hair algae

[Carl C]

Hello community, my tank is 150 gallons and has been operational for over a year I battled hair algae for many many months, and then one day it just started going away, I have been free of hair algae for eight months at least, and even have some to get some Coraline algae, my tank has very little livestock. Only two medium size fish. I have quite a few corals, Some good size ones as well. All of a sudden out of the blue the hair algae is coming back. The only thing that I can think that has changed is I put some cones on my lights to direct lighting so there would be no spillage. I am wondering if this has increased the intensity. I just took off the cones. But I really don’t want to go through another outbreak. Any ideas?
Alkalinity 8.3
calcium 407
salts 35
phosphate 0
nitrate 0
nitrite 9ppb
temperature 78

 

[lapin]

It could be that the change in light caused something that was using up your nutrients to stop. Now that they are not consuming them the hair has decided it likes to free meal. Its just a guess.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

What kind of lights, what spectrum/settings, and what’s the photo period? Also, 150 is a lot of water. Two fish won’t generate much. When you say a lot of corals, what do you mean? The two fish probably won’t be able to keep the nutrients up by themselves for a lot of corals in that big of a tank. Are you feeding the corals separately? Are you dosing nutrients? The algae needs something to feed off of besides light, and I can’t see how the cause would be the bioload from two fish in a 150 with regular maintenance.

 

[Carl C]

What kind of lights what spectrum/settings, and what’s the photo period? Also, 150 is a lot of water. Two fish won’t generate much. When you say a lot of corals, what do you mean? The two fish probably won’t be able to keep the nutrients up by themselves for a lot of corals in that big of a tank. Are you feeding the corals separately? Are you dosing nutrients? The algae needs something to feed off of besides light, and I can’t see how the cause would be the bioload from two fish in a 150 with regular maintenance.

hi Kessil a360x 3 of them the par was in the 200s mid way in tank and they are on about 12 hours but there is a long wind up / down of probably 2 hours on each end , also I haven’t changed settings in many months
I do feed coral but once a week spot feeding, maximum. I’ve got two pretty good size trumpet corals, when is about the size of a fist the other is about 1/4 of the size of a fist, I have a good size hammer coral about the size of a fist, zoas maybe 50 polyps total , a lobo, rock anemone 3” diameter, sea anemone fist size , a few other species can’t think of names (but not a lot compared to 150g) I dose alk and calc
Has auto water change and auto top off
Oh and a big fuge
Many bells and whistles haha
Thanks

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Hmm, what kind of algae eating clean up crew, or algae eating fish do you have? Any at all? The pics you posted seem like small portions of the tank, not GHA run amok. If you do t have anything actively feeding on it,maybe drop something in there to eat it up. I had an explosion and culled a lot of it, then had cyano, now I’m at a happy equilibrium with patches of GHA that my algae eating fish (fox face and lawnmower blenny), urchins, snails, and crabs eat on the daily. It doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t spread and everyone seems happy. Maybe getting rid of it isn’t the answer, but adding to your ecosystem is? I know if my critters dropped in on the portions of your tank in those pics they’d love it.

 

[Dan_P]

Hello community, my tank is 150 gallons and has been operational for over a year I battled hair algae for many many months, and then one day it just started going away, I have been free of hair algae for eight months at least, and even have some to get some Coraline algae, my tank has very little livestock. Only two medium size fish. I have quite a few corals, Some good size ones as well. All of a sudden out of the blue the hair algae is coming back. The only thing that I can think that has changed is I put some cones on my lights to direct lighting so there would be no spillage. I am wondering if this has increased the intensity. I just took off the cones. But I really don’t want to go through another outbreak. Any ideas?
Alkalinity 8.3
calcium 407
salts 35
phosphate 0
nitrate 0
nitrite 9ppb
temperature 78

By the look of large patches of hair algae (can’t tell for sure in the substrate pictures. Photos under white light would have been better), the GHA was in “remission”. It now needs to be aggressively consumed to keep it under control though you might have missed the point of keeping it from becoming ugly again.

As for what caused the growth now, I would not spend too much time conjecturing. Just assume that what you did last time to reduce GHA growth was a partial successful but lacked a “kill” shot.

By the way, you could scrub a rock clean of visible GHA but it would grow back. GHA filaments are very small. Leaving just a tiny filament behind could become a GHA patch again. That is why your system might need more constant grazing. And when the GHA seems gone, I would feed the grazers to keep them healthy and grazing.

I am reading mixed reviews on ‘cures” like Vibrant and Dino-X. They might work, might cause cyanobacteria blooms, might harm coral (death of toxin producing dinoflagellates), etc. As for getting rid of “GHA causing nutrients”, that is another magical mystery tour you can take, adding various types of bottled bacteria. Again, mixed reviews though. I would prefer to purchase something to eat the GHA.