How To Get Rid Of Most types of Algae Journey/Guide ( Green Hair Algae, Turf Algae ,Diatoms and More)

[ShoreReefer]

I’m currently battling GHA myself and I’m not sure of the cause. I did have a cyano outbreak last month and treated with chemiclean. It eradicated the cyano however that’s when the GHA took off. The tank is almost 2 years old and I have always had zero to little PO4 and NO3 readings. I did a deep cleaning of my sump 2 weeks ago and vacuumed a ton of detritus. I added turbo snails, 2 pincushion urchins, 10 hermit crabs and 3 emerald crabs. I baste the rocks every few days and manually pull what I can. My corals are looking great but I’m afraid the algae is going to suffocate them as it’s starting to grow on and around them.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

I’m currently battling GHA myself and I’m not sure of the cause. I did have a cyano outbreak last month and treated with chemiclean. It eradicated the cyano however that’s when the GHA took off. The tank is almost 2 years old and I have always had zero to little PO4 and NO3 readings. I did a deep cleaning of my sump 2 weeks ago and vacuumed a ton of detritus. I added turbo snails, 2 pincushion urchins, 10 hermit crabs and 3 emerald crabs. I baste the rocks every few days and manually pull what I can. My corals are looking great but I’m afraid the algae is going to suffocate them as it’s starting to grow on and around them.

First off chemiclean is normally very reef safe and a lot of people have used it and I carry a unopened box just in case. Sometimes when you have something out competing another organism it cause a reaction in the tank and the next thing comes in to take over. Later this week I'm going into hydrogen peroxide for treatment as well when I return from my trip on Thursday.

When ever we do something via chemicals we usually get a reaction from the tank. I would keep alage short by manually removing and ride it out for a little longer the balance usually fixes itself in a month or two. Are you dosing anything besides alk mag and calcium? If so I would stop for a couple weeks. When dealing with an issue minimize everything you can control in the tank and make small adjustments. If not dosing anything you can try a 24-48 hour blackout to weaken the alage if it's doing damage to coral.

We know what caused the alage now let's manage it till the biodiversity sorts it out. Sometimes people get stuck in a loop of treating everything when they need to let the tank get back to normal which takes weeks to months. What were seeing in our tank is usually something that already happened 2 weeks ago or more. Keep up maintaining the alage and post a picture if possible.

 

[NanJ]

First off chemiclean is normally very reef safe and a lot of people have used it and I carry a unopened box just in case. Sometimes when you have something out competing another organism it cause a reaction in the tank and the next thing comes in to take over. Later this week I'm going into hydrogen peroxide for treatment as well when I return from my trip on Thursday.

When ever we do something via chemicals we usually get a reaction from the tank. I would keep alage short by manually removing and ride it out for a little longer the balance usually fixes itself in a month or two. Are you dosing anything besides alk mag and calcium? If so I would stop for a couple weeks. When dealing with an issue minimize everything you can control in the tank and make small adjustments. If not dosing anything you can try a 24-48 hour blackout to weaken the alage if it's doing damage to coral.

We know what caused the alage now let's manage it till the biodiversity sorts it out. Sometimes people get stuck in a loop of treating everything when they need to let the tank get back to normal which takes weeks to months. What were seeing in our tank is usually something that already happened 2 weeks ago or more. Keep up maintaining the alage and post a picture if possible.

Our 300g tank has been through a similar journey. My husband (Chief Operator) got sick and was not able to battle the hair algae outbreak. Once we got past his crisis, I (Formerly Assistant Operator promoted to Chief) tackled the hair algae outbreak/takeover.

Cali Reef Life is absolutely on point. It is diligent maintenance, scrub and scrub, and scrub some more, blow off the rocks, CUC, don’t overfeed.

My husband is mostly back on duty so we blow off the rocks and scrub weekly. We can’t remove our rocks so we have to scrub in the tank. We have an assortment of brushes found on Amazon, some with long handles to reach in the way back, thin ones to reach in crannies, stiff bristles to get a good scrub.

We haven’t won the battle yet but are holding the front lines. We were doing better but started losing many of our Turbo snails - gotta figure out why and replenish. I think our chiller has mineral build up and isn’t keeping the water temperature in the ideal range. Always something……

 

[ShoreReefer]

First off chemiclean is normally very reef safe and a lot of people have used it and I carry a unopened box just in case. Sometimes when you have something out competing another organism it cause a reaction in the tank and the next thing comes in to take over. Later this week I'm going into hydrogen peroxide for treatment as well when I return from my trip on Thursday.

