Frogger
Active Member
No matter what fish, sea hare or urchin it is hit or miss with green hair algae eating. I have tried them all. My yellow tang used to do a good job until he died 6 months ago. Nothing else has worked.
Beep'ing Green Hair Algae
- Thread starter spiritwalker
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spiritwalker
Community Member
Agree.. the sea hair I got seems to be making little progress. I was expecting faster results. Considering getting a couple more until things are under control. I'd love to have to give them away someday.
Frogger
Active Member
I have found the best option for a sea hare is to buy one off of another reefer that has one that has eaten all of their hair algae. That way you get a proven source.
I have also found it tough to get one to survive when purchasing them from the pet store. They don't eat and then they disappear somewhere and die in the tank polluting the tank in the process. Keep an eye on your little fellow if he is not eating he will likely die.
I have found no success with the boiling hot water and I am spot treating with hydrogen peroxide. I have to use 1% per 10 gallons twice a day to control cyano-bacteria so I might as well spot treat in the process. Chemiclean only working for a couple weeks. So I bought a microscope and confirmed cyano.
I have also found it tough to get one to survive when purchasing them from the pet store. They don't eat and then they disappear somewhere and die in the tank polluting the tank in the process. Keep an eye on your little fellow if he is not eating he will likely die.
I have found no success with the boiling hot water and I am spot treating with hydrogen peroxide. I have to use 1% per 10 gallons twice a day to control cyano-bacteria so I might as well spot treat in the process. Chemiclean only working for a couple weeks. So I bought a microscope and confirmed cyano.
JumboShrimp
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@SwiftStorm , I have two 7-gallon nano tanks, similarly kept and maintained, but obviously not identical. The tank with the Lawnmower Blenny definitely has less gree hair algae. Can I say for sure it’s due to him though? It’s pretty much a guessing game— ‘would I have more GHA without him?’ What I have picked up, whether it’s a Tang, an Urchin, whatever, is that when someone says this ‘will’ eat GHA, I think, ‘may’ eat GHA, and I give it a whirl. Best wishes! 
spiritwalker
Community Member
Picked up some more CUC. 10 trochus, 10 hermits, and a sea hare.
Also picked up some NOPOX and will start carbon dosing.
Also picked up some NOPOX and will start carbon dosing.
spiritwalker
Community Member
Couple updates.
This new sea hare is hungry.. it went to work immediately and doesn't seem to care about the lights. The first one I got only seems to work at night.
Since lowering the height of my kessil h80 refugium light my chaeto has shown significant growth. The fuge also had a ton of hair algae in it growing on the glass which I'll try to clean out this weekend.
Measured NO3 at 8ppm and PO4 at 0.02ppm this evening. Removed gfo and started dosing NOPOX. Based on the instructions they want me to start with 10ml per day but I'll start with 5ml for a day or two to ease in to it.
In hindsight, I think my clean up crew was, and may still be, pretty light. I now have about 1 snail and one hermit for every 10 gallons. I have a lot of rock in my tank that needs cleaning. I also have two shrimp and now two sea hares. We'll see how things look after a while.
This new sea hare is hungry.. it went to work immediately and doesn't seem to care about the lights. The first one I got only seems to work at night.
Since lowering the height of my kessil h80 refugium light my chaeto has shown significant growth. The fuge also had a ton of hair algae in it growing on the glass which I'll try to clean out this weekend.
Measured NO3 at 8ppm and PO4 at 0.02ppm this evening. Removed gfo and started dosing NOPOX. Based on the instructions they want me to start with 10ml per day but I'll start with 5ml for a day or two to ease in to it.
In hindsight, I think my clean up crew was, and may still be, pretty light. I now have about 1 snail and one hermit for every 10 gallons. I have a lot of rock in my tank that needs cleaning. I also have two shrimp and now two sea hares. We'll see how things look after a while.
Frogger
If you'll consider blast cleaning your sandbed vs treating the cyano via water actions, our sand rinse thread shows us beating cyano 100% on all pages
This is an example of a sandbed that is immune to diatom, dino, and cyano invasion since there's no waste. If having a diverse sandbed is important, then the way to attain it isn't in the invaded condition it's adding refugium refreshment kits to a clean condition sandbed and -starting- with diversity in a cloudless bed. It's not about adding diversity or meds to a clouded sandbed, which always regenerates a new invasion set after another one wanes.
Just wanted to offer that physical action to the bed, like spirit walker did on the rocks n setup. All forms of deep tank access cleaning can be done such that they're safe, and the invader is blasted not coaxed out.
