My Fight with Green Hair Algae - You CAN win!
- Thread starter RobertP
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RobertP
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I do not pretend to be an expert but for me the siphon method worked the best. I tried scrubbing but it kept coming back. On one of the pictures you can see the tonga rock is covered with it but it is shorter than the rocks around it. That was one I scrubbed off several times because it was easiest to pick up and scrub. I also pulled rocks out several times and sprayed them off with the garden hose. I think helped because you are removing the gha from the tank. Scrubbing worked but how much is the floating gha going down the drain and how much is just resettling on the rocks? I was changing my filter socks every 5-7 days or until they got clogged with algae so I was removing it but not as quickly as spraying off or siphoning out.
I think the key is getting the nutrients low and removing as much gha from the tank as possible. It was a fight and it took months but it is worth it!
I think the key is getting the nutrients low and removing as much gha from the tank as possible. It was a fight and it took months but it is worth it!
vetteguy53081
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I had hair algae as thick as a carpet and 3" in length.
Bought a Yellow eye Kole tang and Algae blenny a week ago also and as of today, (6 days) is 100% Gone !!!!
Bought a Yellow eye Kole tang and Algae blenny a week ago also and as of today, (6 days) is 100% Gone !!!!
Ryan420r6
Community Member
Happy to hear that you won your battle with GHA. I had a showdown this summer that was won by physical removal (75% rock was scrubbed inside of tank with toothbrush and 25% pulled out of tank) and running GFO. I saw Melevs video on NoPOx and was going to use but GFO worked for me. It took several weeks but all the GHA started bleaching and becoming weaker and finally did not grow back after scrubbing. I was still running my algae light in the sump to try to keep my macro alive but it died as well. I had a good amount of GHA in the sump that I had to remove which was a pita since it’s pretty cramped in there. I was contemplating throwing in the towel but reading success stories like these kept me going.
Great write up on gha, this certainly portrays my tank currently but haven’t won the battle yet... I one day noticed my nutrients were 0 from a neglected tank about 3 months.. with so much gha on my rocks, Walt Disney... and other high end frags that ended up dying..due to my neglect. I noticed my cheato wouldnt grow.. so I decided to purchase a h380 kessil which grows my cheato like crazy now.. I also was running nopox. And my corals were so pale I decided to discontinue my nopox... after two weeks of just having cheato as my nutrient control my nitrates were still undetectable and corals still seemed unhappy... I did however notice it was easier to remove the gha.. as it was weakened by such low nutrients.. so I began to siphon.. then I decided I should dose some nitrates kn03 and my gha loved it and kept growing a darker green! However it wasn’t growing as fast anymore with detectable nitrates 1-2 ppm. Corals still seemed dull so I upped the dosage and currently reading 5 ppm. My theory is grow more cheato.. and have my corals thrive to outcompete the gha... hasn’t happened yet.. I might end up discontinuing my kn03 dosing and let my nutrients creep down until I can siphon and kill most of my gha. Hopefully this will shift the balance and defeat gha once and for all...forgot to mention I added so many turbo snails.. a fox face and I already have tangs and a lawnmower blenny and they don’t seem to want to eat the gha.. it’s just too much I believe.. it’s so frustrating I hope it just vanashes!
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The easiest way to stop growback when doing external scrubbing is to use a metal rasp, a knife tip, to scrape and debride vs brush. Remove the holdfasts at the holdfast level is what stops regrowth
Scrubbing is lawn mowing
Rasping is my grandmother digging out dandelions with a butter knife bc whole plant gone beats a haircut
Peroxide is then used on the cleaned, algae free surfaces to destroy fragments. The method can be used ideally with removed rocks and nothing can beat it.
It's secondarily best on in tank setups where we drained the tank to access the target just the same way. A series of mini repeat water changes is done on the remaining third tank water; to export both peroxide rinse water and fragments. Removal and external work is indicated if someone is serious about winning, although less risky levels can be tempted in tank to see if they'll comply.
All manner of nutrient realignment or sequestration starts after this process, strictly. Most would leave the algae in place, then incrementally work against it.
All clean up crew changes/modifications are done on the clean condition tank for the 1% who are fed up with purposefully farming algae.
In every minor detail we're doing opposite of what the masses do in large current running tank correction threads. We get only the fed up, many of them years deep into eutrophication. Those with entry level invasions, day forty of their day three thousand, can benefit particularly. They still have the chance to act.
Of course it's ideal if fish take care of things like they should. But if they don't
Do what your dentist does
Do what your dr/infection specialist does when they debride a wound and isolate substrates
Lastly, another subtle opposite so critical, in our restoration threads we do nothing to the whole tank all at once. We test rock
Do what your architect does
Model what you think will work before affecting your structure in experiment (how again do the masses handle algae issues?)
