Tipping point

[Gizmo]

Oi! I'm at the end of my rope on this one. I've got more Hair Algae than I know what do to with. I've manually pruned the whole tank, added a crew of snails and crabs, an urchin, an algae blenny and I've tried a scopus tang, who i might add didn't even have the slightest interest in the stuff. PO4 is 0 obviously because the HA is at it, and the nitrates are below 2. I've done 100g+ water changes in the last week, and the crap keeps growing. running a phosban reactor for months, changed the media too... not sure where this leaves me. Ideas? maybe go FOWLER and get some butterfly fish? dunno.

[Eb0la11]

Simple solution. Get a sea hare. I had mounds and mounds of hair algae and tried the same stuff you have tried with snails, crabs, tangs etc... Those all help but so little. Get a hair algae and give him a solid month and he'll have it cleaned up and it wont return.

Be sure once the job is done to pass the sea hare on cause otherwise if he starves to death and perishes he will poison the tank.

[gbeef]

Are you using RO water or straight tap water?

[bvlester]

shorted the time your lights are on 2 on 2off 2 on 2off 2on and then off the rest of the time. I call it stormy days use atinics only HA does not grow well ubder atinics. use a sea hair and when it starts to slow its feeding progress then it is prity much done even if there is still HA left he probaly will not touch it. There may be some of the stiffer type of algea mixed in I have found they don't seem to like that type and will leave the area alone. once you think hes prity much done what he is going to the sell on here or pass it along even give it back the LFS. When sea hares die they release a toxin into the water and it may kill the all the tanks ocupents. The use of tap water in some areas is a contributing factor in the groth of HA. Where I am I don't think it makes much difference as our water is Ro and I use a comercial grade filter system.

Bill

[Gizmo]

Are you using RO water or straight tap water?

RODI. Tested the source to make sure I wansn't adding any po4, zeero :|

[Gizmo]

Picked up a Sea Hare from AI. He's acclimating now. I'm not too worried about him running out of food. There is A LOT of HA, even after pruning. I have 7 tanks for him to "clean" so I'll just rotate him through, or lend him out if he's THAT efficient. Here's hoping.

[Tom R]

You still have to find the source of the problem.

How old are your light bulbs?

Are you sure your PO4 test is accurate?

Have you LFS test your water for a second opinion.

Tom R

[Eb0la11]

Yeah the source of the problem does matter, though if its just new-tank-syndrome then its just from that and will go away after its been conquered.

One sea hare single handedly cleaned all the HA out of my 165G DT and there was like 8 inch strands floating off like every rock I had. There was a ton. Im confident in these little guys abilities, just give him time though. It took him about a month to completely clean mine, but you'll notice some difference after a week. The only thing is he seems to just attack it at random rather than just cleaning a whole rock first and working systematically which can be frustrating lol

[bvlester]

You still have to find the source of the problem.

How old are your light bulbs?

Are you sure your PO4 test is accurate?

Have you LFS test your water for a second opinion.

Tom R

If he has alot of HA then the test will come back as 0 as the HA is eating it up. Algea lives off P04 as well as co2 and a miread of outher particals in the water to much light is what set my algea in to action. everything was great untill a timer for my lights didn't work to right it would come on and not go off when it was set for. Afew hours latter it would turn off for no reason at all. I checked the programing on the timer and it was right. changed to mechanical timers they always work and they never loss there programing. I borowed a larged sea hare and he cleaned up pritty much everything except a couple of spots he would venture over to them but would not eat from them I found out that if there is any of the hard type of macro algea they may not eat that area. I not have a sea urchin and he eats it also my angles eat it. things are good now.

Bill

[Gizmo]

I see a lot of similarities out there. I'm using a Salifert PO4 kit, and the bulbs are different ages. The "centre" of the 3 is about 8 months, left has been running about 3 months and I just firied up the right bulb recently as I added more SPS to that side. It is possible that this outbreak was from firing up the 3rd bulb, but I would have thought it would have broken out earlier when I fired up the second bulb... who knows. The sea hare is already making some headroom, yaaa!! :) I have a 70g with a stars and stripes puffer in it, he eats 4 large shrimp a day, i'm sure his, uh, crap, adds to the phosphates...

[Canadian]

How old is your LR? And where did you get the LR?

[Gizmo]

How old is your LR? And where did you get the LR?

Got the LR about 9 months ago from Aquarium Illusions. Other than the HA, its been very clean.

Update on the sea hare: he got 3 rocks completely clean last night :eek: IT looks like I took the rock and scrubbed it. All the Coralline algae is intact, but I did have to pick up my frags from the sandbed, he knocked them all off. :)

[danny zubot]

Old lights aren't always the culprit the GHA equation. GHA will only grow if your nutrients permit, and old lights are just an aiding variable. How are your alkalinity levels? I have found, as well as other reefers, that elevated alkalinity levels make it more difficult for GHA to grow. The reason for this is beyond me but try elevating them slowly over the next few days and see what happens. At the very least, your corals will enjoy it.

Danny

[ScubaSteve]

I know this might be redundant saying this but make sure you prune the HA outside of the tank. When you cut it in your tank it will just spread and get worse. I had it pretty bad at one point and same deal, nothing would eat it. So I snapped, developed a twitch, pulled the worst rocks out during a water change and scrubbed the sh** out of them with a toothbrush in some of the water I pulled out, then rinsed them with fresh mixed SW and put them back in. The CUC, urchin and top snail took care of the remainder. Been HA free since (except for the nicely groomed little patch that they let grow to snack on... I swear they're farming it).

Sometimes you just gotta show some creatures who's higher in the food chain with a little tough love.

[Eb0la11]

I know this might be redundant saying this but make sure you prune the HA outside of the tank. When you cut it in your tank it will just spread and get worse. I had it pretty bad at one point and same deal, nothing would eat it. So I snapped, developed a twitch, pulled the worst rocks out during a water change and scrubbed the sh** out of them with a toothbrush in some of the water I pulled out, then rinsed them with fresh mixed SW and put them back in. The CUC, urchin and top snail took care of the remainder. Been HA free since (except for the nicely groomed little patch that they let grow to snack on... I swear they're farming it).

Sometimes you just gotta show some creatures who's higher in the food chain with a little tough love.

Used the same strategy in conjunction with the sea hare and it worked.

In response to OP:
That sea hare is a marvelous creature. I wish I coulda kept it around long term, but when the job was done it was time to pass him a long. Hope he continues to do the trick. Yours seems to be working faster than mine and also more systematically lol

[Gizmo]

To reply dKh is at 11, has been for a while. Calc is 440 mag is 1300 and iodine is .07

The seahare disappeared for a day, but I saw him munching again today, much mor sporatically than the otherday, but still getting the job done. whew. I was pruning it in the tank, probably what cause it to spread faster. damn.