hair algae

[GGGREGGG]

here's the story.....

all the liverock i have was in a 55 that i had running for around 2 years. i had bought the 75 and was building the canopy for it when i broke up with my ex. when i moved into my new place the canopy wasn't finished so i was running some really old vho's from the 55 on the 75 while i finished the new canopy in my spare time. i put in around 200 lbs of southdown and seeded it with live sand from my old tank.

between the old bulbs and the ro/di i was using from all pet discounters on first colonial that was 70ppm for TDS, i acquired a hair algae problem.

i switched back to using my old ro/di unit and my metal halides have been up and running now for a couple months but the algae persists. i've done several large volume water changes, beefed up my herbivores, and started running phosban in the little fluidized bed filter they sell for it.

i've gone through 2 sea hares, can't keep them alive for some reason. everything else is fine though including my giant sebae, fish, shrimp, crabs, corals, starfish, etc. the algae only grows on the rocks.

i do have a tds meter, my tap is around 80ppm and the water out of my ro/di unit is 0ppm. it has to be the sand.

right now i've got 3 maxijet 1200's in there plus the return from my sump, (mag7).

i can take pictures but it seriously is humiliating for me, i feel like a failure! :D

i still have the 55 so i can move everything into it while i do whatever i decide to do to the 75. i've got some decisions to make :D

[marietrg]

Hmmm, well I had really bad hair algae a while back. My "fix" was to take each rock out piece by piece and handwash it with a brush in salt water. That seemed to get things off to a good start. I'm not sure if it was absolutely necessary.

The best thing I ever did was get a refugium. I bought a cheap 10 gallon gas tank and light fixture from Wal-mart. I replaced the bulb with a nice one from the LFS. I used a diamond tipped Dremel tool to cut holes into the 10g for bulkheads. Finally, I added a mag pump and it works great.

The fuge is the logical solution. The macroalgae outcompetes the bad algae for nutrients.

One other thing I learned was to be careful what is put in the tank. For example, the coral food phytoplankton stuff apparently causes algae to grow as well.

[marietrg]

Hey one other thing... You should test your RO/DI unit. I ran into a problem where one of the cartridges was "spent". Little did I know when I performed a water change the algae was growing more and more...

[GGGREGGG]

yeah i don't use phyto, no need for it right now. most of my corals are meat eaters :D

i thought about setting up a fuge but i'm not really sure where the hell i'd put it :)

the filters for the ro/di unit are brand new.

[waterlily]

Sorry you are going through such a frustrating time with your tank. My hair algae is giving me fits as well. I looked at it under a microscope and it looks to be some kind of cyano that is toxic to fish...which is why my fish aren't eating it. You want my rabbitfish? I'm going to have to try one of those sea hares.

[mylittleocean]

I see a BB vs. DSB debate coming.

[GGGREGGG]

i'd actually like to get a foxface to add some color fish wise. once i get rid of the blennies that is. i'm really surprised that my female maroon hasn't fed them to the anemone :) at least with the foxface even if it's a baby it's poisonous spines should keep her at bay :)

the sea hares in my experience go right to work but for some reason they always die a few days after i get them. maybe my algae is poisonous as well.... that would explain why nothing else is eating it :)

[GGGREGGG]

no debates here, i'm pretty sure the sand is the source of all my frustration....

[burke757]

it is just southdown, right greg? i don't see how that could be to blame. I think it was your water from the fish store. I think now it should be only a matter of time before the algae starts to lose the battle. Do you have any macroalgae in the main display, that is what i do instead of a refugium.

[ranceego]

Originally posted by GGGREGGG
, i feel like a failure! :D


Greg, i had hair algae for 2 years, i scrub rocks, it would come back. the best thing is to find your source. Test the ro/ water, anything less than 0 for tds is unacceptable. are your bulbs old that will do it. Start some rowa this will pull it out. I changed all of my bulbs, got a rowa rector. got 3 sea slugs. replaced all my filter on the ro, pulled all of my sponges out. Took my bio rocker out. pulled all my sand out of the refugium. all over 3 month tested every day, and it died on its own. my source i think was the sponges and the biorocker. hope this helps

[GGGREGGG]

randy-yeah it's southdown. the thing is that i had a dsb in the 55 and it was all carib sea aragonite and i never had any problems like this. i know the water from the pet store and the old vho's are what triggered it, but it's not receding after all the changes i've made.

ranceego-my ro/di is 0ppm for tds. i changed the filters a couple weeks ago. bulbs have like 2 months at the most on them. besides my liverock and the sand i have no other biological filters in there. i am running phosban but just started it like a week or so ago. can't keep the sea hares alive.

i've even thought about taking a trip up to dr. macs and getting new live rock but that means cycling. i can throw everything in the 55 while i wait but it's not drilled. i guess i could cure the liverock in the 55 but i don't have a hang on skimmer anymore....