Especially handy in large tank arrests:
Take a test rock out of the tank. Do all manner of X to it only. Chart your growback and efforts manual on that sole rock, keep control over what you want on it. Prepare to upscale that to the tank one day
Keep the main tank running in the same manner that got the forest to grow. as the test rock is put back, you are now observing the power of holdfast dandelion removal vs what got us here
Once the target rock is algae free even in a system that promotes algae, we have a greenprint to upscale
Lastly, if I had a dollar for every algae challenge tank that sat on top of a cruddy, crusty, cloud liability/not rinsed in eight years because '98 said so sandbed I'd have three thousand dollars. enough to buy a normal sized reef tank. We must let go of detritus farming, we never actually needed to know anyone nitrate or phosphate levels in all those pages.
End diatribe on algae challenge traits.
Scrubbing is lawn mowing
Rasping is my grandmother digging out dandelions with a butter knife bc whole plant gone beats a haircut
Peroxide is then used on the cleaned, algae free surfaces to destroy fragments. The method can be used ideally with removed rocks and nothing can beat it.
It's secondarily best on in tank setups where we drained the tank to access the target just the same way. A series of mini repeat water changes is done on the remaining third tank water; to export both peroxide rinse water and fragments. Removal and external work is indicated if someone is serious about winning, although less risky levels can be tempted in tank to see if they'll comply.
All manner of nutrient realignment or sequestration starts after this process, strictly. Most would leave the algae in place, then incrementally work against it.
All clean up crew changes/modifications are done on the clean condition tank for the 1% who are fed up with purposefully farming algae.
In every minor detail we're doing opposite of what the masses do in large current running tank correction threads. We get only the fed up, many of them years deep into eutrophication. Those with entry level invasions, day forty of their day three thousand, can benefit particularly. They still have the chance to act.
Of course it's ideal if fish take care of things like they should. But if they don't
Do what your dentist does
Do what your dr/infection specialist does when they debride a wound and isolate substrates
Lastly, another subtle opposite so critical, in our restoration threads we do nothing to the whole tank all at once. We test rock
Do what your architect does
Model what you think will work before affecting your structure in experiment (how again do the masses handle algae issues?)
Especially handy in large tank arrests:
Take a test rock out of the tank. Do all manner of X to it only. Chart your growback and efforts manual on that sole rock, keep control over what you want on it. Prepare to upscale that to the tank one day
Keep the main tank running in the same manner that got the forest to grow. as the test rock is put back, you are now observing the power of holdfast dandelion removal vs what got us here
Once the target rock is algae free even in a system that promotes algae, we have a greenprint to upscale
Lastly, if I had a dollar for every algae challenge tank that sat on top of a cruddy, crusty, cloud liability/not rinsed in eight years because '98 said so sandbed I'd have three thousand dollars. enough to buy a normal sized reef tank. We must let go of detritus farming, we never actually needed to know anyone nitrate or phosphate levels in all those pages.
End diatribe on algae challenge traits.
Richard Hercher
Active Member
@RobertP i second that update request! I’m currently losing the fight against GHA (and a few other algaes to boot) but I’m not giving up on the war! My big concern now is the stuff is the dominant life form in my tank after bacteria. What bugs me is the stuff just keeps growing. What that tells me is it has more food. If there’s more growth, that tells me there’s more nutrients to feed it. Killing the algae in the tank just invites it decay somewhere in the water system and be recycled into more food for more algae. I’m running a canister filter right now, and am trying to figure out how to do an effective refugium without another box (tank, sump, hob, etc). Tonight I started considering an in-tank acrylic breeder or isolation box with holes to hold some Macroalgae while I let the big rocks get shaggy green, then take them out and scrub them off in a bucket before putting them back in.
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vetteguy53081
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Might be worth a shot to acquire a sea hare. They are like lawnmowers with hair algae. Also an algae Blenny
Richard Hercher
Active Member
Like the OP, I’ve killed two Sea Hares (but they are super cool to watch). Also, wife is vetoing the Blenny—our 75G FOWLR seems to crash when we get more than 6 fish, and she’s got her list. I’m building out the clean up crew, adding a few big snails at a time. Part of the problem could be I’ve got a lot of crap in my sand bed, and I’ve been getting a lot of Cerith snails that are churning it right now, probably releasing a lot of locked up junk.
vetteguy53081
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For sand bed- do siphon if that yucky. On sea hare, big key is a very slow acclimation before releasing into tank. Had one for over 6 months before i rehomed it to a local club member who had a bad hair algae issue. He acclimated it for 20 minutes although I stressed 2-3 hrs and killed it.
OP
OP
RobertP
Active Member
I will say that there was ZERO algae in the display when I took it down. Once I got the GHA out of the display the refugium grew chaeto crazy fast. I was harvesting chaeto every couple weeks! One thing that I also noticed was that I have a low nitrate problem! The corals were starting to suffer for LACK of nutrients. I started feeding more and lowered the fuge lighting schedule until I found the happy place where I could keep about 3-5 nitrates and corals were happy.
