help me cure my hair algae

[B33FST3W]

Ok, I have been fighting hair algae for a couple of months now and I'm running out of ideas. I have already removed all the rockwork and scrubbed it, done tons of water changes and run phosphate removing media.

I have less then 10ppm of nitrate and phosphates show 0ppm. I only feed once a day and I dont think I overfeed. I have added chaeto to my fuge and run the light one it for 12 hours a day.

The only thing I can think of is that I dont have enough snails and crabs to clean up as most of them died since I got them (they lasted about a year).

So since I am adding in more snails and crabs, can anyone recomend so good ones for hair algae? Also, can anyone recommend anything else I need to do to eliminate this problem.

Thanks,
Stew

[Gooli]

let's get some basics out of the way first....i think we should fine the CAUSE to the problem first.


1. Are you using Tap water? If not...what water are you using?

2. How long is the tank been up and running? i assume it's the 37g.

3. Are you running a skimmer? which one?

4. Are you using any additives at all?

[B33FST3W]

1. It started when I added a sump to my system and filled it with tap water (I ran carbon in the tap water for 24 hours before I added it to the system thinking it would get all the bad stuff out). Since then I only use RO/DI water that I get at the LFS.

2. Its been up for a little longer than a year.

3. I have an octopuss NW150

4. I use seachem calcium, alk, and kalk. For salt I use IO, and I add kent's zoecon to the frozen food once a week.

[chem-e]

The only invert that has worked well for me long term were scarlet hermit crabs. I had a bad outbreak of HA when my tank crashed lasted, but now it's gotten much better. I've tried all kinds of other inverts such as snails (margarita, astrea, and cerith), sea hare, lettuce nudi, etc; but none of them makes it past a month or two, except the scarlets. I started with 5 of them and then I slowly add a couple here and there whenever my LFS gets them in whenever I have time to go to the LFS. I think I'm up to 10 now, but I could use another 5 to 10 more.

Also, what helped me was manual removal of the HA along with skimming wet.

[DrHank]

Your nitrates are way to high. Mine are at 2.5 ppm and I'm just begining to get my hair algae under control. My phosphates test at 0 but phosphate usually is taken up bu the algae and substrate so it is possible that the reading is false. Make sure that the TDS of the water you're getting from the LFS is 0.

Once you have elevated nitrates it's going to take a lot of water changes to bring them down. There's a calculator on Reef Central's front page that will give you an idea of hoe many changes are needed to improve purity.

I'd really recommend that you get your own RO/DI when you can. If you're going to do reef, you're going to need it. Also, even feeding once a day can be too much. What do you have in your tank as far as livestock goes?

[Gooli]

"It started when I added a sump to my system and filled it with tap water (I ran carbon in the tap water for 24 hours before I added it to the system thinking it would get all the bad stuff out). Since then I only use RO/DI water that I get at the LFS."



- So it's pretty clear that the tap water started this problem. If you want to be successful...DONT USE TAP WATER. The only exception would be someone who tests their tap water and they are super clean with no nitrates, and ZERO TDS - very unlikely.

I personally dont trust anyone else with my water...how do you know if the quality of the RO water from the LFS is decent?. Did you test it? We had a local store here sell RO water with like 50ppm of nitrates. i urge you to test the RO water next time.

So instead of looking for a band-aid fix with a snail or crab...cure the root of the problem :)

i hope this helps.

PS. Nitrates at 10ppm is not ideal...again..that could be due to the water from the LFS and the tap water.

[sean48183]

It not tap water. Your nutrients aren't being utililzed by algae outside the display tank. They find your tank conditions perfect to grow in. You need to find a way to grow this algae outside your diplay tank. What type of light are you using on your fuge? This can make a big difference. If your light is more intense in your main tank than your fuge why would your algae rather grow in your fuge? My light on my fuge is brutal and algae grows out of control while my display has none. I can't keep any type of algae loving critter in my display.

[B33FST3W]

Ok, my nitrates have now droped to 0ppm. The light I have on my fuge is the one recommened by melevsreef (some sort of 5100k screw in bulb), and I have good cheato growth.

On the other hand, I am now missing 2 fish. I cant find them in the display, sump, overflow, or floor. I dont know how they would have died as they looked good one day, and the next day I just cant find them.

Im not that worried about the fish (although they would be my first losses :() I just want to know that if I take a couple of hours and clean out all the hair algae, it wont come back as super fast (it took it 1 week to compleatly cover everything last time I did it) as it did last time?

[tran383]

I had this problem for 3-4 months and it was bad! I didn't think it was gonna get better. I tried everything, large weekly water changes, RO water, pulling the rocks out and scrubbing it, hand removing them, running rowaphos, added emerald crabs, reduce feeding (although I only feed every other day), reduce MH light time, remove large live rock with a lot of hair algae, but there was so much hair algae it would clog my filter pads in my phosban reactor and calcium reactor causing it to basically stop, and it was collecting in my overflow teeth and standpipe, it was bad news... and then to top it off, my skimmer pump broke! So I went skimmerless for ~25 days.

However, I did two things different, I purchase a few filter socks and ran them to catch all the hair algae I couldn't see, I didn't even bother to wash it or clean it, I just put in new ones and went through like 4. And then... I changed one of my suspect old metal halide 250DE bulbs. With these two changes and no working skimmer, within one week all the sudden all of the hair algae disappeared and then I started to see weblike growth of coralline on my rocks. I only noticed it because my tank was more red and less green. Plus, I have a wavebox so I really saw the hair algae swaying back and forth... all the sudden there wasn't green algae swaying back and forth!

Now I have no more hair algae and it feels soooo good. For the last 4 months, I didn't buy anything new or introduce any new corals because of this problem. I honestly didn't think it was going to get any better... I almost gave it up! I'ts frustrating when there's soooo much of it. I wish I'd taken pictures so you could be motivated. But yeah, its doable. Use filter socks and change out old light bulbs. I don't normally run filter socks, but I wouldn't hesistate to use them if I had a break out again. Good luck.