface. Water should all be rippling across the surface, but not churning or breaking. A good example of what your surface should look like can be found here:

http://www.reefscapes.net/fulltankphoto2.html

Scroll down to the second photo on that page. That should give you the general idea.

Be absolutely positive that your skimmer is big enough for your tank. If it's not, it's not removing as much hair algae spore as you need it to remove.

Beyond that... wait it out. The stuff will die. I've had it with hair algae too. I wanted to start stocking my tank with corals back in October. My husband finally gave in and installed a sump and a euro-reef skimmer on my tank this week. With the sump alone (improved gas exchange) the hair algae is losing the war.

Keep the faith!
J.

 

[Jolieve]

Oh.. and like several other people said, good flow! You need the flow to blow detrius off the rock so that dirt and nasties don't collect and turn into more phosphates in your tank.

 

[Droggy]

I found that dosing with Kalkwasser did it for me.Hair algae from hell was growing in my tank last year.Did everything that you all advised but no total eradication .Until someone told me to up the kalkwasser dosing, well i have nothing but praise.Your Calcium levels are a touch low so it wont hurt to try it and see.

 

[Anonymous]

I tired Kalk a few months ago and that made things worse. It raised my PH and caused all the coraline to die off.

I am trying B-Ionic but not getting to far with it.
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[Jolieve]

Your CA level is a little low for a reef tank and your ph is a little low as well. CA should be around 400, ph 8.2-8.6. Go ahead and start dosing kalkwasser. If you can find it, use about a teaspoon of Ball Pickling Lime in a gallon of top off water and drip this into your tank slowly, at night when ph is low, if this doesn't raise your calcium level over the course of a couple of dosings, increase the amount of pickling lime. Two teaspoons per gallon seems to work for me. This will cause the phosphates to turn into calcium phosphate, which, from what I understand, the hair algae cannot use. Coralline die off is a temporary sacrifice in the name of eradicating this pest. It will grow back, and I think you will find with continued dosing that the coralline will take off like a shot. Coralline feeds on calcium. Mine died off several months ago, and with dosing, the coralline has exploded in growth in the last month.

How many powerheads, filters and other things move water in your tank and how many gallons per hour do they move combined? I do genuinely sympathize here, I've been fighting this same plague since August myself, but I refuse to give up. I know I can overcome this... and so can you. Just keep the faith.

J.

 

[jthunder]

I had one answer to the clean-up dilemma:

Diadema savignyi - Sometimes called black pencil urchin


http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod ... pCatId=591

You will probably need to find a new home for him once all the algae is eaten, they can get really big!!!

Once mine was done with all of the algae in my display tank, I moved him temporarily to my sump, and within days it was cleaned out of all algae in there!

JT

 

[Anonymous]

Flow is a mag 9 on the return and a Maxi 900 and a maxi 1200 aimed fro mthe front corners towards the LR that alternate on a wavemaker.

I could use more flow but haven't founf the BEST way to do it. Of course I can add 3 more powerheads but that gets ugly. I can add a closed loop but not sure on the pump and rating.
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[Juck]

Hey Rob,

Even if you have 5 feet of head on your return you're still gettting 1150+ gph of circulation with those 3 pumps,, that's 20x tank capacity,,,, you don't need more circulation.

I had hair and cyano from hell in my 75 when I upgraded to halides,,,, I put in 50 Red leg hermits, 50 blue leg hermits, 75 Astrea snails and 2 Mithrax crabs.

Wasn't cheap, but the rock, glass and sand were spotless after a week or so.

Good luck

 

[DK]

Tell us about your lighting. (hair) algae needs light in the right spectrum and food. If the food is limited, lets look at the light. What is your photoperiod?

 

[Supergenius74]

ok i have the same problems, lots of green hair algae, tons and i got it when the tank was about 9 months old and still hove it now at 18 months old. I tried lots of things and they all helped a little , except for srcubbing the live rock which i consider to be conter-productive. Anyways my algae is now controlled by 2 lettuce nudibranches, sea slugs that are green and look like lettuce. They are doing an excellent job and I only got 2 of them because my tank is 55gal. The green hair algae is nearly half what it was 2 weeks ago when I put them in. They only cost me 6 bucks a piece and a drive to a fish store 2 hrs away that had them. I know of tanks with no substrate at all that have hair algae so leave your DSB. My lights are 135W PC's and I have now turned them back up to 10 hrs a day and my softies are lookin great now. Get a nudibranch, they work great, just be patient.

 

[Anonymous]

Even if you have 5 feet of head on your return you're still gettting 1150+ gph of circulation with those 3 pumps,, that's 20x tank capacity,,,, you don't need more circulation.

Circulation <> turnover.

I'm talking about the level of force the water is moving inside the actual tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Lighting is a 250W HQI DE 10K PFO light running a Ushio bulb, Also 2 95W VHO actinics.

Act = 10 hrs
MH - 9 hrs

I ordered a Blueline 40HD pump (750 GPH roughly) and a SCWD. I will install the Closed loop hopefully this weekend.

I will move the 2 powerheads lower in the tank to get more flow across the sand for now.
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[Anonymous]

Since I am going try to let the HA grow and kill itself off by eating up all the fuel it is finding.

Just curious, This stuff has spread like a wild fire to to other rocks now covering most of the LR and it starting to grow on the back glass.

How can I find the fuel source?
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[Jolieve]

Hard to tell, since test kits cannot measure the fuel source faster than the hair algae can eat it.

Your best bet is to do weekly water changes (and make sure you let that nsw mix for at least a day before you use it!) to reduce the amount of organics in the water column on a continual basis.