Anyone had any luck getting rid of hair algae?

[christyf5]

It ain't pretty but I need some sort of strategy for this stuff. I had a bit of a crash a couple months ago and the stuff popped up out of nowhere. I haven't had to deal with HA since I started in this hobby many many years ago (although I've dealt with every other kind of algae it seems). So far I've been picking/siphoning it out but to no avail. I added about 10 astreas and an urchin. So far about 4-5 snails have croaked (also have some cyano and some sort of odd brown cyano, I assume that is killing them but who knows). No interest in a lawnmower blenny because once the HA is gone there will be no more food source and rehoming fish here is next to impossible.

So, new bulbs coming within the week. All parameters are good:

temp 78.9
SG 1.026
alk 9 dkh
ca 450ppm
PO4 0.03ppm
NO3 5ppm

So, anyone have any magic bullets or will it be a combo of time and diligence. I don't have a lot of time for the tank lately but if someone has a good success story it would be encouraging

[ocean diver]

Weekly water changes of 10%, lite feeding only, clean all "crap" out and suck HA out also, run reactor with GFO. This will work and will take some time to see results.....about a month!!!

[Myka]

The brown cyano may be dinoflagellates if the snails are dying. Do you have a calibrated digital pH meter to test pH? Test kits are useless for pH.

The mini crash suggests you're dealing with nutrients from die-off. Temporarily (or permanently) adding extra water flow to stir things up better would help a lot. Especially blowing behind rocks and down by sandbed. Maybe look into vodka/vinegar dosing or biopellets until you're under control again. Some Lawnmower Blennies will eat prepared foods (most won't), you could look for one that will. Or a smaller species Foxface Rabbitfish if you have room in the tank. Be diligent with weekly 10% waterchanges taking the time to pull out the algae (12-18" tweezers are handy for this purpose).

What is Mg at? Do you dose Mg? If so, which product?

In the end, elbow grease and time.

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by Myka

The brown cyano may be dinoflagellates if the snails are dying. Do you have a calibrated digital pH meter to test pH? Test kits are useless for pH.

The mini crash suggests you're dealing with nutrients from die-off. Temporarily (or permanently) adding extra water flow to stir things up better would help a lot. Especially blowing behind rocks and down by sandbed. Maybe look into vodka/vinegar dosing or biopellets until you're under control again. Some Lawnmower Blennies will eat prepared foods (most won't), you could look for one that will. Or a smaller species Foxface Rabbitfish if you have room in the tank. Be diligent with weekly 10% waterchanges taking the time to pull out the algae (12-18" tweezers are handy for this purpose).

What is Mg at? Do you dose Mg? If so, which product?

In the end, elbow grease and time.

The brown cyano isn't dinoflagellates. No bubbles and it doesn't come back in a matter of hours like dinos.
I've already got a ridiculous amount of flow (wavebox, tunze 6100, 6080 and 6045, vortech MP40, dart return full open). I have been turkey basting and siphoning where things pile up (I've angled the flow to pile detritus in easy access points).
I do 20% weekly waterchanges which have sort of fallen off into bi and tri-weekly waterchanges but I'm getting back on track the past few weeks.
No vodka/vinegar dosing. Even if its the holy grail I'm done with that stuff, its too "smoke and mirrors" for me.
Might have a look for a foxface rabbitfish, fish are slim pickins around here, if it wasn't in Finding Nemo or an "aggressive"/FOWLR type its unlikely I'll find it. I haven't had much luck with fish that are supposed to eat certain types of algae. I think my other fish just tell the new ones to hold out for prepared foods. My fish are a bunch of lazy arses.
Mg is at 1290, working on raising it up but I rarely go past 1300. The tank uses a ridiculous amount of Mg. I use Elias magnesium mix, he does the Randy Holmes-Farley recipe for me and a doser takes care of the rest.
Already running GFO, can't say I'm impressed with this last batch from BRS, it doesn't seem to be doing a bloody thing, all the phosphate just goes straight to whatever algae is breeding away in the tank so PO4 levels are usually low.
No pH meter, it died awhile ago and I never replaced it. Tank was always 8.1-8.3 though and frankly the tank used to run at 7.8 and looked the best it ever did.

