Hair Algae Issues Won't Go Away

[BTimms]

use your poisons and snake oils I run my tank without them.

What is your secret?

 

[Double monti 61]

Being open minded and I like to read as much about the hobby as possible and understand new ideas and methods that may help me become more successful in my pursuits like identifying certain things that may appear in your system or my system I know that some forms of life that live in a tank may be easy to identify but others are not so easy but people are so trained to follow the popular opinion that they do not question the popular opinion I do and my so called hair worms are not spaghetti worms read a book!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Is this tank by chance at or near a window?
What also is phosphate and nitrate level and what test kits are you using to check ?

 

[jt8791]

I would say a pincushion urchin, preferably a short spine they are only supposed to get 4” compared to 8” on a standard pincushion. Might have to feed it after gha is gone though. Although I think having a fuge to compete with it helped my battle but chaeto bottomed the nutrients out and I traded gha for dinos.

Shut off fuge light, tossed chaeto, hooked up uv for a few nights and overfed horribly. Actually gave myself a bloom in the process but Dino’s or diatoms are gone, whichever it was, little to any gha and finally got nitrate to 5, phosphate is at .50. Light bioload brought more issues than it was worth but I’ve got rbta’s and 2 ac110 fuges, adding a 4th fish and switching to red ogo and sea lettuce.

oh and turn white, red and green lights way down. I did a blackout on the display for one night but then brought just whites to 25% blues 75%. Gonna try 80% blues and 20% white red and green and see how everything looks. Hard to say if the blackout was necessary, I had shut the green and red lights off when gha first started.

Turbo snails would help as well, maybe not as efficient as urchins. I added 4 but haven’t seen them since Dino’s popped up.

 

[Double monti 61]

Is this tank by chance at or near a window?
What also is phosphate and nitrate level and what test kits are you using to check ?

No and I never check my levels I do a 2 gallon water change once a week.

 

[Double monti 61]

Here is a short video of a hermit crab eating of one of the limpets on the glass.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I've been having hair algae issues in my 20g long for almost 2-3 months and I can't get rid of the stuff. My tank is about 8-9 months old. I've tried manual removal, more frequent water changes (and my nutrients are nitrates <20ppm and phos <0.25ppm, this is how they've been since the tank has cycled but only recently has the algae taken over), more CUC, less light, less food, and additional filtration (mini hob skimmer) to no avail. My corals aren't doing too well because the gha is encroaching on their polyps or skeletons and I feel like giving up. I feel like I'm about to lose my investment to a bunch of algae.

What can I do? Is there a chemical I can use to flush out some of the algae and use manual maintenance to finish off the rest? Something I haven't tried? I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I wish I could press a restart button and have a clean tank.

Please let me know what I should do.

I would avoid chemicals as too many to choose from and too many history of deaths from cheap to expensive, this is the very last resort I think.
Can you remove your aquascape and clean individually? If not I would go for the more hands on approach and scrub for at least 1 month

 

[Double monti 61]

Not sure why my system does ok.

 

[ZoWhat]

Been reefing since 2007, gha usually a direct correlation to Phosphates getting into your tank via water sources or food sources or additives.

Out of control nitrates can contribute to gha, but Phosphates are like a super food for gha. To beat gha you must attack Phosphates as the true villain they are in our small ecosystem.

You can test for Phosphates but they are consumed sooooo quickly that you probably have a low reading well after the algae have had their full daily diet of Phosphate.

Plenty of ways to remove Phosphate if you research and read.

Most times if you continually export Phosphate, algae starves and dies off.

In my opinion, your ability to export Phosphate from your water column continuously is a cornerstone skill every Reefer should master
.