How do you remove GHA from your DT these days?

potatocouch

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We all had this (GHA) one way or another, one day, once twice etc.

How do you folks (manually) remove GHA from your DT i.e. base of the tank (say bare bottom), rockworks, back of the tank (crevices of the tank) etc?

I'm referring to the mechanics of how you manually remove/reduce/trim your GHA and not about fixing the root cause (i.e. reduce Po4/No3, Vibrant etc).
 
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potatocouch

potatocouch

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By yourself a nice stiff bristle brush at the local Walmart or drug store and get to work. I use a hairbrush made out of boar bristles.
are you taking the rocks out while you brush the hell out of them?
or do you do it inside the DT and let the filter sock captures it (and some may even end up at the rockwork again)?
 

bruno3047

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are you taking the rocks out while you brush the hell out of them?
or do you do it inside the DT and let the filter sock captures it (and some may even end up at the rockwork again)?
Whatever rocks I can remove, I remove and brush them in a bucket. Tank water if I’m protecting livestock. Tapwater if I don’t care. Whatever rocks I can’t remove I hold firmly with one hand and brush with the other and then get a nice big net and net out as much of the floating algae pieces as I can.
 

mtraylor

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Well outside of the obvious of getn your parms and everything stable to get the source of the algae under raps.

A clean up crew with some Mexican turbo snails
 

Tiki_Reef

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are you taking the rocks out while you brush the hell out of them?
or do you do it inside the DT and let the filter sock captures it (and some may even end up at the rockwork again)?
I take the rock out and I am pretty sure that is what the other person is hinting to.
 

Mikedawg

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Plastic tweezers from Amazon for hard to reach areas.
 

homegrowncichlid

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personally, I found that while treating for dinos or cyano, hair algae was also controlled during 3 days of black out. While 99% of dino or cyano will die out, I find that the 3 days of black out, is enough to weaken the hair algae, just enough for my clean up crew. The clean up crew doesn't eat tough fibrous algae of course, but will only eat the fresh shoots. After 3 days of black out, they seem to be pulling on the weakened algae, not actually eating it, and the hair collects in my filtration. I did this every month and now do it once every 2 or 3 months, to "clean" up my rocks and polish the phytoplankton out of my water. (Note, I use an algae scrubber, which provides algae competition). So to answer your question of How do I physically remove hair algae, my hermit crabs are doing most of the physical work. (Note my fox face definitely pulls the tough hair algae off the rocks, even though it doesn't eat it, since the hair grew in the first place. I believe the fox face is also trying to pull fresh shoots, off, while spitting the weakened, tough fiber out). Once the hair algae is weak, it detaches when pulled from the rock.
 

Reefer Matt

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Manually pull big stuff by hand, then siphon out at water change. Then get a 50/50 mix of astrea snails and blue leg hermits. 1 critter per gallon. The algae will be gone in a week or two.
 
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