[GGGREGGG]

jake-i have tested for PO4 and NO3, trates are somewhere between 2.5 and 5ppm and PO4 was undetectable. i'm thinking the algae may be disguising the PO4 maybe? i'm gonna start doing water changes as fast as i can make it and manually pulling out what i can.

[Ixthys]

Have you considered "cooking" your live rock. I'm not really in favor of this practice, but if your live rock has been taken over, it might be your only option to get it out of the nooks and such and give you a chance to start fresh without having to buy new rock.

[GGGREGGG]

i took some time and read some of the threads that one of the members has been posting about cooking his rocks. from what i read i've got a lot in common with him; i am beyond frustrated as well and i miss the days when i could just enjoy this hobby.

cooking seems pretty drastic and i'm not sure i'm willing to accept the casualities which i will inevitably suffer. it can't be the only option, to me it will be a last resort.

there's a few more things i'm gonna try and if they don't work i guess i'll have to consider trying it then, if i haven't thrown all my liverock into the lake behind my apartment before then :D

[Ixthys]

Well, throwing it in the lake would definitely cure your hair problem, but wouldn't help the casuality rate! :D

[jake2045]

Greg,
Set your skimmer so that it pulls a wet skimmate, and try to bring you ph up,( above 8.3) I know I have said it but water changes helped alot I believe. As for the PO4 and NO4 both will feed the HA. Rowa will reduce your PO4 fast but can harm the tank if done to quick, so if you try it start very slow.I think the HA is masking your PO4, with frequent water changes the level should go down. The HA will just stop growing and slowly disapear.Do you have a fuge? I have a little cheato, but mine has slowed down in growth. I need to give Randy a little, but you can have some aswell.The cheato blew up when I had the ha, must have been a lot of fuel in the tank.

[GGGREGGG]

jake- the skimmer is set to wet, the riser is up pretty high. i was reading some of anthony calfo's threads last night about protein skimming and i'm considering redesigning my sump. i don't have a fuge but i'm thinking about incorporating a small one.

once i'm ready it would be cool if i could get some of that chaeto from you.... that stuff needs a decent amout of current right? it doesn't go sexual does it? what kind of lighting does it need?

[Amber Nussbaum]

Greg I have a probably.. basketball-sized ball of chaeto that will come out of the tank tonight. Stuff grows like crazy. You can have it when you come to get the snails, etc.

[GGGREGGG]

are you serious? that's pretty big, where do you keep it? i guess i need to get my butt in gear and mod my sump huh? what kind of lighting have you been running over it? flow? how often have you been pruning it?

[Amber Nussbaum]

I was given a big ball of it, so I just jammed it behind a rock. Otherwise it will float around, because it has no means of attaching itself to anything. about half of it is exposed to my VHO lights.. it probably doesn't get much flow but it grows pretty fast. I would say I pull out a couple fist sized clumps every couple weeks. Sometimes a few strands escape and little balls of it will start growing around the tank.

But it's not a nuisance at all, and if it gets on your nerves, just pull it out and throw it in the yard.. haha easy.

You can just take as much as you think you'll need.

[GGGREGGG]

sweet. DIE HAIR ALGAE DIE!!!! :D

[ranceego]

greg, water changes are stress to a reef, so is phos, so add the 2, i know it sucks but 1 a week is not good, try another way, i do a water change 1 a month, 20%, some may differ, but i think its too much on a tank already stressed

[Country Boy]

I do a water change once every 8 months :)

just kidding I only did that once....

now i do it about once a month also

[GGGREGGG]

tommy- sooo.... what do you recommend? water changes are out?

phosphates are undetectable but i'm running phosban anyways...

i got some chaeto from amber, gonna remodel my sump this weekend to incorporate a refugium, that way i can get it rollin :)

[ranceego]

even with hair algae and now 0 phos, it will take it about 2-3 months to die. just do what your doing, just 1 change a month. but make sure your water is good. add your new stuff and be patient.

[jake2045]

Greg. I agree with Tommy that a BIG w/c can be stressful, but I have been doing 5-10 gals a week and everything looks better after the water change. Just my 2 cents.

