help green hair alge

[greyhawk]

i just found more green hair alge starting to pop up in my tank again. what can i do? i lost this battle once already where i just gave all my old rock away and bought all new rock. today i find the stuff growing on some of my corals. i cant go though this again. i use ro/di water all the test i do so that every thing is in spec's theres no phospates or anything bad showing up in my test. this is what all i have
75 G 2-250w 20,000K MH, 2-110w VHO actinic's,2 802 power heads, berlin HO skimmer ,150 pro wet/dry system with live rock ,fluvle 404,120 lbs live rock,60 lbs live sand, red mushrooms, green mushrooms, green Harry mushrooms, Star Polyps, zoolanthas,brown Cynarina lacrymalis, plate coral,green Brain Coral, 50 blue hermit crab, 100 assorted snails,1 mandolin green Goby,1 flamed angle, 1 yellow tang

[acro-wrasse]

Greyhawk,
I have had 2 battles with hair algae. The first time a large amount of hermits did the trick...about 250 into my 75 gallon.

The last time I bought about 200 hermits, 6 yellow tangs, a tamini tang, and a clown tang to put to work in my 225 gallon. I did cut back on the MH lighting to 8 hours until the algae began to lose the battle.
The tangs did a number on the algae and I have been hair algae free for almost 2 years.

Good luck!

[bshumake]

Sea Hare's. Their Hoovers of the dreaded hair algae. And their cute too.

[Rendos]

How long do you run your lights? How old are the bulbs? Are you using RO/DI water?

[greyhawk]

ok this is what i use and do to my tank and some of the reading
new bulbs not a month old yet
i do use a seachem's phosphate gaurd.
i have a uv bulb inline on my ro/di system.
i have close to 100 turbo snails they just dont seem to care for the stuff anymore.
in the 404 i have carbon and phosgaurd.
my tds reading is 1.
my vho run about 10 hours and the mh run about 5.
the next thing im going to try is to build a refuge

[bshumake]

Originally posted by greyhawk
the next thing im going to try is to build a refuge
Doing the fuge is a nice addition if you have the space. Might I suggest an algae scrubber? Seed some window screen with that hair and have the water run over the screen in the fuge and this is suposed to really take the phosphates out.
Another source of PO4 is food. If you're overfeeding it'll rise. There is some PO4 water additive that supposedly helps to remove the PO4 by increasing it's molecular size (possibly by opsynization) and your skimmer takes it out. This is trash and not worth the money. I tried it and it don't work.
I say make the fuge, get a $5 bag of Cheato from Kermits, get some sea hares (maby 1 if its not too bad because their PIGS) and feed less.

[greyhawk]

i feed a cube of shrimp every 3 days. i put the cube in a shot glass and let it thaw then drain it and put just the food in to feed. so i dont think im over feeding.i also do a water change once aweek about 10 to 15 gallons. i would like to figure a way to make my wet/dry into a Refugium but i will most likely have to try to buy one and replace my wet/dry

[bshumake]

Originally posted by greyhawk
i would like to figure a way to make my wet/dry into a Refugium but i will most likely have to try to buy one and replace my wet/dry
OK. so feeding isn't a problem. If by wet/dry you're talking about your sump you might be able to add a baffel in there to make a small fuge area. Depends on how tight that sucker is on space. Course... if you wanted to I could make you a sump.

[greyhawk]

that would be cool i dont think i would be able to turn this into a fuge
this is what mine looks like
http://cgi.ebay.com/ProClear-150-GAL-Wet-Dry-Aquarium-Filter-w-Return-Pump_W0QQitemZ7721076759QQcategoryZ46310QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Rendos]

Looks easy enough to add a baffle to make a refugium area. We could just drain the sump...glue in an acrylic baffle and it should work fine.

Barrett is better at this than me, so I will defer to him, but it definitely looks doable.

[greyhawk]

it might but there are some rails inside it that would cause problems i think. got me