Dealing with hair algae

[mackinzie766]

Hi, I’ve been dealing with hair algae for a while. I got two emerald crabs and they were dealing with it great, they cleared about 80% of it and it wasn’t spreading anymore so i wasn’t stressing about it. We moved recently and for a week and a half i had to keep my stuff at my mother in laws house. I gave my sister in law the job of feeding the fish and exactly how much to feed. Well come to find out my mother in law put BREAD, in my tank “bc my fish were hungry” i tried to explain you cant do that and she thought it was a joke i was ticked but everything seemed ok. well a few days later now i’m dealing with hair algae all over again. I manually removed A LOT of it. I’m not 100% sure it’s hair algae as it’s very curly, bright green, and not slimy. so i’m not even sure what to do. There is also a lot of brown algae in the tank growing over the once green hair algae. here are my parameters as of today after i did about a 40% water change. i only had a zoa and a mushroom in the tank along with 2 fish, 2 emerald crabs, and some hermit crabs. the zoa and mushroom are completely closed up. any suggestions for what i should do? Tank is about 4/5 months old

.

 

[Fishology]

What I do is use a brand new toothbrush and brush up the algae and them remove it with a siphon and do a 3gl water change to get the algae out and try brushing it off with the toothbrush every day to two days . Hope this helps.

 

[exnisstech]

There are some tips in my thread about removing it. The tip about using the hose in post #7 worked really well

 

[MarshallB]

If your tank is 4/5 months old. it's just going to go through it till other microfana start outcompeting it. Add copepods and do your best to clean it weekly.

This is the hardest time. It's a test of patience and discipline.

 

[I never finish anythi]

Bring p04 down to 0.03

 

[I never finish anythi]

And dkh is kinda high for Fowlr in my opinion. I'm not an expert tho

 

[Illini_Drew33]

I also use some turbo snails to help. But a good way to handle it is like someone said above. Scrub with a toothbrush and then syphon. I like keeping my Po4 around .1 to .15 and it keeps my hair algae out. If you can't get it to that level you can also CAREFULLY use GFO which is what I do.

 

[Daniel92481]

Sorry about the bread ordeal. Make sure she knows that you don’t have ducks in your tank.

Get some additional CUC including some trochus and turbo snails. I would also work to get the phosphate levels down to 0.1 or lower. What test kit do you use for phosphate? I use a Hanna ULR which has been pretty accurate.