hair algae is a pain in the butt

[ryangrieder]

im starting to get my hair algae back in my 72 bow tank and its slowly spreading all over the place. i really dont have any phosphates but ive been using small amounts of phos buster just to make sure i get it to perfect levels and been using API marine algaefix. use to work amazing now its doing nothing. what products you guys sugguest? thanks!

 

[fcamargo6thave]

get a sea slug in there, do a nice water change, and take it easy on the lights do you have alot inverts in there?

 

[stedfast82]

a

Im from south of chicago and i have not seen any one post that they have algae blennie's or saill fin's they will eat it i have 2 saill fin's and 1 small algae b and i cant find 1 hair of it in my tank if you have a reef IMO you need them I turn my m/h on at 9am and they go off at7pm if you dont have a Ro\Di that can make all the diff

 

[ryangrieder]

well i have a jumbo algae blenny thats got to be pushing 5-6 inches. i also have a decent amount of inverts. i was thinking about a sea slug. the blue dot one. anything important or special i need to know about them?

 

[ryangrieder]

blue spot sea hair. thats what i was thinking about but my friend had a few and never could keep it longer then a month. anything special i need to know about it

 

[reefer-nyc]

sea hare dies = poisons your tank. So, find someone who has one and borrow it until its done eating as it most likely won't eat your macro [if you have any].

 

[jackson6745]

I have been fighting HA for months and my tank is very low nutrient. I have most of it under control finally. I tried EVERYTHING!!!!
Best thing I did was raise the MG level using KENT magnesium. Supposedly there is an ingredient in kent brand MG that acts as an algaecide. It works. Keeping up with frequent weekly water changes along with manual plucking is also very effective. Also get yourself a bunch of mexican turbos and manually place them on hair algae patches when you see them in a clean area.

HTH

 

[cmor1701d]

I recently had a HA outbreak in my 125. Haven't had that in several years, but lack of maintenance probably got me this time. I cut the lights back to a 2 hour cycle for the MH and 3 for the 03's. Did a weekly 25 gal water change after scrubbing off as much as I could with each water change. I'm down to one small patch. I increased the phot period back to normal (10/12) and I'm continuing with the PWCs. Seems to be working.

Sailfin's are somewhat hit/miss on HA. Mexican turbo snails always seem to work but get to be escargo size and knock over everthing, so I didn't get any this time.

Just a few things to try.

Basics are:
Cut feedings (1x every 2-3 days at most)
Cut light period
increase PWCs to least 25%/week

Nutrients are hard to measure. The HA is using it to grow and spread so it appears that all parameters are fine, when in fact they aren't.

Hope some of that helps.

 

[jackson6745]

Nutrients are hard to measure. The HA is using it to grow and spread so it appears that all parameters are fine, when in fact they aren't.

.

Very true. Kind of makes me wish that i had a refugium on my tank. Algae would probably grow in there and not in my display

 

[cmor1701d]

I have some chaeto in my sump. It was disappearing as the HA took hold in the tank. Now that I (hopefully) have the HA under control it seems that the cheato is gowing in volume again. Then again my eyes aint too good <g>.

 

[topmav1]

I bought a sea hare to help with my algae bloom and it died in 3 days...I would go with the other methods mentioned above first.

 

[ryangrieder]

thanks alot guys. ill take all your advice into considderation!