Help...Green Hair Algae is driving me crazy

[cracker]

Grassy, I'm hangin in there with Ya ! Same issues LOL We'll get there some day !
Hey the latest pics don't look all that bad.

 

[captan42]

I wouldn’t be adding anything but water and food.

Keep up on the weekly WC, do your manual cleaning and keep up the CuC.

I would highly recommend a tuxedo urchin. I had GHA worse than any of your photos and about the same or less CuC and once I added that urchin he plowed through 80% of the GHA in a few days. My problem is cyano growing where the rocks have been cleaned.

My tank is new like yours, and I am a newbie to all this but from all the research I have done it all points to patience! This is the ugly phase where it is all coming to balance. If there was some bottle magic cure for all our problems forums like this wouldn’t exsist and more people would be doing it.

Good luck!

 

[grassy_noel]

Thanks, I'll soldier on and resist the temptation to add anything new.

Any thoughts on whether putting a piece of "real" live rock in the tank would help increase biodiversity? It seems like maybe this new tank ugly period is extended because I started with dry rock. Was just wondering if adding a bit of live rock (like from the ocean) would make any difference...

 

[mcarroll]

Yes, but it will still not be overnight. If you really have room or can make room, I would do it.

Of course having all live rock with one or two pieces of dead rack would be the more ideal proportion – the way things are you'll have to battle algae only manually/with CUC while microbes migrate slowly from good rock to bad rock.

 

[grassy_noel]

Yeah, I thought that might be the case.

I've been contemplating ordering some live rock from KP Aquatics, so maybe I'll order 10 lbs, cure it in my other tank, and when it's ready slowly swap pieces between the two tanks until they're each about 50/50 live versus dry...hmm...

 

[grassy_noel]

@mcarroll a while back you suggested I start dosing phosphate (and maybe nitrate, too?) because my reading has been a hard zero for at least a couple months. Is this something you would still recommend?

I understand it won't make the GHA go away (it will probably just make it worse) but might protect me from cyano and/or dinos in the future.

Just curious about your thoughts...

 

[mcarroll]

Yeah, I thought that might be the case.

I've been contemplating ordering some live rock from KP Aquatics, so maybe I'll order 10 lbs, cure it in my other tank, and when it's ready slowly swap pieces between the two tanks until they're each about 50/50 live versus dry...hmm...

Unlike most reefy changes, I think I'd do this one quickly rather than over time. I forget how stocked the tank is already, but I might even put any current plans for the tank on hold until this effort was complete.

Have you handled uncured rock before? It's not too common these days, so if it's your first time, it would pay to do some reading and maybe even call the folks you're buying from to get direct advice from them.

 

[tenurepro]

It doesn’t look like a bad GHA problem. I think increasing your cuc will help. Oddly enough, the only times I had algae in my tank was with either high nitrates and undetectable phosphate.

 

[grassy_noel]

It doesn’t look like a bad GHA problem. I think increasing your cuc will help. Oddly enough, the only times I had algae in my tank was with either high nitrates and undetectable phosphate.

Thanks! It's under control, but it takes an hour or two of manual pulling every Saturday to keep it from totally taking over.

My nutrient issue is similar. Nitrates are between 1-5 ppm and phosphate is totally undetectable. So...Unbalanced.

Right now I'm waffling between trying to run GFO for the first time (which is everyone's first recommendation when GHA appears) or dosing phosphorus to get Nitrate and Phosphate back in balance. I realize how ridiculous that sounds...remove Phosphate or add Phosphate...but that's the kinda head games I've been playing. I've received both those pieces of advice from two separate, very well respected people on this forum, so...

 

[ParsedOut]

I'm experiencing some similar issues with my tank. Little tufts of green/brown hair algae, but my tank is much newer than yours. Only a few months since cycled, the diatoms only lasted a few weeks but this has been dragging for a little while. Every weekend I take a toothbrush and scrub while siphoning. I don't have anything to suggest or add, mostly just following along at this point. Keep us updated and good luck my friend.

 

[tenurepro]

Thanks! It's under control, but it takes an hour or two of manual pulling every Saturday to keep it from totally taking over.

