Hair Algae Help, 29 gallon

[brendan2u]

I'm having some issues with hair algae... I had no visible hair algae in the tank and then I fed my corals ReefRoids once and everything went to crap (exaggeration).

I have thick hair algae on both walls, and I have some starting to grow on rocks and small patches popping up on the sound bed.

I have done 3, 5 gallon water changes (every 3 days), and pick hair algae when I do the water changes. I bought a lawnmower blenny to help on the rocks, but he doesn't really touch the established algae on the glass.

I am running the following items...

Biocube 29 with Ocean Revive LEDs.

I just lowered the lights from 60% blue and 40% white to the following.

Blue: 50%
10am-7:30pm

White: 27%
12:30pm-5:45pm


4" sand bed
12" water column
Lights are 7" above water

Temp:79-81°


Jebao Sow-4 wave maker, 5-8 intensity, variable

Aquamaxx HOB 1.5 (purchased after hair algae issues, running for last 3 weeks, pulls some, but not a ton. Feel like the O ring doesn't complete seal which allows there to be less bubbles up the chamber).


Chaeto, Chemipure Elite, Carbon, Filter floss

Nitrates are reading 0, don't have a phosphate kit or a PAR meter.

Tanks inhabitants:
2 clowns, yellow head jawfish, small 6 line wrasse, and lawnmower blenny. Various snails, hermits, and 2 peppermint shrimp.

Coral hasn't grown at all, but all look healthy (most purchased black Friday, tank was set up in July 2020).

LARGE Wall hammer, gold hammer, rainbow chalice (bleached, moved down, hoping for better results), trumpet, Slimer, bam bam, frogspawn, dragon soul/grim reaper torch, bubblegum chalice, hairy shroom.

 

[brendan2u]

Main concern was algae started growing on my dragon soul (still a tiny head after 4 months) and I had to pick it off the other day. Don't want already non growth corals to be choked out by algae later down the line.

 

[ParkerK]

Main concern was algae started growing on my dragon soul (still a tiny head after 4 months) and I had to pick it off the other day. Don't want already non growth corals to be choked out by algae later down the line.

Just preference pretty much, but maybe your sandbed is a little too thick which helps the GHA establish a good footing. I’d also turn ur lights down a little more for their duration during the day. I’m not an expert but have some experience. Maybe try to stop picking it as much but if u do make sure your flow is off so it doesn’t push the trimmed GHA all over ur tank. I assume that’s why it spread so much so fast.

 

[Taiyaki.Visuals]

I'm dealing with the same issue here, hoping to see how you get through this =O

 

[brendan2u]

So I believe I found a major source of at least coral growth issues (as well as algae potentially).

Despite doing 5 gallon water changes every 5-7 days, my Calcium and Alk were both EXTREMELY LOW (375 and 5.1).

I have raised it up to 450 and 8.6 as well as got a conch and some turbo snails.

Fingers crossed, it'll take a bit of time and then I'll reassess.

 

[New&no clue]

I had a similar issue with my 30 gallon, GHA everywhere. Here are the steps I used and it helped a ton.

• Increased my CUC. I ordered more snails from reefcleaners.org, along with a couple of other oddities that he had. I added more than I would need, thinking after they tackled the algae, I could move some over to my other tanks, which is lacking in snails as well.
• Decrease the amount of white light. My lights were set to 50% white. I turned them down to 30%. I also did a three-day blackout to help weaken the GHA to make removal easier.
• Manual Removal. After the three-day blackout, I started to pull as much out as I could every day for four days in a row.
• Increase amount of chaeto. In one of the back sections, I have chaeto growing. I took the live rock out of another section and added more chaeto. My thought was to create something to compete with the GHA for nutrients in the water.
• Change type of filters. I was using sponge filters, which were not getting changed as often as they should. I switched to Poly-filters instead.

Here is how it started

And here it is today

 

[hikermike]

Lawnmower blenny would help as well as a turbo snail or urchin

 

[zukihara]

I'm a believer in dosing phyto for various algae issues. Natural and no downside to try it.

I've done it on two tanks so far, one with GHA and one with cyano and it did not take long to outcompete the algae. 2-3 days for cyano and a week for GHA to be cut 80%. That's with no water change at all., just phyto.

More snails couldn't hurt either.

 

[Hermie]

If it's on the glass, use a razor and siphon it all out