Frustrated with Hair Algae

[sonymdcdvcd]

Other than rabbitfish, what other fishes can i get that will help me battle with hair algae that's growing on the rocks right under my halides? My rabbitfish is currently not being very helpful and neither is my lawnmower blenny. thx

[justinl]

can you cut the lights for a week without any harm to other stuff? if not a week, then try three days a week with no lights until the crap goes away. how long is your current photoperiod?

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Seahares do a better job on hair algae than fish IME. Just keep them away from powerheads.

But yeah, look for the cause instead of focusing mainly on the symptom. What are your water parameters? High nutrients feed hair algae.

Anthony

[Snappy]

I've had luck with blue legged hermits. Put them in your sump for a few weeks and then place them where you want them to eat. Once they are hungry enough they will chow down the hair algae but once they get a taste for the other stuff they stop so you may have to starve them again.
Sea Hares will also do a good job on hair algae.

[kwirky]

agreed. a sea hare worked great on hair algae for me.

unfortunately it worked so well it starved to death when the tank was clean of hair algae :(. maybe try to arrange somone to pass the sea hare along to when you're done with it, so it doesn't starve in your tank when the algae's gone.

if you're using seio/tunze's for water flow, you can just wrap vinyl window screen around the intake sections to prevent the sea hare from getting caught. You'll have to clean it twice a week though. I had to save mine once from the overflow chamber too. that was a pain.

[robzilla]

i've been battling mine for months. cut down on lighting & check age of bulbs, limit feedings, increase skimming, use ro water, manually remove the algae, i've also setup a phosban reactor.....
the battle can be won.
with my trigger fish, i cant put any creatures to help, he thinks it lunch for him :)

[wickedfrags]

What is the status of your RODI uit?

[sonymdcdvcd]

i do water changes everyday and so far my parameters has been good. i top off with RO. so it may be the age of the bulb since it's getting to the 1yr point... i currently do not have a sump and i think sea hares are alittle too big for my 50gallon.

[wickedfrags]

Try not to have yout TDS reading go much above 5 before your change out your filters.

Where did you get yoru liverock from? Was is from another tank? Is the HA new, or has it been around for a while?

[DanG]

I had a seahare in my 40 with no problems, I just had to keep an eye for corals that he may have knocked over. Just be ready to do something with him when you run out of hair algae. Depending on how bad it is, it may take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, but they're hardcore eating machines.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Wow, water changes every day! That sounds like too often & bad for stability.

[Reefer Rob]

Try basting patches of it with hot (boiling) RO/DI water. Just stay away from any corals. Within a day the patch will be dead. You can slowly work you way through most of if this way. The down side is it also kills your coraline algae.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I've had a sea hare for six months. It's still alive and eating any algae that pops up on the rocks.

[sonymdcdvcd]

lol sorry for the typo, i do water changes every week lol. it just happened after i came back from my vacation. it may be just my neighbor thinking that my damsel and clownfish are always hungry so she overfed them. lol. i'm thinking of picking up a tang, i wonder if tangs eat hair algae as well.

[tknude]

I am have been working on getting my hair algea under control as well. I made some changes that seem to be helping me. I went BB so I can more easily see where the crud is that needs to be vacumed. Also gave away my sand sifting goby. As well I had one nanostream 6025 in my tank and I added another one. So far it seems that things are better. Just before I made these changes (about 3 weeks ago) I took all my rock out and scrubed it down under running water. I have no coral yet so this was not too hard to do. I now have a 33 gallon with 2 clown fish and one cleaner shrimp. I do my water changes with RODI water once a week.

Thanks to Albert for giving me these suggestions!

Hope this helps.

Ted.

[Delphinus]

It's been suggested a few times already but I'll add my opinion to the hat as well. A seahare will do you better on the filamentous algae than your rabbit or your lawnmower blenny. There are two main problems with seahares: 1) when the food source runs out they do tend to starve, more often than not. 2) They likely eventually will encounter a powerhead, pump intake or stream with sad results. And it's weird, because they can, for months, be fine walking all over pump intakes and walk off, but eventually they seem to run out of luck. But they are incredible algae eating machines that not much can compare to.

Rabbitfish are good at removing algaes but they tend to be particular to certain species.

Lawnmowers, as a rule, do not actually eat filamentous algae. Some may develop a taste for it but what they actually are eating when they do that lawnmower-gulp thing is going after slime algae. If you let slime accumulate on your glass you'll see the their kiss marks all over it.

How old is your tank? It's basically not uncommon for a new tank to go through a hair-pulling (sorry for the pun) phase of nuisance algaes. Hang in there!

[naesco]

I've had a sea hare for six months. It's still alive and eating any algae that pops up on the rocks.

It is slowly dying if you do not have lots of algae to eat.
Lend it out to the reefer that has a problem and if the algae becomes a problem again get it back.

Sea hare are the best solution for hair algae but they will die if there is not lots of it to eat.

Remember to turn off your powerheads for a while and very slowly acclimatize the hare before you place it in the tank