My nutrient issue is similar. Nitrates are between 1-5 ppm and phosphate is totally undetectable. So...Unbalanced.

Right now I'm waffling between trying to run GFO for the first time (which is everyone's first recommendation when GHA appears) or dosing phosphorus to get Nitrate and Phosphate back in balance. I realize how ridiculous that sounds...remove Phosphate or add Phosphate...but that's the kinda head games I've been playing. I've received both those pieces of advice from two separate, very well respected people on this forum, so...

So - I only saw benefits once I started dosing phosphate to balance nutrients... it may spur gha at the beginning. I wouldn’t run GFO - your phosphates are undetectable so why run gfo! I know that there is a lot of obsession of running low nutrients, all because they are meant to eliminate algae issues, but these systems tend to be always at the edge of the knife; we know from biology, that nutrient limited environments tend to be species poor; so low and unbalance nutrient often lead to unstable systems in my opinion. Yet I can name many systems that have detectable and balanced systems with vibrant corals and little nuisance algae. For MY experience, my tank is now so much easier to run with nitrates above 2 ppm and phosphates above 0.1 ppm. I clean the glass once or twice a week, but I do zero cleaning of rocks or substrate. Tanks process differently and my experience may be unique, but my advice would be to beef up your cuc and avoids gfo and carbon dosing. Give that a month or so and then re assess

 

[pharazon]

Hey there, how’s the battle going?

 

[grassy_noel]

Thanks for the nudge, it's been a little bit since I've provided an update.

The battle wages on...

I'm at least at a place of equilibrium, I think. The hair algae problem is not getting any worse, but to keep it stable I have to do a major cleaning every weekend. This includes pulling out as many tufts as I can by hand with an airline tube siphon and stirring my sand bed. I've stopped scrubbing the rocks as it seemed like that was just spreading the algae around to new spots all over the tank. On a bright note, pretty much all of my corals are looking great, as long as I can keep them from getting overgrown by the algae!

A list of things that have not worked for me, in case you are interested:

• Hydrogen peroxide - maybe I needed a stronger solution, but it does almost nothing when spot applied under water in the tank. I'm limited to 1.5ml per application since my tank is so small (~15 gallons total volume)
• Fluconazole - I can be sure I don't have bryopsis at this point...I've done two 3-week courses at 20mg/gal with no noticeable change at all, except that I think this might have killed a lot of my snails
• Switching to non-pellet food - I'm feeding rinsed fresh calanus and rinsed frozen mysis...no difference
• Blackouts - I've done up to 90 hours with cardboard taped over all sides of the aquarium...when I took it off the algae just laughed at me

As of Monday, I am running GFO for the first time. After reading about a million threads and several articles by Randy Holmes-Farley, I've realized that whether I can test it or not, I have a phosphate issue. In my case, I believe that I'm probably overfeeding relative to my phosphate export mechanism, which at this point is limited to protein skimming and water changes, neither of which are capable of keeping phosphate low enough to inhibit algae growth. My daily feeding introduces phosphate, which is immediately taken up by the growing algae, so my Hanna checker reads zero.

It's worth noting, too, that this process gets more and more effective as the week goes on because the total amount of algae is increasing, further extracting phosphate, so of course my test the following weekend is zero. I'm hoping the GFO will extract the phosphate from the water faster than the algae can (especially after a cleaning when there's relatively little algae to soak it up). In doing so, I'm hopeful that the algae won't have enough phosphate to grow.

I've also started up a little DIY algae scrubber/reactor, which I hope will take over phosphate export duty in the long term, as I'd prefer not to run GFO forever. In one of the overflow chambers of my Nuvo Fusion 20, I have a media caddy which has a clear back. I cut away a section of the black vinyl covering on the back of the tank and siliconed a 10" LED grow light facing into the filter chamber. Then, in the media caddy I placed a rectangle of cross stitch mesh (craft store plastic mesh that looks just like the growing surface of an algae turf scrubber). I'm running the LED 12 hours a day on a reverse photo period. I'm hoping that in a week or two algae will start to populate the mesh and eventually grow into a mat, like an ATS (I know I don't have the air-water interface...). Then, occasionally I'll remove the media caddy, scrape algae off the mesh and replace, physically exporting phosphate. If this proof-of-concept works, I might do it in the other filter chamber as well, doubling the algae growing area...we'll see.