SW
One thing I'm really interested in knowing within your experiment is how well heat/boil water does about transmitting down the plant shaft into its holdfast base to kill that which we couldn't scrape out. Your rate of growback follow up will remark upon that, can't wait to see how it unfolds in time. That heat may well be penetrating the top areas+ conducted by the plant themselves which is like peroxide in that it's a -kill- not just a physical remover.
All methods that remove gha and bryopsis from rocks with a brush only are lawn mowing, not true plant kills. same for clean up crews, hares do work for us but they're never dislodging the anchors. They chew, eat, leave the regrowth portion in place, then contribute bioload to the tank to feed regrowth. Not that cuc are wrong, this is how nature keeps a reef clean, but we get to make comparisons across threads which use varying actions for algae control. We like to have controlled, very controlled regrowth (nobody wants a sterile reef) so that diversity flourishes inside and wet can keep animals we like to watch fill their niches.
When recovering from a large scale invasion, animals alone aren't enough and that physical kill or chemical kill interval is needed to reclaim the potential back from the rocks, we'd rather coralline be the covering agent and we have to help real estate become that often. Peroxide is wonderful about traveling through, burning most of the plant as it sits there soaking. But it has minor microbial impacts people want to avoid, you and i chatted about how 3% is kinda weak sauce and 35% is the man party but it's too dangerous to be stored around children... If boiling water travels through the plant and kills down to the holdfast just the same then many people will prefer it's risk period during application, all of a couple minutes max, zero residual. It's real potential, you certainly got creative. In all these years I've been making tank rescue threads nobody ever thought of that one lol.
I agree that parameter balancing and adjusting can/might starve off plants and even kill them from within the rock, no discounting that. To me, that is used for the reclaimed tank, in the clean condition, it's been fun so far analyzing ways you've used to cause the clean condition without delay
If you'll consider blast cleaning your sandbed vs treating the cyano via water actions, our sand rinse thread shows us beating cyano 100% on all pages
This is an example of a sandbed that is immune to diatom, dino, and cyano invasion since there's no waste. If having a diverse sandbed is important, then the way to attain it isn't in the invaded condition it's adding refugium refreshment kits to a clean condition sandbed and -starting- with diversity in a cloudless bed. It's not about adding diversity or meds to a clouded sandbed, which always regenerates a new invasion set after another one wanes.
Just wanted to offer that physical action to the bed, like spirit walker did on the rocks n setup. All forms of deep tank access cleaning can be done such that they're safe, and the invader is blasted not coaxed out.
SW
One thing I'm really interested in knowing within your experiment is how well heat/boil water does about transmitting down the plant shaft into its holdfast base to kill that which we couldn't scrape out. Your rate of growback follow up will remark upon that, can't wait to see how it unfolds in time. That heat may well be penetrating the top areas+ conducted by the plant themselves which is like peroxide in that it's a -kill- not just a physical remover.
All methods that remove gha and bryopsis from rocks with a brush only are lawn mowing, not true plant kills. same for clean up crews, hares do work for us but they're never dislodging the anchors. They chew, eat, leave the regrowth portion in place, then contribute bioload to the tank to feed regrowth. Not that cuc are wrong, this is how nature keeps a reef clean, but we get to make comparisons across threads which use varying actions for algae control. We like to have controlled, very controlled regrowth (nobody wants a sterile reef) so that diversity flourishes inside and wet can keep animals we like to watch fill their niches.
When recovering from a large scale invasion, animals alone aren't enough and that physical kill or chemical kill interval is needed to reclaim the potential back from the rocks, we'd rather coralline be the covering agent and we have to help real estate become that often. Peroxide is wonderful about traveling through, burning most of the plant as it sits there soaking. But it has minor microbial impacts people want to avoid, you and i chatted about how 3% is kinda weak sauce and 35% is the man party but it's too dangerous to be stored around children... If boiling water travels through the plant and kills down to the holdfast just the same then many people will prefer it's risk period during application, all of a couple minutes max, zero residual. It's real potential, you certainly got creative. In all these years I've been making tank rescue threads nobody ever thought of that one lol.
I agree that parameter balancing and adjusting can/might starve off plants and even kill them from within the rock, no discounting that. To me, that is used for the reclaimed tank, in the clean condition, it's been fun so far analyzing ways you've used to cause the clean condition without delay
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spiritwalker
Community Member
The boiling water killed it dead at the roots and those spots look as sterile as the rock treated in h202. Gha and film algae are dead. You have to shoot the boiling water into the rock. Simply spraying the gha with it is not enough. Inject it into the rock to kill it at the "roots". One might be tempted to drop a whole rock in boiling rodi which could be extremely dangerous and life threatening so be warned.
