Beep'ing Green Hair Algae

[spiritwalker]

Like many others, I am dealing with some of what I believe to be green hair algae.. I would love some guidance (and morale support) while working through eradicating this crap from my slice of ocean.

Tank setup:
120 gal display tank with 125 lbs (when dry) of rock. 40 breeder sump. Barebottom DT.
Vertex 180i skimmer
Varios8 return pump
Carbon/gfo reactor
fuge with chaeto and kessil h80 light.
kessil a360we lights x3 over DT
tunze 6501 wave pumps x2

Inhabitants:
PB Tang
Yellow Tang
Sailfin tang
2 clowns
3 chromis
cleaner shrimp
emerald crab
handfull or so of astrea snails
16 or so turbo snails (12 recently added)
handful of blue leg hermits.
various pods and little sponges

Corals (mostly small frags)
Montipora digitata
Favia
Montipora Cap
Pink branching cyphastria
Tubbs stellata Montipora
montipora satosa
Acanthastrea
Goniopora flowerpot
Euphyllia Hammer
Zoanthids
Cyphastrea
Anacropora
Stylophora
Acropora
Birdsnest
Mushrooms

A little history:
Tank has been up and running since July 23, 2018. Rock cured for about 50 days prior.
Started to get a bubble algae outbreak that looked frightening.. it was everywhere, it was very small bubbles and often times deep in the holes in the rock where I could not pluck it out. I decided to dose vibrant to combat the bubble algae and ended up getting cyano.. Turned my attention to treating the cyano and got rid of it but then some gha started forming deep in the rock holes.. again in spots where I could not pick it out.. Went back to dosing vibrant and got another cyano outbreak.. Again turned my attention to kicking the cyano and am now left with the GHA..

Most recent water tests results:
NO3 12 ppm (down from prior week. was 16)
PO4 0.08 ppm (up from prior week as it was zero and I took gfo offline)
Alk 9.2 dKH
PH 8.2-8.3
temp 78*
CA 455 ppm
MG 1480 ppm
Spec gravity 1.026

Note: skimmer had been off for a handful of days prior to the test results as I was treating the cyano.

Recent actions to combat this:
Reduced feeding and quit feeding pellets.. I typically feed 1/8th sheet nori and the equivalent of 1/3 cube of LRS Reef Frenzy daily. I hand feed the frozen and not much gets past the fish. The tangs usually consume the nori within a couple hours.
I've reduced my light photo period from 10 to 6 hours over the past week or so and have also recently been running full blue spectrum.
Adjusted wave pumps to be on full speed and have arranged them to minimize dead spots. These put out 3400 gph each.. I'll be looking to double that as soon as i can get more pumps.
I doubled the chaeto volume.
I've been doing 20% water changes over the past couple weeks but my nutrient numbers are not all that high (yes, the gha can be consuming it and masking the real values)..

I have some time off coming up over the next couple weeks and want to have a game plan to really attack this stuff. I ordered a bunch of H2O2 and will be removing and spraying some of the accessible rocks that dont have coral on them and perhaps scrubbing others as best as I can.. Also looking into perhaps getting a sea hair.. considering trying vibrant again.. all options are on the table.

Any guidance y'all can provide would be very much appreciated.. I grab some pics this evening of the current condition of my tank. I've seen much worse but I dont want to let this get out of hand.

Cheers!

 

[Jason mack]

If you raise your mag upto 1700 the hair algea will die off ....then let mag drop slowly again ...raise it slowly as well

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I look to using your chaeto fuge to out compete the hair algae in the display.
The kessil h 80 is a good light, but the wattage (only 15W at full spectrum & intensity) most likely isn't enough to do a proper job (particular depending on the surface area of the fuge & how much chaeto you want to grow)

It should be running on RED, or Bloom at the least (the RED is essiential & blue unimportant for green algae)
If enough chaeto is growing well GFO should not be necessary.
Get your NO3 down, down to 2 to 4 ppm, also using the chaeto.

good luck.

 

[spiritwalker]

If you raise your mag upto 1700 the hair algea will die off ....then let mag drop slowly again ...raise it slowly as well

Jason, I will raise my mag. I think I read somewhere to raise it about 100ppm per day.

 

[spiritwalker]

I look to using your chaeto fuge to out compete the hair algae in the display.
The kessil h 80 is a good light, but the wattage (only 15W at full spectrum & intensity) most likely isn't enough to do a proper job (particular depending on the surface area of the fuge & how much chaeto you want to grow)

It should be running on RED, or Bloom at the least (the RED is essiential & blue unimportant for green algae)
If enough chaeto is growing well GFO should not be necessary.
Get your NO3 down, down to 2 to 4 ppm, also using the chaeto.

good luck.

