Kayotic5011
Active Member
SKERTTTTTTTT! Did you just say......."yes" You heard me right. Now before you get all worked up check my story and what I have done and the info I can bring you form what I learned, I personally think its worth it.
Let me start off by saying just the thought of adding this to a tank is just awful to me, but here is my story and what I have come to learn.
Once apon a time, like a 3 months a ago I started to notice brown hair algae in a 40 gallon I set up with some live rock and sand. It had already run its cycle and I had added some fish but no corals....yet, as I planned to upgrade to a larger tank and didn't want to spend a lot of money for nothing. I had no protein skimmer on my tank at the time and I was using tap water because it was the only water available to me at the time. Im sure it caused my issues a long with no protein skimmer....anyway I got some phosguard and put it in my filter area in a bag and let it go to work. I pulled out the hairiest rocks and scrubbed them with a tooth brush. I went after this stuff like there was no tomorrow...."Scrub Scrub Scrub all day long, Scrub Scrub Scrub while I sing this song, Gonna de hair them good, Gonna make them shine, They will be lucky if I don't use turpentine....
Welp all went well for a week then the hair began to creep...Stuff grows faster then yard grass. I tried and tried, even got a tomini tang who did an amazing job but he seemed to farm it and have patches instead of taking it away. I got tired of it all and had thought for a long time "I don't have corals but what about my macro algae's? At this time I had some Gracilaria, Sargassum, Scroll algae, Chaetomorpha, Dictyota, and dragon's tongue macroalgae. I did not want to loose any of it, but if I let this brown hair take over its gonna tank over everything....what do I do???
After some careful thinking this is what I decided to do. Ive had it with that brown hair i'm willing to kinda do what it takes...but first a stop to my local lfs...lol yes I bought something first...bare with me a moment.....No it wasn't Algae Reducer because I already had that (not to be confused with Algae Flex Though probably the same thing), I bout a dieing BTA from my lfs. I brought it home and gave it a week or so, It started to show a little life to it.....ok here it goes ................ cant look! I cant believe Ive done this, Its for the greater good. I put algae reducer in my tank and let it roll.
Algae flex or reducer works by putting holes in the cell walls of the algae and by doing so will kill it. My questions are How will it effect my pistol shrimp, my microalgaes, and that anemone and the life on my live rock like coralline algae? I could do nothing now but follow a series of dosses to rid myself of this hair algae....Welp a week has gone by and you can see a major difference, I've only dossed one time at this point but you can see the reducer working. The brown hair was receding, but I also started to loose my Dictyota where all the rest seemed fine. Week two rolls around and you can tell the reducer is starting to loose effect so I give another go. At this point I've lost my Dictyota, and started to loose my Scroll Algae, no no no, but it is what it is now, this is science gotta keep going. All my blue leg hermits were doing fine, snails were fine and My beloved pistol shrimp "Clamps" "Let me give'em the clamps boss!" was as happy as could be.....Time for another dose this time slightly under the week time as directed actually to keep the algae from coming back. At this time I started to loose my anemone , but my Chaetomorpha, Red Gracilaria, and the Dragons Tongue were doing fine were the Sargassum was being stunned.
My refugium never got brown hair or anything like that it stayed healthy and never seemed to be effected to much by the reducer. The green algae growing in the refugium on the baffles was not effected nore was my chaeto. The red Gracilaria, Dragons Tongue, Dictyota and Sargassum were all in the main tank where the dossing was happening. as for the anemone he wasnt doing good when I started and bought him half dead and though I really hated to put it through that, alot of us have them and I needed to see how it effected the algae inside of it, which let go of it rock and got caught in a current maker. Thankfully I found it quick, but the damage was done. I think It was dieing from the reducer and let go of the rock and floated to its doom. It didn't look good before...
Anyway I stopped using the reducer weeks before my tank upgrade and have done some water changes cleaning it as much as possible (not that I kept any of my water during the upgrade just sand and rocks). The reducer accompanied with the repeated use of phosguard really did a number on the brown hair and though it did, I DO NOT RECOMMEND adding this stuff to your tank. In my personal opinion I think it will kill everything if you over load your tank or just use it to long.