My tank was taken down and put in storage in June 2018 because we sold our house and building a new one in the country. They just started framing so going to be another 6-7 months before we get to move in. However, I have lots of reefing plans. My 130gal tank will not be going back in the house. The tank is over 15 years old and with those old seems being dry for over a year bothers me. However, it will go in the spray foam insulated garage and will become a nice sized fish room. I also still have my old 80 gal tank which I am planning to drill and it will be my very large refugium. As soon as we move in I will set these two tanks up in the garage with the sump. At some point I will get a new tank for inside the house and the best part is that the pipes will go straight through the wall and into the garage sump...so nothing inside except the tank. Still want to hook it all together to make a larger water volume for stability. When I get that started I will have to post pictures of the build! Rock "re-curing" will start in a couple months.
My tank was taken down and put in storage in June 2018 because we sold our house and building a new one in the country. They just started framing so going to be another 6-7 months before we get to move in. However, I have lots of reefing plans. My 130gal tank will not be going back in the house. The tank is over 15 years old and with those old seems being dry for over a year bothers me. However, it will go in the spray foam insulated garage and will become a nice sized fish room. I also still have my old 80 gal tank which I am planning to drill and it will be my very large refugium. As soon as we move in I will set these two tanks up in the garage with the sump. At some point I will get a new tank for inside the house and the best part is that the pipes will go straight through the wall and into the garage sump...so nothing inside except the tank. Still want to hook it all together to make a larger water volume for stability. When I get that started I will have to post pictures of the build! Rock "re-curing" will start in a couple months.
12% Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide. Not the 3% stuff you get from the store, that wont do anything. It Has to be either 12% or 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide. The 12% can be ordered on Amazon. The 35% stuff is difficult to find, 12% works just as well.
Dose it with a syringe directly to the algae, it Kills GHA in minutes. no more than 1mL per 10 gallons. Squirt it directly on the GHA. It bubbles and melts away the algae in minutes, killing it. Will not harm corals, fish, or inverts, as long as you dont overdose. Once or twice a week till you blast all the algae. Dont do it daily. Every other day is ok if you watch the fose amount.
No More Then 1ml per 10 gallons per dosing session.
Dose it with a syringe directly to the algae, it Kills GHA in minutes. no more than 1mL per 10 gallons. Squirt it directly on the GHA. It bubbles and melts away the algae in minutes, killing it. Will not harm corals, fish, or inverts, as long as you dont overdose. Once or twice a week till you blast all the algae. Dont do it daily. Every other day is ok if you watch the fose amount.
No More Then 1ml per 10 gallons per dosing session.
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You can see in some of the pictures from last month that the GHA started turning white which means that it was starting to die off!
Oh I also should mention that with the hose siphon I had a net in the sump to catch all the GHA so I could throw it in the trash. I read where one of the experts (Sanjay?) uses an old sock. I tried this today and it was great. I had to find a clean old sock with no holes (not so easy lol) and rubberband it to the end and catch all the gha in it. Then I turn the sock inside out in the since to check that I didnt accidentally catch one of my CUC.
So here we are today after starting NoPox and my 500 ml bottle is almost finished and things are looking SO MUCH BETTER. NoPox, weekly water changes, and sucking out the GHA and it is defeated! The weekly water changes were probably no required because my parameters were fine but since I had lots of GHA floating around after a suck-session I would change 20%.
Battling my own GHA problem so came across this thread. Just wanted to say that I like your aquascape!
GHA is totally easy to fix, let's turn this into a work thread that doesn't take years to collect a bunch of pics.
post up an invaded tank, be willing to take it apart and clean it the way we do in the sand rinse thread, be ready to access all rock for scraping and peroxide work (which stops the growback) and then voila, fixed. no need for animals, wait time, test kits, hesitation.
since a known kill system is avail for GHA, and can be mini modeled on a test rock before upscaling, to be invaded is fully a choice. Its not hard to rid the tank of gha if the tank is smaller, its hard only when # gallons and # pounds rocks make access a challenge. the biological kill step is mighty simple, I hit like on it above.
post up an invaded tank, be willing to take it apart and clean it the way we do in the sand rinse thread, be ready to access all rock for scraping and peroxide work (which stops the growback) and then voila, fixed. no need for animals, wait time, test kits, hesitation.
since a known kill system is avail for GHA, and can be mini modeled on a test rock before upscaling, to be invaded is fully a choice. Its not hard to rid the tank of gha if the tank is smaller, its hard only when # gallons and # pounds rocks make access a challenge. the biological kill step is mighty simple, I hit like on it above.
just4kicks
New Member
My problem with GHA and aptisia is soo bad I have been thinking of removing all the rock that does not have coral on it and bleaching it for a few days. Then rinsing it well but before I put it back using hydrogen peroxide 12% on the rock that was left with the coral frags. I don't know if that would kill the aptisia or not but it should get rid of the GHA. I realize the rock would be cycling again but that is ok if I can get rid of the GHA and aptisia.
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