[ranceego]

i used to do small one once a week. My phos was at 2-3. But i called a friend of mine with lots of experience. He told me that less is better for water changes, you need to get the filtration up so you don't need water changes to keep you water clean, so i changed my total system. I always go a little extreme, but it worked for me. now i do 25 gallons on a 230 gallon load 1 time a month.

[spshead]

how many snails and hermits do you have. With that much algae i would probably have 75 snails and 75 hermits. I never believed in overloading with cleaners but since i threw another 100 snails in the tank i haven't cleaned the glass 3 weeks now. i would siphon out most of the sand and just leave about 1/2 to 1" on the bottom. i have had small cyano blooms in the past and i found that water changes did help. i dont want to start the sand debate. but lets face it when i moved my tank back in june everything under 1" was dead, black, and stinky. all the rock was killed off and right then i decided to say see you later to the deep sand bed. lets face this too there is no magic remedy for every tank. each tank is unique some things work for some people and other things do not. but i have a hunch that my magic potion ;) listed above will solve your problem:lol:

[GGGREGGG]

i need to talk to jeff and see what he can do for me price wise for some snails.... there's some guys on ebay selling snails and i was also pricing one of the packages from phishybusiness with some add-ons.

[spshead]

snails will help but the overall change you do is what is going to reverse the problem. hows the bubble

[GGGREGGG]

it's good, tentacles are out every night

[tangface]

i did pretty much the same thing as tangface and all my hair algae is gone. cleaners and good water is the key

[The Shrimp X]

well i still have a bad problem with HA, but luckily i soon will be upgrading to a 75 gallonb BB Starboard, with a big skimmer and big fuge! so hopefully this will be the last time i ever have to see this unsightly HA again (hopefully!!! that is)

[GGGREGGG]

yeah i'm gonna drop some more snails in there when i can get around to it... my late night alcoholic beverage consumption habit consumes a decent amount of my off time these days :)

[ranceego]

Originally posted by GGGREGGG
yeah i'm gonna drop some more snails in there when i can get around to it... my late night alcoholic beverage consumption habit consumes a decent amount of my off time these days :)
haha, i know how you feel:D

[fantasticfish]

my nitrate is zero but I still have some hair algae. Its not like long but covers my rocks. It seems to be going away. Just remember if your nitrate is zero it doesn't mean it really is zero, its just zero after the algae has used it up. I guess that I should have mine exterminated before the summer is over. Any things that you all suggest eating it? My hermits seem to like it. Only like 2 eat it at the same time though, so I am sure they do nothing. I need something that shows no mercy.

[GGGREGGG]

i'm slowly removing the southdown out of my tank; don't wanna spike anything. i still have hair algae and that's the only thing i can figure is causing it. i've gotten pretty bored with the hobby because of it, i'm seriously considering breaking the tank down....

[waterlily]

Boy, can I relate! I have that da** hair algae too. Nothing eats it. I don't have a sand bed, use RO/DI water, and I've been doing water changes almost every week and I scrub the rocks when I do them to get the algae out. Still, I have the problem. My husband says when we move into our new house in February, he wants no tank or a different tank, but not this one. I'm looking at either getting out of this thing or getting an entirely new tank next winter/spring. The thing is, I really like the fish. I hate the furry rocks though.

[GGGREGGG]

yeah i've been thinking about setting up a 30 gallon cube that oceanic makes and keeping my sebae and my gold striped maroons in it, and maybe my yellow tailed damsel simply because i've had him since i started my first tank back in 2002. then maybe setting up the 75 as a FO with a trigger or two :)

[jake2045]

Oh old are the light bulbs? And do you use RowaPhos?Weekly water changes and heavy skimming helped me out the most.

[GGGREGGG]

i changed the bulbs out a while back and the hair algae continues to flourish, i'd say they've been running for somewhere between 4 to 6 months. i was using phosban but i was having problems with the chamber clogging so i stopped using it after a month or so... didn't really see any difference while i was using it. i'm slowly pulling the sand out, it's gotta be the cause of it.

[BigEasy]

I didn't have hair algea, but did have a huge cyano problem about 5 months ago. I took out all but 1/4 in of sand, use a phosban reactor and made a fuge for chaeto. Cyano all disappeared. No amount of water changes (and I did ALOT), changes in feeding, water flow, etc worked until then. I really think it was the phosban and chaeto. Hair algea is often fueled by the DOCs as well, so maybe give these a try if you haven't already. As of now, I have no algea, cyano or otherwise, and my coraline took off when I did the above.