When ever we do something via chemicals we usually get a reaction from the tank. I would keep alage short by manually removing and ride it out for a little longer the balance usually fixes itself in a month or two. Are you dosing anything besides alk mag and calcium? If so I would stop for a couple weeks. When dealing with an issue minimize everything you can control in the tank and make small adjustments. If not dosing anything you can try a 24-48 hour blackout to weaken the alage if it's doing damage to coral.

We know what caused the alage now let's manage it till the biodiversity sorts it out. Sometimes people get stuck in a loop of treating everything when they need to let the tank get back to normal which takes weeks to months. What were seeing in our tank is usually something that already happened 2 weeks ago or more. Keep up maintaining the alage and post a picture if possible.

Thank you for your reply. I dose kalkwasser for my alk and calcium and I’ve been doing weekly recommended doses of microbacter7 for the last 2 weeks. I considered carbon dosing to help the beneficial bacteria but since I’m at .02 PO4 and .97 NO3 (just got ICP results this morning) I’m afraid to bottom them out. I am dosing Neophos to try to get PO4 to better numbers because my Hanna checker always reads 0. I also started the reef moonshiners program about a month ago. I know I’m throwing a lot at the tank but maybe your right I should stop dosing everything but the kalk, I’m just afraid of bottoming out my nutrients. Lighting I run aquaticlife t5 hybrid 4 bulb fixture with 3 Hydra26’s for a total of 13 hour photo period. Since I’m running the AB+ program on the hydras with little red, green and whites, maybe I’ll turn off the t5 fixture for a few days to see if that helps. Here are a few pictures of what I’m dealing with.

 

[brandon429]

this thread is going to be an excellent learning example for the differences of outbound vs inbound work on reef tanks

what works in our tanks, we always think must work for others/get ready for a surprise~

this is how new reefing methods are formed though, by taking on jobs in other people's tanks / the updates they report are either humbling or they usher in new techniques for the hobby

 

[brandon429]

the major challenge for this thread will be true cures and not tradeoff invasions. for a working example, see the 600 page fluconazole thread in the nuisance algae forum.

= at the start, they can see fluc really does kill gha in 99% of reefs and it looks to be promising. by page 600, there are many good cures, and also ten thousand dinos and cyano problems that sent the former gha entrants into other work threads. these are the differences between inbound and outbound works in reef tanks. fluconazole is so likely to cause cyano, that large tankers better think twice about how they choose a fix method.

*this gradient is what the best inventions in the hobby had to work against (peroxide use in the reef for example) so press on. nothing evolves without going against the common grain, new practices can't form without work threads to test.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Thank you for your reply. I dose kalkwasser for my alk and calcium and I’ve been doing weekly recommended doses of microbacter7 for the last 2 weeks. I considered carbon dosing to help the beneficial bacteria but since I’m at .02 PO4 and .97 NO3 (just got ICP results this morning) I’m afraid to bottom them out. I am dosing Neophos to try to get PO4 to better numbers because my Hanna checker always reads 0. I also started the reef moonshiners program about a month ago. I know I’m throwing a lot at the tank but maybe your right I should stop dosing everything but the kalk, I’m just afraid of bottoming out my nutrients. Lighting I run aquaticlife t5 hybrid 4 bulb fixture with 3 Hydra26’s for a total of 13 hour photo period. Since I’m running the AB+ program on the hydras with little red, green and whites, maybe I’ll turn off the t5 fixture for a few days to see if that helps. Here are a few pictures of what I’m dealing with.

I would definitely cut the nitrate dose first. The alage consumption is whats keeping it low. I would try that for 2 weeks and if you still have alage cut the rest of dosing. I find if there's something wrong minimizing what could be causing it is best.
Also goes when adding things if you cut both at same time you won't know the cause or solution.You can always go back to dosing slowly once problem is solved. Whatever you do slow changes are usually best. Definitely stop nitrates till you get alage under control. Continue to feed fish if worried about zeros.

 

[ShoreReefer]

I’m going to stop the neophos but continue the moonshiners. I siphoned a lot of detritus and algae into a filter sock in the sump today as I’m trying to minimize water changes. The sock was filthy when I finished. I’ll continue with the microbacter7 and do this for a month and see where we are.

 

[G’sReef]

There is a chance that ICH or other parasites can encrust on their shell. The snail itself wont have it but if its kept in a fishless tank the parasite will die without a host when it releases it spawn. It's a very small chance but I don't have ICH in my system and throwing some CUC or coral in qt for 5-6 weeks is easy enough for me.

