Hair Algea

[Josh23]

I have a little hair algea growth starting to take place. The tank is only about a month old, is this normal to see in the cycle of a new tank. Should I look at getting a phosphate sponge? What have you used to battle this crap.

thanks
Josh

[Drock169]

I would "cook" the rock if your just starting up the tank. Hair algae is a tough one to battle.

[Josh23]

how do I cook rock? anyone else have any thoughts?

[toxic111]

All I did in my tank (and I jsut went through this) is let it go as part of the cycle, after a couple of weeks, I just used an algae scraper and cleaned it off the glass. The clean up crew I added after the cycle took care of the rest of it.

[bv_reefer]

hair algae is as mentioned a tough one to battle, at the end it's a couple things combined that end up eliminating. when it started developing on one of my rocks, I pretty much just ended up manually removing as much as possible, reducing my photo period, stopped feeding corals for 2-3 weeks, cut back on feding fish, and of course kept up on reasonably adequate water changes. :smile: good luck, it's an ugly algae to have to deal with, but heres a thread from a couple months back originally posted by michika, try to get as much as possible out of it. and don't let the gha win!

[Josh23]

Did you say you had a link to a previous thread?

[bv_reefer]

wow sorry totally forgot to post it :lol: > http://canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=34686&highlight=GHA

[michika]

Ah my GHA thread! Well to follow up on it something in my crazy list worked and I think it was three things;

1) time; the longer my battle went on the less GHA there was to deal with, my tank is now GHA free. I let all the phosphates that had accumulated in my rocks leech out, and I did it without cooking them, it never caused any problems to my livestock; SPS, clams, LPS, inverts or fish.

2) Good inverts; I got a longspinr urchin who mowed down the GHA, and once he took it off the rock it never came back. I also got a bunch of blue legged hermits and starved them in my sump for a week before putting them into my tank.

3) Staying up on my weekly cleanings; weekly-bi-weekly water changes, and making sure my MH bulb wasn't too old.

Since your tank is new I would just advise you to ride it out. Mostly likely your GHA is part of a normal cycle in your new system. Make sure you use quality water, RO/DI is recommended, and stay on top of your tank. If the GHA gets long just manually prune it out. If its still hanging around in about a month send me a PM or get in touch with me and I can give you some other suggestions.

[kwirky]

new tanks go through their "algae cycles". I wouldn't worry too much at only a month. Like michika said keep on top of your routine. Make sure you siphon out the detritus as often as possible (every week, minimum). Fairy hermits are awesome for hair algae too.

I find often hair algae problems are caused by detritus problems. Detritus that isn't dealt with ever ends up leeching into the rocks which then takes forever to leech out. If you take care of detritus on the bottom of the tank (and the stuff lieing on the rocks) early then you solve the problem before it starts.

[Josh23]

Thanks for everyones advice

I hope its just part of a normal tank cycle... I have been doing the following since I started up the tank...

- weekly water changes with bottled RO/DI (4 gallons a week) 24 gallon tank
- purchased a urchin & 6 hermits within one week (no GHA at that time)
- blow off all the rocks with powerhead weekly
- suck debris off barebottom weekly

I'm suprised to see the GHA at all as I thought I had done a good job - hopefully just part of the cycle.

[bv_reefer]

lot of good advice i got from that thread, one method i never ended up trying was chin lees' hot water in bottle with straw method, never hurts to try. michika did you ever end up removing any sand at that time?

[michika]

I never tried the hot water method, I was to afraid for my coral and clam collection.

We pinpointed the issue as my rocks, and once we did that I never removed the sand. However when I moved from my original GHA infested tan to my current system, I did not re-use the sand. In the end I don't think the sand played any role either with with my particular outbreak, although this probably doesn't hold true for everyone.