[GGGREGGG]

i've got coraline all over, at the bottom of my sump, inside my skimmer, i think it's actually even spreading onto my couch :D i've got chaeto in my sump, it grows, but there's still PLENTY of hair algae in my display as well as growing around the edges of the chaeto.... right now i'm focusing on removing all but a little bit of the sand bed so i guess we'll see what happens from there.... i may start running the phosban again though since i've still got like a bag and a half of it....

[waterlily]

Greg - I like your idea about the cube and then a larger fish only tank. I'll give Rowaphos a try and adding another light on the refugium for the chaeto. I'm still going to have to break down the tank.

[GGGREGGG]

yeah i saw the 30 cube at petsmart, i really liked the way it looked with the matching stand even though i think it's a tad bit over-priced. i'd really like to set up a tank dedicated to my clowns and the anemone though.

i bought the phosban and the phosban brand reactor off the internet for like 40 bucks. the reactor is just a fluidized bed filter with a phosban logo on it :) i read where some people were experiencing RTN with their SPS from particles of the iron-based media settling out in their tanks, so to be on the safe side i replaced the factory filter-floss at the top of the chamber with a cut out of some thicker stuff, (higher density), that i picked up at a craft store. edit: marinedepot has them on sale right now--

i had also considered setting up my 75 for a snapping turtle :) a friend from back home is incubating some eggs right now and promised me as many as i want when they hatch sometime in august. i'd probably end up drilling some holes in the spare 55 i've got because i'd have to modify the level of the drain pipes to suit the turtles needs.

[waterlily]

Great idea! Snapping turtles have always been on my "want" list:rolleye1:

[GGGREGGG]

aww come on have you ever seen them when they're babies?? :D

[waterlily]

Yep. When we lived in Michigan my sister caught a baby snapping turtle. It was ugly. We always hated them because they ate the baby ducks. Plus, we were afraid we would get chomped by one when we were swimming in the lake.

[Charlie Davidson]

I found one (1") in back yard this spring, put it in river tank!-- I was afraid it might crawl out- and snap my toes. :) so I let it go.

[GGGREGGG]

i found a website a few weeks ago that tells all about how to take care of them so if things work out after the move and all i may just end up with a couple of them... either that or some red belly piranhas :D apparently you can find them in the cincy area although i've never heard anything about them around here. my buddy has two of them in a 75 and they're starting to get big!!

after removing roughly about half of the dsb and hand pulling a bunch of the algae out of the tank it appears to be receding but it could be my eyes playing tricks on me... right now i'm filling the 30 gal tub up again for another batch of fresh saltwater in preparation for another run along the bottom of the tank with the shop vac. inevitably more water gets sucked out than sand but this way the water doesn't cloud when i suck the sand out.

[waterlily]

Now there's an idea...a snapping turtle and pirrhana tank. Why didn't I think of that???:hmm5:

I have my 24 gallon nano-cube deluxe ordered. Once I get that I will move what I want to keep into it and sell off the rest.

[GGGREGGG]

hey i'm a guy cut me some slack :) what kind of bulb are you gonna put in the hood of that nano cube? those tanks look really nice if it's the ones i think you're talking about.

[GGGREGGG]

hey just wanted to say that, 1) i stopped by all pet discounters yesterday and tested their water with my TDS meter and it was at ZERO :eek2: the sign says deionized water so they must have switched over from ro.... and 2) the snapping turtles hatched, (Kathy), and i'll be setting up a 30 breeder for a couple of them :)

[waterlily]

How is that 20 gallon tank going? I'm happy with my 24 except that instead of the red hair algae, I have bright green now. The urchin loves to eat it, but I need more clean up critters to keep it under control. I have not modified the tank at all. It comes with stock (2) 36 watt compact fluorescent lamps. It seems sufficient for the corals I'm keeping.

Enjoy the baby snappers!

[GGGREGGG]

the 20 is good, no algae problems like i had with the 75 and the southdown....

[GGGREGGG]

the turtles are in Kathy! heh heh heh.... :cool: i'll post a link to a picture once i get some of them, just got in last night and set up a 10 gallon for them, they're tiny! :)

[waterlily]

Looking forward to those pics:D

I'll try to get a picture up of my tuxedo urchin sporting a huge clump of chaeto. It's almost as funny as when it was carting the xenia around.

[GGGREGGG]

hey here's the pictures i promised of the snappers, sorry it took so long for me to post them up, i've been pretty busy... greg
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/gregorygampfer/Img_2365.jpg
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/gregorygampfer/Img_2405.jpg
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/gregorygampfer/Img_2411.jpg