How else to do battle with hair algae

Pescador · #1 07-10-2007, 05:55 PM

My old 125 looked just like your tank and I was just about ready to throw in the towel.
I don't know what the solution was for sure but I put in three diadema urchins, a new skimmer, and changed to Tropic Marin salt. It cleaned up pretty fast after that.
I still think it was switching salt but that's pretty hard to prove. It's never come back anyway.
Good luck and hang in there.

michika · #2 07-10-2007, 06:08 PM

I'm thinking that I will look for an urchin, but only after I've found a way to secure all my SPS frags down.

Until then I guess I'll just conitnue with the points I outlined above, and with what I've already been doing. I hope this nasty outbreak takes care of itself soon, because its making my tank look like quite the eyesore.

Delphinus · #3 07-10-2007, 07:43 PM

Honestly, I think it's an unadvertised rite of passage for most reef tanks to go through a cycle like this in their first few months or so... This tank is about that, isn't it? If so ... continue on, as you are doing, and it should clear itself eventually. It's when the tank does have measureable nasties like nitrates and phosphates that you can't account for when you start to have REAL headaches. For example, my ritteri tank, just can't keep nitrates under 30.

I can't keep any corals in that kind of sewage. Where do they come from? I have no idea, it's not like I overfeed, it's not like I don't have a good skimmer. I guess it's just having a 24" anemone turns out to be a bioload beyond my wildest imagination. But weirdly I dont' really have any filamentous algaes in the main tank except for in the overflow strainers. I guess the urchins, rabbit and abalone are basically keeping things clean that way. But I do get the occasional bad bout of cyano, man I wish I could figure out a way to deal with this nitrate problem (tank is about 1.5 years old now).