I have been running my h80 higher above the water than I wanted. Today, the gooseneck was delivered and I installed it and now my light is much closer to the water. I would say the surface area is about 16x16.

I've been running the light spectrum on the Grow setting max intensity. I have adjusted it to the bloom setting at max intensity.

 

[spiritwalker]

Here are some pics of the challenge.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I have been running my h80 higher above the water than I wanted. Today, the gooseneck was delivered and I installed it and now my light is much closer to the water. I would say the surface area is about 16x16.

I've been running the light spectrum on the Grow setting max intensity. I have adjusted it to the bloom setting at max intensity.

Cool. Maybe 6" off the surface would be good going by the diagram I posted.
And yeh, the Grow setting,,, too much blue

 

[PirateDan]

Tanks 5 months old your going way to fast at 4 months I had every kind of algae there is after about a month of pulling off rocks it started going away.

 

[spiritwalker]

Tanks 5 months old your going way to fast at 4 months I had every kind of algae there is after about a month of pulling off rocks it started going away.

Yea, I thought I was going slow. It's like the old saying, you don't know where the line is at until you cross it.. live and learn. I'll slow down.

Cool. Maybe 6" off the surface would be good going by the diagram I posted.
And yeh, the Grow setting,,, too much blue

Should I be running the fuge light 24x7? Currently set opposite my DT schedule.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Should I be running the fuge light 24x7? Currently set opposite my DT schedule.

24/7, you can yes, especially if you are attempting to reduce no3.
Once you get no3 down to your target level you can then reduce the lighting period.
Yes, opposite cycle to display for oxygenation & maintaining pH

 

[Toomnymods]

I had GHA 100% worse than yours and have been battling it for over a yr now.. tried reef flux 5 times did it correctly no skimmer for 3 days, let it run its course for 21 days and never killed more than 10-15% of it. Tried dosing phosphate rx which actually thinned it out quite a bit. even though tests showed 0 ppm phosphates I knew my dry rock from marco rocks was leeching it into my system. I have been dosing that 2-3 x a week now for over a month. To polish the stuff off because I was just sooo sick of looking at it and want it gone. I went and bought a gallon on 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide. This IS VERY VERY STRONG STUFF!! Definatly use gloves and goggles. I dosed 26ml for a 220 display and 40 gallon reef and still bleached two of my lps colonies. Everything else is fine including the fish and snails, etc.. GHA all turned white within 3-6 hrs, hahahaha Works great, I plan to dose one more dose in another week after my next waterchange just to make sure it is gone forever. After it turns white the snails for some reason love it and will devour it.

 

[that Reef Guy]

I had GHA 100% worse than yours and have been battling it for over a yr now.. tried reef flux 5 times did it correctly no skimmer for 3 days, let it run its course for 21 days and never killed more than 10-15% of it. Tried dosing phosphate rx which actually thinned it out quite a bit. even though tests showed 0 ppm phosphates I knew my dry rock from marco rocks was leeching it into my system. I have been dosing that 2-3 x a week now for over a month. To polish the stuff off because I was just sooo sick of looking at it and want it gone. I went and bought a gallon on 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide. This IS VERY VERY STRONG STUFF!! Definatly use gloves and goggles. I dosed 26ml for a 220 display and 40 gallon reef and still bleached two of my lps colonies. Everything else is fine including the fish and snails, etc.. GHA all turned white within 3-6 hrs, hahahaha Works great, I plan to dose one more dose in another week after my next waterchange just to make sure it is gone forever. After it turns white the snails for some reason love it and will devour it.

That is very Harsh.

You would use that Dose for Regular 3% Peroxide not 35% (1 ML Per 10 Gallons).

Yes, it will take longer but it will not Stress out the Animals.

After about 2 Weeks the Algae will Weaken.

Then Just Syphon it Out.

DON'T use 35 Percent.

Use the Regular 3 Percent that you buy at the Store.

Dose Once a Day When Lights Go Out.

 

[Katrina71]

On a positive note, the beeping GHA really makes your coral pop!

 

[Toomnymods]

That is very Harsh.

You would use that Dose for Regular 3% Peroxide not 35% (1 ML Per 10 Gallons).

Yes, it will take longer but it will not Stress out the Animals.

After about 2 Weeks the Algae will Weaken.

Then Just Syphon it Out.

DON'T use 35 Percent.

Use the Regular 3 Percent that you buy at the Store.

Dose Once a Day When Lights Go Out.