Both of these latest interventions are going to take a couple weeks to take effect (if at all), but at this point I've been dealing with this for almost 5 months so I'm learning to be patient. I'll check back in a few weeks with an update.

 

[cracker]

Thanks for the update I'm just about where You are. It's a stalemate for me in the war !

 

[pharazon]

this point I've been dealing with this for almost 5 months so I'm learning to be patient. I'll check back in a few weeks with an update.

Please do. The silver lining to this whole thing is that despite battling it for 5 months, you’ve never given up. Countless people have quit the hobby over battles like yours, but you’re still here waging war. I love it. Much respect for that.

Thank you for the list of attempted solutions. The most disheartening thing, in my opinion, is that the flucon has zero effect. It’s been a silver bullet for many against both bryopsis and GHA. Perhaps yours is a different, more resilient type.

I look forward to hearing how GFO works out for you. Keep us in the loop! And if you ever need vent or bounce some ideas off someone, feel free to PM me.

Good luck!

 

[Paul B]

I moved my reef 10 weeks ago to my new house and I have the exact same hair algae as you have. The only difference is that I know it is natural and normal with a tank move or a new tank so I have been going out to dinner a lot and forgetting about it. The tips of some of my corals died from the stuff and it is ugly. The only thing I do differently from you is that I stopped changing water. When you change water you add more nutrients. Algae is self limiting and when it exhausts whatever it is growing on, it will instantly stop growing, like over night. Then it will die and the tank will normalize. I won't change any water until it is gone.
It could be iron, phosphate, nitrate or any number of things. But it will use it up and croak. Unless of course you keep changing water to feed it.

This is my tank after the move. You can't see it in this picture but there is algae all over the place. Now it grew more. But it will stop soon.

 

[Retro Reefer]

Good advice from @Paul B.. and don’t give up on your clean up crew, with all that algae you have plenty for them to eat, I don’t think your snails are starving they just can be difficult to keep alive sometimes.. I have had a dozen in my new 40b for a few weeks with just about nothing for them to eat, think I’ve lost one.

 

[grassy_noel]

Thank you so much @PaulB and @Retro Reefer for your advice! I guess I could give skipping water changes a try. I guess I'd been working on the assumption that more water changes were always better. If I do this, would you recommend I stop manually removing the algae, too? I normally do this while siphoning out water for water changes. I could skip it altogether, or I could keep doing my siphon-harvesting into a filter sock and then just return the same water to the tank instead of changing it out.

I also plan to boost my cleanup crew this weekend. Right now I have about a million Cerith snails (I think they bred in my tank), three nassarius snails, two trochus snails, and a cleaner shrimp. Since I started the first round of Fluconazole I've lost 5 trochus snails, 6 astrea snails, 3 turbo snails, 2 margarita snails, and an emerald crab (over the period of about 4 months). This is what led me to believe they might be eating poisoned algae (i.e. poisoned with fluconazole). I've given up on hermit crabs, they just annoy me and don't seem to eat any algae, so I banished them all to my softy tank. I was thinking this time around I'd try half a dozen trochus snails (they seem to eat the most algae), maybe a pincushion urchin (I've heard good and bad things), and a new emerald crab. Thoughts?

 

[Retro Reefer]

Best to have large diverse CUC.. I really like the Margarita Snails if you can get them, in my experience they seem to plow through hair algae faster than most but I can never keep them alive long term.. I had a outbreak of hair algae in a 3.7 gallon Pico a couple years ago and the few hermit crabs and 1 astrea I had in the tank weren’t Keeping up, I introduced 3 margaritas and in a couple weeks the tank was clear of algae.. crabs can be a real pain and may not eat much but they spend the day relentlessly picking and pulling algae off your rocks allowing it to inter the water column and exported from your tank via your filtration.. I also enjoy watching hermits they are such clowns

 

[Paul B]

No, keep removing it by hand. That is how you eliminate whatever it is feeding on.