If you already have tried it what kind of tank did you use it in, what did you have in it and what was effected. Lets compare notes and log some real info that will help those with the need for this type of information and ourselves.
Let me start off by saying just the thought of adding this to a tank is just awful to me, but here is my story and what I have come to learn.
Once apon a time, like a 3 months a ago I started to notice brown hair algae in a 40 gallon I set up with some live rock and sand. It had already run its cycle and I had added some fish but no corals....yet, as I planned to upgrade to a larger tank and didn't want to spend a lot of money for nothing. I had no protein skimmer on my tank at the time and I was using tap water because it was the only water available to me at the time. Im sure it caused my issues a long with no protein skimmer....anyway I got some phosguard and put it in my filter area in a bag and let it go to work. I pulled out the hairiest rocks and scrubbed them with a tooth brush. I went after this stuff like there was no tomorrow...."Scrub Scrub Scrub all day long, Scrub Scrub Scrub while I sing this song, Gonna de hair them good, Gonna make them shine, They will be lucky if I don't use turpentine....
Welp all went well for a week then the hair began to creep...Stuff grows faster then yard grass. I tried and tried, even got a tomini tang who did an amazing job but he seemed to farm it and have patches instead of taking it away. I got tired of it all and had thought for a long time "I don't have corals but what about my macro algae's? At this time I had some Gracilaria, Sargassum, Scroll algae, Chaetomorpha, Dictyota, and dragon's tongue macroalgae. I did not want to loose any of it, but if I let this brown hair take over its gonna tank over everything....what do I do???
After some careful thinking this is what I decided to do. Ive had it with that brown hair i'm willing to kinda do what it takes...but first a stop to my local lfs...lol yes I bought something first...bare with me a moment.....No it wasn't Algae Reducer because I already had that (not to be confused with Algae Flex Though probably the same thing), I bout a dieing BTA from my lfs. I brought it home and gave it a week or so, It started to show a little life to it.....ok here it goes ................ cant look! I cant believe Ive done this, Its for the greater good. I put algae reducer in my tank and let it roll.
Algae flex or reducer works by putting holes in the cell walls of the algae and by doing so will kill it. My questions are How will it effect my pistol shrimp, my microalgaes, and that anemone and the life on my live rock like coralline algae? I could do nothing now but follow a series of dosses to rid myself of this hair algae....Welp a week has gone by and you can see a major difference, I've only dossed one time at this point but you can see the reducer working. The brown hair was receding, but I also started to loose my Dictyota where all the rest seemed fine. Week two rolls around and you can tell the reducer is starting to loose effect so I give another go. At this point I've lost my Dictyota, and started to loose my Scroll Algae, no no no, but it is what it is now, this is science gotta keep going. All my blue leg hermits were doing fine, snails were fine and My beloved pistol shrimp "Clamps" "Let me give'em the clamps boss!" was as happy as could be.....Time for another dose this time slightly under the week time as directed actually to keep the algae from coming back. At this time I started to loose my anemone , but my Chaetomorpha, Red Gracilaria, and the Dragons Tongue were doing fine were the Sargassum was being stunned.
My refugium never got brown hair or anything like that it stayed healthy and never seemed to be effected to much by the reducer. The green algae growing in the refugium on the baffles was not effected nore was my chaeto. The red Gracilaria, Dragons Tongue, Dictyota and Sargassum were all in the main tank where the dossing was happening. as for the anemone he wasnt doing good when I started and bought him half dead and though I really hated to put it through that, alot of us have them and I needed to see how it effected the algae inside of it, which let go of it rock and got caught in a current maker. Thankfully I found it quick, but the damage was done. I think It was dieing from the reducer and let go of the rock and floated to its doom. It didn't look good before...
Anyway I stopped using the reducer weeks before my tank upgrade and have done some water changes cleaning it as much as possible (not that I kept any of my water during the upgrade just sand and rocks). The reducer accompanied with the repeated use of phosguard really did a number on the brown hair and though it did, I DO NOT RECOMMEND adding this stuff to your tank. In my personal opinion I think it will kill everything if you over load your tank or just use it to long.
If you already have tried it what kind of tank did you use it in, what did you have in it and what was effected. Lets compare notes and log some real info that will help those with the need for this type of information and ourselves.