I thought you had to qt for 76 days to ensure ich is prevented?

 

[Cali Reef Life]

I thought you had to qt for 76 days to ensure ich is prevented?

It's about risk management what's the risk I'm willing to take 76 days was based on an old study in unnatural conditions cold sterile container. It's been show that raising temperatures with increasing oxygen flow decreases the life cycle. The new method if kept at 80-81 degrees is 45 days. This is for fallow treatments. I'm willing to risk a very small % chance that ich gets into my tank from a shell or coral if it's extremely low. The fact I qt everything wet is probably going above 80% of reefers.. this is a hobby and I have yet to get ich 3.5 years after going fallow. Risk management vs realistic practices are what I'm about.

 

[mandyvan]

Yeah, the most important thing, IMO, is a good clean up crew. A wild reef, or a captive reef with perfect water quality will end up buried in algae without them. I always have an urchin, along with turbos, trochus and astrea snails. Plenty of them. You do need to have your frags glued down however, as the urchin and turbos will bulldoze.

Great point! Urchins knock over quite a bit of frags. Sure makes the rounds. The snails don’t get blamed for moving frags nearly as much. Can’t seem to find turbos locally lately.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Sorry for the delay sometimes life takes you away from prioritizing the fish tank. I was still doing my weekly water change but wasn't able to spend as much time due to travel for work. This process sometimes has ups and downs and I want to be honest with you because its good to show the bads and good times we all been there. I have no more green hair algae but this red turf algae is something else its very difficult to remove but the good thing is it doesn't really affect my coral growth and is more a cosmetic issue.

This week were talking about adding things to tank or rock to manage a problem. Now there are several different ways of doing this and the best way is usually start with the maintenance and everything we discussed in the past but sometimes you need treatments to get to a manageable state. What I did was remove one rock from the tank and for purpose of education I left my corals on it. I dosed the rock directly with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I did this outside the tank and let it drip into a freshly made saltwater bucket.

After I left the rock in the bucket for about 10 to 15 minutes. I made sure to not directly hit my corals but I was not trying to be careful with the amount due to no dosing it in the tank. Here are the results. after 5 days. Its turns orange and dies off and the CUC ate most of it. The corals all survived and I saw no negative results.

I will dose another rock this week so I don't upset any balance in my tank. I also am getting no pox to lower my nitrates. I maintain 10ppm- 15ppm every week with my schedule and my maintenance keeps them dead even. I want to dose until they drop in the 5 range and then stop dosing and go on a as needed basis. Remember less is more and taking your time to adjust things is better then doing everything at once. I also am buying 5 more Mexican turbo snails because they are helping keep the red turf at bay and ate the small patches of green hair.

 

[xabo]

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[nicowboy]

Sorry for the delay sometimes life takes you away from prioritizing the fish tank. I was still doing my weekly water change but wasn't able to spend as much time due to travel for work. This process sometimes has ups and downs and I want to be honest with you because its good to show the bads and good times we all been there. I have no more green hair algae but this red turf algae is something else its very difficult to remove but the good thing is it doesn't really affect my coral growth and is more a cosmetic issue.

This week were talking about adding things to tank or rock to manage a problem. Now there are several different ways of doing this and the best way is usually start with the maintenance and everything we discussed in the past but sometimes you need treatments to get to a manageable state. What I did was remove one rock from the tank and for purpose of education I left my corals on it. I dosed the rock directly with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I did this outside the tank and let it drip into a freshly made saltwater bucket.

After I left the rock in the bucket for about 10 to 15 minutes. I made sure to not directly hit my corals but I was not trying to be careful with the amount due to no dosing it in the tank. Here are the results. after 5 days. Its turns orange and dies off and the CUC ate most of it. The corals all survived and I saw no negative results.

I will dose another rock this week so I don't upset any balance in my tank. I also am getting no pox to lower my nitrates. I maintain 10ppm- 15ppm every week with my schedule and my maintenance keeps them dead even. I want to dose until they drop in the 5 range and then stop dosing and go on a as needed basis. Remember less is more and taking your time to adjust things is better then doing everything at once. I also am buying 5 more Mexican turbo snails because they are helping keep the red turf at bay and ate the small patches of green hair.

How long can you leave your coral out the water? I’m planning on removing my rock that has corals attached to it and spray some peroxide but don’t know for how long I should leave it outside to finally put it back inside the water