Any solutions to hair algae that won't go away?

[Sophie"s mom]

Following because I’m dealing with the same. Tried all the same things. Currently on second dose of flux rx which is working but some spots seem immune. Sea hair didn’t touch it, snails don’t touch it. Beyond frustrating. If my scape wasn’t glued together I’d rip it down and h2o2 the whole thing

Have you tried Pitho crabs? They are supposed to eat it. The ones I have graze on algae all the time, I have to supplement them with nori.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I went for a week long vacation in November, I left the auto feeder on and came back to a green hair algae tank. Now 3 months later, its very close to being done, just a few stubborn tufts left. This is what I did:

-start using filter socks and changing daily (I stopped doing this months ago...)

-Feed less but more often. I don't believe in feeding less to the fish, so I fed less per meal, but more meals per day. Uneaten food that rots IMO is the number one algae fuel.

-Weekly water changes and toothbrush the algae. It does nothing at first, but after 2 months of being scrubbed weekly, it has affect.

-Start wet skimming, empty that cup 2 or 3 times a day.

-Before you do water change, or before you remove the filter sock, turkey baste the rocks, get the detritus out of the holes and crevices, blow out the low flow area's of your tank, get it all moving in the water column so it gets caught in the filter sock, then change the sock.

-I normally keep a very light cuc, so I added 6 mexican turbos (40 gallon tank), they did a good job on the dying algae, but they are lazy and won't touch the algae bushes so you have to do your part to wear down the bushes.

Thats what I did and it worked for me, 3 months of doing this.

 

[Dom]

I have had hair algae for a while now, maybe 6-8 months, and I can't seem to get rid of it or find what is causing it. I have tried many things like NoPox, microbacter 7, flux rx (3x dose), Mexican turbos (at one point I had 15), emerald crabs, sea hare, lower light length and intensity, complete deep clean of all rocks, and a week-long black out, along with regular water changes. So far I have had not even a little success, besides the deep clean but the algae is back now. I have heard that it could be from nitrates and phosphates but for the past 4 months or so my nitrates have been stable at 10-20 and phos at .03-.15. My tank is about 3-4 years old and I did go through a phase of no problems for 2 years then started to experience some hair algae. Not really sure what else to do, any ideas?

Try this:

To begin, I would discontinue all of the bottled solutions you've tried. When adding so many different products to the same tank, you couldn't possibly know the interactions between these products and how it impacts the tank.

The solution to your problem is manual labor. And the foundation to all of this is faithful, weekly 20% water changes. This will do 2 things: reduce nutrients and replenish elements consumed by the tank.

So I would use a toothbrush to get as much hair algae free floating in the tank, and then siphon out as much as possible during a water change.

Repeat this process weekly and you will see results over the next 6-8 weeks.

What are your husbandry practices?

Dom

 

[Cthulukelele]

Hair algae at high concentration will outcompete everything including chaeto. My advice would be let it grow out somewhat long then use a pair of long angled tweezers (like you get for planted freshwater aquariums) and rip out as much as you can from the root. Also be aware that depending on infestation level you'll get a mild to moderate nutrient spike that'll likely affect other nuisance organism abundance

 

[paintman]

Try this:

To begin, I would discontinue all of the bottled solutions you've tried. When adding so many different products to the same tank, you couldn't possibly know the interactions between these products and how it impacts the tank.

The solution to your problem is manual labor. And the foundation to all of this is faithful, weekly 20% water changes. This will do 2 things: reduce nutrients and replenish elements consumed by the tank.

So I would use a toothbrush to get as much hair algae free floating in the tank, and then siphon out as much as possible during a water change.

Repeat this process weekly and you will see results over the next 6-8 weeks.

What are your husbandry practices?

Dom

You sir are correct!!!!
Unfortunately this hobby and (the current generation for that matter), have gone the way of relying on other things, people and critters to solve their problems. Instead of doing weekly manual maintenance, we have come to rely on every bottled potion, or blinky blinky aparatus to try and solve a problem. Then when that doesn't work.....well hell lets just go and through a couple hundred CUC's at it and watch them slowly die.
If the OP would just get a tooth brush turkey baster and power filter, and spend some time doing what should be done every week his problems would go away.

 

[Midasblen]

Don't replace your rock. How long have your been testing? Your Phosphates don't stay dormant for years. Rock that is in bad shape should be normalized within 6 months with no external means of export. If they were phospate bound you would have had lots of algae a couple months after turning your lights on and that algae would have sucked the nutrients right out of the rock.

I have been testing phos for over 4 months

 

[Midasblen]

What are your TDS on your ro water? Have you tried a refugium with chaeto?

My tds is 0 and I haven't tried a refugium since algae killed my last one, but I am thinking about trying again or getting a scrubber

 

[Midasblen]

My go-to move with nuisance hair algae is to physically remove it from the tank.

Don’t just brush it off the rocks…take it out of the tank and brush it off into a bucket of your tank water, then rinse it off in a bucket of clean water. Then make sure you have some CUC animals that eat GHA, like turbos and urchins. You might have to do this a few times over a month or so, but you will get rid of it.

You have to get all of the P and N sequestered by the algae out of the tank. Brushing it off in the tank and siphoning it out is better than doing nothing, but not significantly better.