I think Ocean diver has it right though, elbow grease and time. I'll see if I can jack up my Mg levels. I've read that higher levels (1400+) can help knock it back as well.

Thanks for the ideas

[burgerchow]

Only thing that works 100% is a sea hare or a couple of them. Had bad hair algae problem a couple years ago. Tried all the standard methods to eliminate it, but nothing worked til I introduced sea hares. They munch that stuff off right to the roots so they don't grow back. Problem is you will need to re home them once all your algae is gone, or they will starve.

Toke-toke-pass.

[toxic111]

For me on my old 33 it was pulling rock right out & scrubbing it with a nail brush. The 10% water changes twice a week. Tried GFO, but never really worked for me, I moved to Probidio and that seemed to help. It did take me 6 months or more to beat it.

[hillegom]

You could try hydrogen peroxide. Read this

http://www.frozenocean.org/t1710-hai...rogen-peroxide

And this

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/26870...s-to-prove-it/

[Aquattro]

I can probably get you a seahare on loan. Also have a reactor and pellets if you want to try that. We also have a foxface in town, IIRC.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

As others have suggested, a sea hare is very good for eating up hair algae. While the sea hare is dealing with the symptom, hopefully you've figured out the root cause of the outbreak and deal with that. It may be as simple as outdated bulbs or bulbs with wrong wavelength.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by christyf5

The brown cyano isn't dinoflagellates. No bubbles and it doesn't come back in a matter of hours like dinos.

Ok, well that's good.

I've already got a ridiculous amount of flow (wavebox, tunze 6100, 6080 and 6045, vortech MP40, dart return full open). I have been turkey basting and siphoning where things pile up (I've angled the flow to pile detritus in easy access points).

Ok, move them around then so that you stir up crap. Put a filter sock on the drain(s) so you catch it all. In the cleanest of tanks you can move the powerheads around and stir crap up.

No vodka/vinegar dosing. Even if its the holy grail I'm done with that stuff, its too "smoke and mirrors" for me.

It's not smoke and mirrors, but ok.

Might have a look for a foxface rabbitfish, fish are slim pickins around here

Getting a fish or invert (like seahare) isn't the best option anyway since that method will not necessarily remove the nutrients from the system. The nutrients will go into the animal and come out the other end as nutrients. Once the nutrients have become fish/hare poop again they have a second chance at being skimmed or filtered out though so there is that benefit.

Plucking it out with tweezers (or removing the rock and scrubbing if you really want to) is often the best idea since you are permanently removing the nutrients that are within the algae.

Mg is at 1290, working on raising it up but I rarely go past 1300. The tank uses a ridiculous amount of Mg. I use Elias magnesium mix, he does the Randy Holmes-Farley recipe for me and a doser takes care of the rest.

Since magnesium chloride hexahydrate is only abut 35% magnesium (epsom salts are about 39% Mg) and the total amount of Mg within the system is relatively high (hopefully) around 1300-1400 ppm it does take a lot of Mg supplement to increase Mg. If you use aquarium products rather than bulk chemicals (like BRS) then you may need to use even more since some aquarium Mg products have less than 10% Mg. Anyway, use as much as you need to get Mg up at NSW value, it will help with algae problems. If you want to prevent adding so much chloride to the tank you can use 10% epsom salt.

Already running GFO, can't say I'm impressed with this last batch from BRS, it doesn't seem to be doing a bloody thing, all the phosphate just goes straight to whatever algae is breeding away in the tank so PO4 levels are usually low.

GFO can only get nutrients that are in the water column, so it doesn't do a darn thing for the algae that is already present. GFO prevents the growth of more algae.

No pH meter, it died awhile ago and I never replaced it. Tank was always 8.1-8.3 though and frankly the tank used to run at 7.8 and looked the best it ever did.

Maybe you did more frequent waterchanges or had lower stock back then...who knows. The tank doing so well couldn't be attributed to lower pH, or rather it would be highly unlikely that pH below 8.0 was singularly the beneficial factor.

I think Ocean diver has it right though, elbow grease and time.

Thanks for the ideas

Hey! I said that too!

You're welcome, good luck!