Major hair algae - please help

[hanselldog]

Need help with a major hair algae problem. I've had it for 2 months (or longer).
I originally thought it was the filter in my ro/di system needed replacing (after changing them - I still have the algae).
Then I thought - maybe the halide bulbs needed replacing (that didn't help either), I also changed the actinics.

Added a large pump to get more water flow and movement.
Checked the water quality (several times) - nothing is going on with that either.

I have started changing 10 percent of the water every other weekend.

Meanwhile, my large clam has died, the snail and hermit crabs have died, and tonight one of my corals is dying (I think it's called a "torch").

The algae is on everything in my 150 gal tank.
I've had the tank up and running for almost 2 years.
I have a large leather coral, a large tree coral (sorry, I don't know their scientific names), 3 types of zoos, purple mushrooms, one large anemone, 2 clown fish, one blennie, one orange shoulder tang, one pajama cardinal, one six line wrasse, one rabbitfish, one skunk shrimp, and 5 chromies.

I feed mysis shrimp every other day and put dried seaweed on a clip every day. The anemone is fed a fresh ground shrimp every Sunday.

This frustration is almost pushing me to take down the tank.
Please help!

[poppin_fresh]

Hmmmmm

The fact that the inverts are dying is puzzling. I would guess that you have high nitrates, but the HA should be uptaking it. Have you tested your tank for NO3 and PO4?? Have you tested your source water for those as well? Do you have a skimmer on the tank?

[ljosh]

How often do you do water changes?

Do you have refugium/sump?

What about a protein skimmer?

What do you have for herbivores in the tank?

What kind of sandbed do you have?

The hair algae comes from a build up of wastes, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and phosphates. It then gets longer and traps particals form the water stream creating a local food source for itself.

What I did:

Got the temperature consistantly under 80F (not sure if this had an impact or not)

Removed as much of the algae as physhically possible by hand. This is the best option because it removes the nutrients bound in the algae from your system completely instead of having something eat it and realease the waste back into the water.

Removed some of the rocks and completely scrubbed the algae off using 2 5 gal buckets w/ SW one to scrub the rocks in and one to rinse the rocks before putting them back in the tank.

Added a phosban reactor w/ a generous amount of phosphate absorber.

Added more variety of snails. I was not having any deaths in my tank though.

I had a shallow sand bed in the display. I found when I removed the rocks there was a lot of build up uder the rocks since I had cured them in the tank with the sand. I vaccumed and stirred the sand several times and used an aqua clear to for mechanical filtration while doing this.

I did this all at the same time. I covered the tank with a blanket ( all of my air to water gas exchange is through the sump) and left it like that for 3 days in the dark. when I uncovered it there was nothing but bare rocks and it stayed that way.

My tank was a lot smaller, only 20#'s of LR, so this was easy for me to accomplish.

I have read on here that some people are having success with the hair algae by raising there magnesium up to 1600. I believe it only works if you magnesium containing sulfates (epsom salts) I have not tried this but they say it literally melts away withen days.

[Sk8r]

What you've got is a massive amount of phosphate coming in from somewhere---pellet food, flake, water [your ro/di TDS is 0?], or bad luck.
What you need to do is: use only frozen food, feed lightly, turn lights out for 3 days once a month, skim wet, [means let your skimmer suck water so long as it sucks something], and if that doesn't help, put a refugium in the loop if you have to buy a cabinet at a garage sale to contain it. A refugium will sop up all the nutrient you free up by killing off the algae, so you can divide it, sell it [where else can you sell or trade a tank pollutant for profit] and get rid of it.

Never mind that your tests don't show phosphate: it doesn't show up in tests if it's bound up in algae, and I assure you it is truly bound up [massive amounts of it] in your algae overrun.

[hanselldog]

Thank you all for the response. As always - you have given me some great suggestions!!

I have been thinking about doing the refugium and I guess it is time to do it.
I have a skimmer (not thrilled with it) and I also have a sandbed that is 3 or 4 inches deep. I have close to 200 lbs of LR.

Another thing that I do on a daily basis is scrub the rocks with a toothbrush and then I use a net to catch the hair algae that has come off the rock (which isn't a lot).

I will also get the NO3 and PO4 test done this weekend.

Thanks again.

[RGRDGR]

I cant believe your snails and hermits are dead when I had a GHA outbreak the snails in particular went through it like a John Deer Rider set on #1. I would get a few more and try them again.

[Sk8r]

You'll be ok, with the refugium. Maybe the nori is the source of your problem...it IS algae, and will contain phosphate. I'm surprised the tang, ditto the rabbit, doesn't give you some help. Maybe if you cut back his feeding to once every 3 days he'd get desperate enough to take after the plague: though there's not much food value in hair algae, so he'll need something, but that it's that far ahead of those too fish makes me suspect that it's their extra food that's fueling the plague, and that they're not working hard enough for their keep.
I doubt that PO4 test will show a thing: it's all bound in the algae.

You don't happen to have a wet/dry filter in the mix do you? Those are notorious for nitrate. Your nitrate readings are ok? A lot of us start omitting that nitrate/ammonia strip test after our tanks get complex, and that's a mistake. We need to keep up with that.

[Mitra]

My sympathies - I am having a similar problem when I've never had a serious outbreak before (had tank for 4.5 yrs)- let me know what you do. I'm thinking about more snails (though not all eat long hair algae) - and a phosban reactor - and maybe I'll turn all the lights off for 3 days.

[spike78]

Your sandbed is kind of in no mans land as far as depth and may be part of the problem. The sand bed should be over 4 inches to allow for good denitrification or less then an inch otherwise. You may have a load of waste in the sandbed that isn't properly breaking down causing you nitrates to rise.

Have you tested for nitrates recently? If so, what were they?