The OFFICIAL how I beat Hair Algae thread! How did you do it?

[Mr_Knightley]

I have yet to truly beat it (i'm battling both GHA and bryopsis), but so far I've had the best success with sea hares and urchins, as well as manual removal. what I've done is I'll go in and remove as much as possible from an area, then I'll put an urchin or hare directly on top of the stripped patch. that seems to help get the rhizomes of the bryopsis off of the rock itself. Please don't take this as advice, though, because I still have yet to truly defeat it. Maybel I'll update when I've removed it all.
Something I really want to try is some lettuce slugs, they naturally eat caulerpa, ulva and bryopsis in nature, so they would seem to be a pretty good candidate, along with a few other methods I'm wanting to test.
Good luck everyone and God bless you!

 

[brandon429]

Reefgeezer: fair and great question. Large tanks sure might can be brought through challenges with water dosing, luck, patience and deft skill but Ive logged hundreds totally lost due to inability to access. we could have saved them if the reef was smaller, in every case.

even Rev was near taking down his once... due to dinos, and if that was a 20 gallon nano we'd never let him get that far to consider taking it down (all 20 gallon reefs are immune to any invasion using full access guiding, no ID needed, ever. if a 20 gallon reefer has a challenge, send em this way)


the reason our hand guiding doesnt harm maturation:

1. bacteria arent harmed by rip cleaning at all, we have ICP measures now for rip cleans, great resulting chemistry, Aquabiomics measures coming soon, and ten years of after pics logged to assess bac. (bacteria harmed systems die, or kill inhabitants)


2. we dont rasp on, or treat coralline and coral flesh/the point of takedown surgery vs water dosing. so, we are selecting for the good growths, that stop our work one day, and against the areas the bad growths have commanded. GHA left in place, opted into, specifically rejects coral placement and coralline placement...until you rasp it away (what a beak does, or an urchin rasp etc we become the grazer)

3. maturation is slower if we aren't hand guiding, and selects for plants (less heterogeneity) but if you hand guide plants and bac mats away/vital space becomes a reef = + heterogeneity.

no large reefing would exist if the rule was firm...but the masses that say the larger reef is the most stable> nope, the larger the reef the easier it is to lose it to an invasion you can't stop.

we can beat GHA in literally any reef where all the water can be removed for direct access, then put back. working through the water is so 1986-2019.

if you have a tank where the water can be drained into a brute, dont constrain yourself to fixing it only via large tank rules, make use of your access, and command performance vs coax it. you can beat any invader this way; if you are using fluconazole as your control habits, that wont help on 75% of reef invasions.

surgery works on all of them.

 

[Crabs McJones]

For me a well stocked refugium with good lighting and consistent weekly 10% water changes I had very minimal gha in the display.

 

[BOWHUNTER4250]

Flux Rx and Hydrogen peroxide dosing and im GHA FREE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sweat90lx]

I'm battling this right now in my seahorse tank.
I think it is cladophora. I dosed Reef Flux 4 days ago and it has receded some.
Water changes and phosphate removers didn't help much at all.

 

[dispatcher46]

I battled hair algae for easily a year, if not more. The defining moment was when I went to a new LFS and they said try tuxedo urchins. I bought two and started NoPox. That two one punch did and my tank has been crystal clear ever since!!

 

[Glenng78]

Powder blue tang, yellow tang, emerald crabs -
I’ll be danged if I can even find one piece of hair algae

 

[AquariumSpecialty]

Vibrant, hydrogen peroxide, Reef Flux have worked well for us in the past. We also have a nice sailfin tang that doesn't mind the taste of bryopsis. Fortunately we have really healthy and awesome looking tanks now. No more nuisance algae in our shop or coral farm.

 

[aqua-nut]

My solution is fairly simple. I started up my Algae Turf Scrubber. It takes 2-4 weeks for it to really kick in but when it does most algae is on it's way out quickly.
I also suspect a fuge with chaeto would also work. No evidence other than the suspicion it would also out compete for the nutrients HA needs.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Keep your CUC stocked(astrea snails, blue legged hermits) take a tooth brush to the rocks and give them a good scrub and keep up with water changes. Keep those nutrients down and it won't grow.

 

[Tjsonger]

Hair algae was taking over. Phosphates and nitrates have been in check and stable and I would rip the hair algae off my rocks weekly, but after a while I got sick of it. I dosed nopox and that is great at keeping nutrient levels low but the hair algae was still feeding on something. A few weeks ago I read something about reefflux and decided to give it a try. 2 weeks later and there isn't any hair algae in sight. Before I used reefflux the hair algae was so bad I was ready to tear my tank down. Also, I'll add that it didn't effect my livestock at all. It's been 5 weeks since I dosed. I'm interested to see long term effects.

 

[FLSharkvictim]

Ones you start to neglect your tank and will see this hair alga start to take off! My tank at one point was really bad and it took me about 3 months to totally get rid of this hair algae. I will tell you how I did it! Ones I started doing weekly 10-gallon water changes in my old 120 mixed reef tank and added a few Emerald crabs and dumped in some peppermint shrimp the correct kind acourse and it was all gone in a matter of a few months. Here is a pic at month 3 after I got all out!

 

[DonTavo27]

I took my bio pellet reactor off line, I’m just running chemi pure blue, socks, and a skimmer.
before that, almost my whole tank was covered in hair algae, including snails...

 

[Marc2952]

Right now hair algae will be a blessing to me since im dealing with dinos instead

 

[Jcosharek84]

I had a major outbreak but won by changing the amount of light available to the tank. It used to be in a well lit room and now in my basement relying solely on the AI Prime, it’s totally gone.

 

[vetteguy53081]

For me, it was lowering white light intensity, Pulling as much as I could by hand and adding liquid vibrant and within 8 days- GONE

 

[Justgettingstarted]

I took my bio pellet reactor off line, I’m just running chemi pure blue, socks, and a skimmer.
before that, almost my whole tank was covered in hair algae, including snails...

I also have alot of hair algea on snails, but I dont run bio pellets , just gfo and carbon, took my filter socks out a couple days ago. Bought a lawn mower blenny, a couple Angel's, big snails, and 2 sea hares that seem to be doin the job

 

[Radicalrob1982]

Hair algae isn't a big challenge. Red wire turf algae ruined my reef tank. Two years of fallow reefing and it has gone from the DT but is still around in the system.

That stuff is the devil lol. I had red turf in my tank for a quite a while. The only thing that worked for me was to keep my nitrates and phosphates low and deployed 2 turbo snails in my 20 long. After a few weeks they ate it all thank god

 

[Bossman]

Vibrant, hydrogen peroxide, Reef Flux have worked well for us in the past. We also have a nice sailfin tang that doesn't mind the taste of bryopsis. Fortunately we have really healthy and awesome looking tanks now. No more nuisance algae in our shop or coral farm.

Would you mind sharing your dosage amount and frequency for dosing Hyrdrogen Peroxide?

I have been recently trying this therapy in one tank but cautious because I've read a few different opinions.

Thanks!

 

[H@rry]

Dollabela Sea Hare. Ugly, algae eating blob of jello.