H2o2 treatment has also killed beneficial coraline algae which leaves real estate for nuisance algae.
Check
That gets relayed to many work threads as a viable outcome helper for sure now, it makes sense. Though you can tell I like peroxide, those negatives are known aspects and my loyalty is to the human being fed up with invasions and choosing to stop them, the implement doesn't matter. Long term, they evolve decade to decade anyway if simple boiling directed water is a mass kill then that's hilarious something as simple was sitting out there the whole time. This is why web forums beat books for reefing evolution. Agreed that formal research/peer review lessens mistakes or totally false claims getting published, but the rapidity of web posts generates new ideas so much faster you just have to sift through more bulk to find patterns, to find after pics where no invader can be seen in a tank fully invaded last week. Well done
That gets relayed to many work threads as a viable outcome helper for sure now, it makes sense. Though you can tell I like peroxide, those negatives are known aspects and my loyalty is to the human being fed up with invasions and choosing to stop them, the implement doesn't matter. Long term, they evolve decade to decade anyway if simple boiling directed water is a mass kill then that's hilarious something as simple was sitting out there the whole time. This is why web forums beat books for reefing evolution. Agreed that formal research/peer review lessens mistakes or totally false claims getting published, but the rapidity of web posts generates new ideas so much faster you just have to sift through more bulk to find patterns, to find after pics where no invader can be seen in a tank fully invaded last week. Well done
One other detail I'd like linked here bc the question will come up eventually when people replicate the method
Even if you had to do large swath coverage with boiler water on rocks from a bare bottom tank, your biofilter is not changed. There is no risk undo the cycle, not even on treated spots.
Contact time before cooling is too brief to remove biofilm on rocks, though initially insulting.
Of course boiling rocks long enough will sterilize, and new reports of mass hospitalization, but I cannot envision any sort of external application of boiling water that would factor into someone's cycle concerns. I used to fire burn algae off rocks using a blue jet flame lighter, the area is immediately cool after heating, this porosity is one giant heat shield is it not
Even if you had to do large swath coverage with boiler water on rocks from a bare bottom tank, your biofilter is not changed. There is no risk undo the cycle, not even on treated spots.
Contact time before cooling is too brief to remove biofilm on rocks, though initially insulting.
Of course boiling rocks long enough will sterilize, and new reports of mass hospitalization, but I cannot envision any sort of external application of boiling water that would factor into someone's cycle concerns. I used to fire burn algae off rocks using a blue jet flame lighter, the area is immediately cool after heating, this porosity is one giant heat shield is it not
Stickboy15
Well-Known Member
Get a few urchins I recommend the pincushion ones they will absolutely destroy the hair algae
At no time should any invader associated with a tank loss on any searchable threads be kept on purpose in a new tank, regardless of age unless one is willing to risk all in the name of experimentation/see what happens
Cyano
Bubble algae
Hair algae
Bryopsis
Clean them out, keep the tank clean not invaded and in time you get to back off
if someone wants absolutely bulletproof will work reefing, zero percent loss of investment, then be hands on and take real estate on day one. All losses of reef tanks to invasions are aquarists choosing to keep the invasion past an intercept point, we have to cease telling new reefers to continue purposefully self invading the new or old tank.
Hands on is no risk, hands off is massive risk and then sometimes you get lucky.
few people begin with algae control
many have to search for it in retro
But if they begin with it, they're gardening, scraping, burning less and they require less over all work
The truth is, yes all algae cycle in, and out, at different times. For some, the initial allowed invasion never goes away... all because the offers continued in web threads that we should keep our hands off new tanks.
Invasions are rampant in the hobby, solely due to that notion. Not bad params
In fact, recent articles on cycling stickied and posted in new tank threads still advise the hands off, alternation of generations style of reefing.
When it's time for tank correction after following the advice to grow algae, diatoms, cyano, anchored algae, the advisors don't assist in cleanup
Resourceful types have to invent and post undo steps
What about not doing, vs undoing?
One thing that should be done fast in the new reef tank is the manual killing of algae, but only for those who will not accept any other outcome. If the chance of fail isn't the swing vote, experiment away.
There is back seat reefing and there's front seat, drivers side with a grip reefing. The kind where you make no excuse to a passerby about a phase, or a cycling period, no excuse. They walk by and see a reef with corals and nothing distracting. That's an attainable status for all reef tanks, the invaded ones have been willed that way.
Cyano
Bubble algae
Hair algae
Bryopsis
Clean them out, keep the tank clean not invaded and in time you get to back off
if someone wants absolutely bulletproof will work reefing, zero percent loss of investment, then be hands on and take real estate on day one. All losses of reef tanks to invasions are aquarists choosing to keep the invasion past an intercept point, we have to cease telling new reefers to continue purposefully self invading the new or old tank.