Actually your wrong.. for 35% hydrogen peroxide you dose 1ml per 10 gallons of water.
Dosing 3% will not do anything to a gha infestation. I’ve tried it. I even doubled the dosage and did it twice a day.. gha just laughed at it. Leave the 3% for people just wanting to do a preventive maintance dose. The 3% will never kill GHA once it takes hold.

 

[cooltowncorals]

My opinion is to look up the h202 thread on reef. But basically get a Tupperware container that’s bigger then your biggest piece of live rock. Syfon tank water into the Tupperware/plastic tote/5gallonbucket like doing a water change replace the water in your tank set up to run as normal. Then start on one end of your tank and pull out each piece of live rock and hit it with a new plastic scrub brush (like one from the doller store) turn rock scrub whole thing then take the peroxide and spray entire rock if corals are attached to it don’t hit corals directly. The GHA will mostly scrub off with the brush take 5 min with brush do brushing under water above water dunk the rock look make sure you have 95% or more off. If corals are attached work around then use a toothbrush around their base if needed if they come off put in sand until your done then put back. Put a filter sock on to catch and loose GHA in your aquarium after your done pull it the next day or two. I did this twice in the past tank was clean for two months the GHA takes a while to grow back where you hit the rock with H202. You have two months to get nutrients under control to keep it from coming back or you just have to rinse and repeat it took me around an hour maybe to scrub the rocks from my 155 gallon. Your tank will look awesome tomorrow if you do this today. I lost nothing in my tank doing this I have a little bit of everything.

Feed only frozen food if you keep up your current plan it’s much easier to control nutrients. The nori is not an issue doesn’t add much to nutrients from what I’ve read.

IMO I’ve done the gfo cheato thing carbon dosing is way less work and easier then doing that. Nopox give it 6 weeks to lower phosphates it works just takes time. Throw a biobrick from brightwell or something similar in your sump for extra bacteria surface area to form on.

Even better is going zeovit (or other similar system AF/brightwell) I run the basic 4 have had 0 algae and super low nutrients since implementing following a second scrub and I feed 2-3 cubes a day mix in flake food couple times a week and dump around a gallon of dense phyto (2 ml shellfish 1800) a day and both of the aminos sponge power and pohls vitalizer 3 times a week nitrates are 0 phosphates real close 9ppb. It’s has a high up front cost but maintaining it is around 50-60$ a month. Including alk calc trace water change ect not to bad.

 

[spiritwalker]

I've read numerous posts and watched many videos about using h202 both as an additive and for target treatment.. I figured I'd start with target treatment with what I could access, treat, scrub outside the DT.. There was alot of conflicting information regarding dosage of 3% and 35% just like in this thread already.. Is there a typical store in the U.S. where one can find 35% h2o2? Looking on amazon it seems like it is limited to 12%.. likely due to shipping regulations. I did try some targeted application of 3% h2o2 to some gha in the DT yesterday.. I used 10ml and a syringe and injected it into a few of the holes the gha was growing in.. wave pumps off. It clearly had an impact on the gha.. was bubbling and pieces seemed to come loose.. curious to see how that area looks in a few days.

Do you all think I should turn my gfo reactor back on at this point? 0.08 ppm phos measured a few days ago.. I turned it off a week ago because i was measuring zero. I read a lot of post where people we claiming an imbalance of nitrates and phosphates caused cyano so I backed off on the GFO.. In retrospect, I do have a strong feeling that the cyano was caused by vibrant and running zero phosphate without the vibrant would probably be fine. Seems to me I should have the gfo back online as part of my gha attack plan.

I have been considering nopox and other carbon dosing methods.. I have not pursued this route because my nitrates are not really THAT high and I was hoping I could bring it down with reduced feeding, increased chaeto volume, and more water changes (I did almost no water changes for the first 5 months).

 

[spiritwalker]

Edit: in retrospect I did reach in with a net to rescue an overturned snail. The net could have disrupted the gha causing it to break free.

Lil update.. I went to dose some magnesium and noticed quite a bit of gha strands free floating in the DT. My water is usually very clear. Something I have done recently has had an impact on loosening this stuff up.

Yesterday I added 10ml of 3% h2o2 as a spot test. Also dosed 500ml magnesium. One or both of those actions are the only things I can think of that would have an impact.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

http://www.melevsreef.com/articles/getting-rid-of-green-hair-algae

 

[spiritwalker]

http://www.melevsreef.com/articles/getting-rid-of-green-hair-algae

Yes, I have seen that video.. Watched it again so it sinks in.. Thanks for sharing.

 

[spiritwalker]

Got a couple rocks out and treated with h2o2 and a scrub brush.