What could be feeding my green hair algae??

[norfolkgarden]

Here's what I'm dealing with just to give u an idea.. it seems to be mostly confined to that one area of rocks and the sand with other smaller patches here and there
I think I'm just gonna try to up the water changes to twice a week if possible and pull out as much manually during each water change.

It looks like the majority of the algae is only on 2 rocks and from the picture they could be easily removed?

Take them out. Scrub brush off over a small bucket with maybe a gallon of salt water to swish them off in and be done with it. 15 minutes.

That will be the easiest and fastest way to remove the gha and the phosphate locked up in the gha.

Continue with the gfo and your algae problem will dissipate.
We had several rocks that were similar. The majority of the rocks looked ok but a few were a mess.
Took about a month for them to finally settle out.
The funny part is wherever we had the worst gha we now have the best coralline algae growth.

Definitely the easiest, fastest solution.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sea Hare, Rabbitfish, and yellow eye Kole tang should mow this down.

One question though- By chance, is your tank at or near a window?? If so- you found your culprit and will have to balck out side of tank at the light source or relocate the tank to a wall Without windows or indirect light.

 

[Bthomas]

It looks like the majority of the algae is only on 2 rocks and from the picture they could be easily removed?

Take them out. Scrub brush off over a small bucket with maybe a gallon of salt water to swish them off in and be done with it. 15 minutes.

That will be the easiest and fastest way to remove the gha and the phosphate locked up in the gha.

Continue with the gfo and your algae problem will dissipate.
We had several rocks that were similar. The majority of the rocks looked ok but a few were a mess.
Took about a month for them to finally settle out.
The funny part is wherever we had the worst gha we now have the best coralline algae growth.

Definitely the easiest, fastest solution.

They would be easy to pull out but the problem with this is that the rocks are sitting on the bottom glass with sand put in after. I plan on having a sand sifting goby or 2 in the future so I don't want them to be on top of sand when I put them back in

 

[Bthomas]

Sea Hare, Rabbitfish, and yellow eye Kole tang should mow this down.

One question though- By chance, is your tank at or near a window?? If so- you found your culprit and will have to balck out side of tank at the light source or relocate the tank to a wall Without windows or indirect light.

Near window yes but its covered with black out curtains so no lights getting through it

 

[vetteguy53081]

Near window yes but its covered with black out curtains so no lights getting through it

Black out curtains may not be enough to filter out indirect lighting (eg: Sun, etc.)

 

[norfolkgarden]

Sea Hare, Rabbitfish, and yellow eye Kole tang should mow this down.

One question though- By chance, is your tank at or near a window?? If so- you found your culprit and will have to balck out side of tank at the light source or relocate the tank to a wall Without windows or indirect light.

Once read that the kole tang is a bristle tooth tang (rock scraper) and won't be able to deal with gha longer than 1/4".
Others have talked about visible bite marks in their algae film on the glass similar to lipstick kisses on a mirror.
[emoji23]

Sea hare will start starving within a week in that tank.

Rabbitfish may be perfect if the tank is big enough.
Don't remember the tank size.

Personal preference would be 2 smaller Turbo's less than 1". Swap them out once they reach 1.5".
Yes, like all snails, they are still bulldozers, just smaller bulldozers.
[emoji4]
We started with 6 and are down to 3 in a 75 gallon tank as everything settled down.

 

[norfolkgarden]

They would be easy to pull out but the problem with this is that the rocks are sitting on the bottom glass with sand put in after. I plan on having a sand sifting goby or 2 in the future so I don't want them to be on top of sand when I put them back in

Looks like you only have 1" to 2" of sand?

That shouldn't be a problem to brush away when you put the rocks back in.

 

[Bthomas]

Looks like you only have 1" to 2" of sand?

That shouldn't be a problem to brush away when you put the rocks back in.

It's probably about 2 inches. That won't cause a problem stirring it up all the way do the bottom?

 

[Bthomas]

Once read that the kole tang is a bristle tooth tang (rock scraper) and won't be able to deal with gha longer than 1/4".
Others have talked about visible bite marks in their algae film on the glass similar to lipstick kisses on a mirror.
[emoji23]

Sea hare will start starving within a week in that tank.

Rabbitfish may be perfect if the tank is big enough.
Don't remember the tank size.

Personal preference would be 2 smaller Turbo's less than 1". Swap them out once they reach 1.5".
Yes, like all snails, they are still bulldozers, just smaller bulldozers.
[emoji4]
We started with 6 and are down to 3 in a 75 gallon tank as everything settled down.

Tank is 150 gallons. I do have 2 small turbos in there now but they haven't touched this algae. Kole and rabbitfish are both on my list of fish to get but they will have to go through quarantine first. Rabbit will be my next purchase (probably in the next few days)

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

I'm just going to suggest it feeds on your happiness, my logic; before you have GHA you're fine, beautiful reef, happy corals, everythings good, once you have it, that totally changes and slowly your happiness seems to fade away. Correct me if I'm wrong but this seems to be the obvious source of its food.

 

[John3]

I had gha for about 5 months. It grew and I’d pull it out by hand. My turbos and emerald crabs and hermits would eat it but not fast enough to get rid of it. I eventually borrowed a very small yellow tang and it cleaned my tank of gha in 2 weeks. I have not had any come back since.

 

[Mike Reef Addict]

I had gha for about 5 months. It grew and I’d pull it out by hand. My turbos and emerald crabs and hermits would eat it but not fast enough to get rid of it. I eventually borrowed a very small yellow tang and it cleaned my tank of gha in 2 weeks. I have not had any come back since.

My sailfin tears it up!

 

[erky]

How will water changes help lower PO4, when it's not detectable when testing the water? The only way it would help is to remove detritus/decaying after and GHA by way of a water change.

I think manual removal is your best option, use some kind of brush. Just be prepared it will take a while!

If you do lights out and the GHA dies, its going into the water column, WC's will remove it from there.

 

[SciGuy2]

Since there are no major photosynthetic critters in the tank, I say give the tank the lights out treatment until the hair dies off. Then vacuum up everything as part of a water change, and use some carbon during the process. Never use "miracle in a bottle" products if you can avoid it.

 

[Bthomas]

Since there are no major photosynthetic critters in the tank, I say give the tank the lights out treatment until the hair dies off. Then vacuum up everything as part of a water change, and use some carbon during the process. Never use "miracle in a bottle" products if you can avoid it.

I've done this and it just came back. I figured there had to be a cause for it somewhere that I needed to correct but it seems like it's just new tank syndrome. I'll keep at the manual removal during water changes..

 

[jasonrusso]

I'm going through this myself. I have heavy GHA and I pull it out by hand until I get sick of it.

My Phosphates were at 0.36. I've been running phosguard for 2 weeks now. Phosphate is down to 0.08 but I can't get it lower. I keep replacing it and adding more. At what point will the GHA start dying?

Nitrates are between 5 and 10. I have a biopellet reactor ready to go, but I don't know if this will solve this problem.

I have a couple of emerald crabs, snails, grass shrimp (feeders from my predator tank) but they don't make a dent.