Hands on is no risk, hands off is massive risk and then sometimes you get lucky.
few people begin with algae control
many have to search for it in retro
But if they begin with it, they're gardening, scraping, burning less and they require less over all work
The truth is, yes all algae cycle in, and out, at different times. For some, the initial allowed invasion never goes away... all because the offers continued in web threads that we should keep our hands off new tanks.
Invasions are rampant in the hobby, solely due to that notion. Not bad params
In fact, recent articles on cycling stickied and posted in new tank threads still advise the hands off, alternation of generations style of reefing.
When it's time for tank correction after following the advice to grow algae, diatoms, cyano, anchored algae, the advisors don't assist in cleanup
Resourceful types have to invent and post undo steps
What about not doing, vs undoing?
One thing that should be done fast in the new reef tank is the manual killing of algae, but only for those who will not accept any other outcome. If the chance of fail isn't the swing vote, experiment away.
There is back seat reefing and there's front seat, drivers side with a grip reefing. The kind where you make no excuse to a passerby about a phase, or a cycling period, no excuse. They walk by and see a reef with corals and nothing distracting. That's an attainable status for all reef tanks, the invaded ones have been willed that way.
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spiritwalker
Community Member
So, it seems that gha does not grow on coraline algae. When we clean the rock with peroxide we are killing the coraline which leaves more room for the gha to take hold. Same seems true for the areas I treated with boiling water. Seems the key here is to get the coraline to cover as much of the rock as possible.
spiritwalker
Community Member
Still at it. The gha continues to slowly grow. Cleaning the rocks again this evening.
You can see in this pic how the rocks look. I cleaned some of the highest pieces so you can see the difference.
Here is one where I used boiling water. You can see nothing really grew back.
And a full tank shot partially scrubbed.
You can see in this pic how the rocks look. I cleaned some of the highest pieces so you can see the difference.
Here is one where I used boiling water. You can see nothing really grew back.
And a full tank shot partially scrubbed.
spiritwalker
Community Member
So, I'm curious if anyone has ever brushed the rocks in the tank on a regular basis before the gha frows back out? In other words, you scrub off the gha one day and then follow up every couple days on a regular basis. Curious if this eventually causes it to die.
I would think most people, myself included, only scrub the rock when the gha becomes an eyesore. I think I'm going to try regular scrubbing for a while.
Not sure what's up with my snails.. I have found some more dead ones.. not a lot, but a few. Also the first sea hare I got died. Wish I knew what was going on with them. Cleaner shrimps doing fine. The second sea have seems fine and actively coming out in the evening.
Full tank shot after cleaning last night.
Sea hare munching
I would think most people, myself included, only scrub the rock when the gha becomes an eyesore. I think I'm going to try regular scrubbing for a while.
Not sure what's up with my snails.. I have found some more dead ones.. not a lot, but a few. Also the first sea hare I got died. Wish I knew what was going on with them. Cleaner shrimps doing fine. The second sea have seems fine and actively coming out in the evening.
Full tank shot after cleaning last night.
Sea hare munching
spiritwalker
Community Member
Get some!!
Ernie C
Well-Known Member
I feel your pain. If it makes you feel better I have worse algae problem. Lol I think your tank looks great. Just keep at it I guess. What lights do you have? Your corals look great under them.
spiritwalker
Community Member
Thanks brother. Definitely gotta keep at it. I'm using 3 kessil a360we units.
spiritwalker
Community Member
Water test day..
NO3 8 ppm (rounded up. Could be about 6 ppm)
PO4 0.0 ppm
Alk 10.1 dKH
CA 465 ppm
MG 1580 ppm
PH 8.23 avg
Tmp 78*
Brushed the rocks again yesterday.. they didn't really look all that bad but did it anyway. Keeping them clean feels like it will work out better than letting the gha grow out. I'm starting to see some coraline return to the rocks that were treated with h2o2.
I have been dosing NOPOX for about a week now.
Research shows that my elevated magnesium levels could likely be causing the inverts to die.
NO3 8 ppm (rounded up. Could be about 6 ppm)
PO4 0.0 ppm
Alk 10.1 dKH
CA 465 ppm
MG 1580 ppm
PH 8.23 avg
Tmp 78*
Brushed the rocks again yesterday.. they didn't really look all that bad but did it anyway. Keeping them clean feels like it will work out better than letting the gha grow out. I'm starting to see some coraline return to the rocks that were treated with h2o2.
I have been dosing NOPOX for about a week now.
Research shows that my elevated magnesium levels could likely be causing the inverts to die.
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