Want macro-algae to go toe-to-toe with an established GHA population and win? Get comfortable…it’s gonna be a while. But knocking the bulk of the population (along with its nutrients) out of tank makes it easier to tip the scales in the MA’s favor and allow it to gain a foothold and outcompete the GHA.

For every water change that I have done for the past 4-6 months, I have manually tried to remove algae and my turbos rarely touch the algae.

 

[Midasblen]

Can you get a tang?

I currently have a blue tang that I got pre-algae and would prefer not to get another.

 

[Midasblen]

Try this:

To begin, I would discontinue all of the bottled solutions you've tried. When adding so many different products to the same tank, you couldn't possibly know the interactions between these products and how it impacts the tank.

The solution to your problem is manual labor. And the foundation to all of this is faithful, weekly 20% water changes. This will do 2 things: reduce nutrients and replenish elements consumed by the tank.

So I would use a toothbrush to get as much hair algae free floating in the tank, and then siphon out as much as possible during a water change.

Repeat this process weekly and you will see results over the next 6-8 weeks.

What are your husbandry practices?

Dom

I have been doing this for several months and it cleans up the tank for a little bit then the algae comes back. I do 15% water changes every week, 2 weeks at the latest, along with cleaning the filter socks, testing, and scrubbing/siphoning the algae off the rocks.

 

[jda]

You need consumers. Any tank that can grow coral has enough light to grow algae. The algae only needs a trace of nitrogen and phosphorous and you could test zero for both po4 and no3 and it would still grow well.

Fuges can help reduce residual waste products, but they don't eradicate algae from other places - this includes a turf style refugium/scrubber.

Consumers like urchins, snail, crabs, fish, etc. There is no way around this.

You can scrub some rocks and stuff, but it will come back.

 

[Midasblen]

You sir are correct!!!!
Unfortunately this hobby and (the current generation for that matter), have gone the way of relying on other things, people and critters to solve their problems. Instead of doing weekly manual maintenance, we have come to rely on every bottled potion, or blinky blinky aparatus to try and solve a problem. Then when that doesn't work.....well hell lets just go and through a couple hundred CUC's at it and watch them slowly die.
If the OP would just get a tooth brush turkey baster and power filter, and spend some time doing what should be done every week his problems would go away.

you don't think I have tried this already? I have been doing weekly/ biweekly water changes and other maintenance, I have also taken every rock out of my tank and scrubbed them down 2 times followed by a black, and the algae just comes back. I have only tried these " blinky blinky apparatus" when the manual labor wasn't keeping the problem away.

 

[Midasblen]

You need consumers. Any tank that can grow coral has enough light to grow algae. The algae only needs a trace of nitrogen and phosphorous and you could test zero for both po4 and no3 and it would still grow well.

Fuges can help reduce residual waste products, but they don't eradicate algae from other places - this includes a turf style refugium/scrubber.

Consumers like urchins, snail, crabs, fish, etc. There is no way around this.

You can scrub some rocks and stuff, but it will come back.

any recommendations on where to get cuc outside of lfs because I have had little luck with their turbos

 

[VintageReefer]

Fuges can help reduce residual waste products, but they don't eradicate algae from other places - this includes a turf style refugium/scrubber.

Incorrect. It is proven that scrubbers properly sized can and do reduce algae from other areas

 

[jda]

I use ReefTopia for caribbean stuff.

Turbo snails are more coldwater species... if you mean Mexican Turbos. 78 degrees is the top of the scale. Astrea, cerith and nerite snails are better in reef temperature water.

Pincuchion urchins can wander off of rocks and hang out on the glass. They can also pick up your snails and carry them around. You have to take the snails off of them and then also put them back on the rocks. Rock and pencil urchins do a better job of saying near the rocks.

 

[wattson]

any recommendations on where to get cuc outside of lfs because I have had little luck with their turbos

trochus snails, the only ones Ill buy, they can right themselves up and do the best job out of any snails I owned so far,

 

[jda]

Trochus are awesome. They don't like to be hot either... I would not let them get much above 78. They can breed in your tank if the conditions are right.

Tuxedo urchins are also great and they can stay in the hairy spots. They only live 2-3 years whereas the others seem to live for decades if cared for correctly.

 

[MrGisonni]

Astrea snails, cerith snails, trochus snails....and a bunch of them. Place them right on the algae. Continue manual removal, maybe into a filter sock in your sump. Get the phosphates in check with rowaphos or phosguard, and try some caulerpa in your algae scrubber instead of chaeto. It grows much faster. IMHO

 

[jda]

Sorry for so many posts, but you might need hundreds of snails and crabs and a bunch of urchins. How large is your tank? I buy astreas and ceriths by the hundred. Hermits too. Urchins by the 4 or 6 pack for my 240g tank.

 

[Dom]

I have been doing this for several months and it cleans up the tank for a little bit then the algae comes back. I do 15% water changes every week, 2 weeks at the latest, along with cleaning the filter socks, testing, and scrubbing/siphoning the algae off the rocks.

Bring your water changes up to 20%. Do them weekly and be faithful to them.

Also, flake food and freeze dried food can be a source of unwanted phosphates. Do you run a refugium? Algae scrubber? Protein skimmer?