HELP!!!! Hair algae invasion!!!

wont scrubbing and spraying with h202 on rocks kill the bacteria?


I recall in that thread I just mentioned, enough of the bacteria colony will survive and repopulate quickly. Take a look, they answer this question and a host of others.
 
What’s your clean up crew? You have hermits I hope?
 
It is not an emergency, so you posted in the right forum. Algae is part of the system (it is in the ocean...)
How you handle it is up to you and your desires. 10 people will tell you 10 different things to do and never do.

I would not do anything drastic or add any crazy chemicals or fixes in a bottle. Just try to manually remove it and make small changes to try and achieve a balance that is acceptable to me.
 
It is not an emergency, so you posted in the right forum. Algae is part of the system (it is in the ocean...)
How you handle it is up to you and your desires. 10 people will tell you 10 different things to do and never do.

I would not do anything drastic or add any crazy chemicals or fixes in a bottle. Just try to manually remove it and make small changes to try and achieve a balance that is acceptable to me.
That’s what I’ve been doing and it keeps coming back. I’ve removed so much I just think something must be leaching from the rocks. Nutrients are normal and I even have chaeto
 
steady does it. Be diligent in removing it by hand and weather the time it takes for a tank to mature. Keep your water parameters steady. My tank is 4 years old and I have a huge GHA problem, but my corals are doing well and I no lonmger have dyanos nor cyano, so it doesn't bother me as much. I let it grow into big clumps which makes it easier to remove. Eventually, corals will cover all the rock work and take away room for the GHA to hold.

There are more experienced and better reef keepers than me that swear by using as little rock as possible in the DT and will supplement with marine pure block in the sump. This makes a lot of sense to me. You can always add rock to create more coral anchorage.

If I had to do it over, I'd use 1/10th the rocks to start and put marine pure blocks in my sump. My original logoc was more rock, more filtration. Now I subscribe to more rock, more homes for GHA and detritus.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm in year 2 of what seems the unwinnable war against GHA. I have an 8ft tank full of rock, started from dry rock. If I had my time over, I would add as little rock as possible, let it get covered in coralline and corals, then add more, then add more, incrementally so your only fighting one small section at a time. You manually remove as each segment 'evolves' from nuisance to corals and coralline. I'm tempted to setup a second tank with no fish and let it 'evolve' entirely before adding nutrients via fish

Your hair algae looks very 'white' to me. In my experience the greener it is, the stronger / more it is thriving. When it goes pale/white like this it's really struggling to stay alive (so your keeping the nutrients nice and low). As mentioned above, let it grow nice and long and try and keep phosphates as close to zero as you can - this makes for easy hand removal.
 
oh and get your hands on as much coralline scrapings as you can to seed as much as possible and research how to accelerate it's growth. Until that is growing inplace of the GHA, nothing will change
 
I’m battling gha myself. At this point I’ve added a scrubber and dosing Vibrant, since it goes after the algae and you can still run your tank methods. Weekly wc using an air hose and scrapping the gha with it, directly into the bucket. Bacteria is a natural way to remove. Snails weren’t as interested in it and urchin is hit and miss with cleaning. I have a lot of coralline, just not on the new Tonga branch scape
 
First off, don't panic. Algae is absolutely normal. It grows everywhere in the oceans. If you had no algae growing in your tank, something would be very seriously wrong. Your tank is still very new and your nutrient levels are not way out-of-whack. Reefkeeping is a journey, not a destination. Settle down and try to enjoy the ride, even though it's not always a smooth one.

Second, your algae is looking very white. That generally means that for whatever reason, it is struggling. Leave it alone and observe one small area of it for a few days to see if it is actually wasting away or recovering.

Third, scrubbing your rock is a complete waste of time, and probably does more harm than good. You cannot -- I repeat, cannot remove hair algae by scrubbing the rock. In order to actually remove it you would need to remove the outer layer of material from the rock, which is not going to happen unless you're using a wire brush and taking the rock down to a pure white state.

Fourth, you can manually remove algae from areas where it's growing in large tufts. At water change time, start a siphon and use a long tweezers to grab a tuft of the algae. Twist the tweezers to remove the algae from the rock and let the siphon suck it up. This does not remove the algae entirely, but does remove the bulk of it, doing two things. It makes the tank look better, and exports all of the nutrients that the algae has locked up in its cells.

Finally, patience is key. This can be a long process, and there is no magic bullet. Grazer animals are great, but many consume algae without completely digesting it, which means they can actually help spread it around the tank. But they are still mostly beneficial. Most grazers are, however, pretty specific about what they don't like, and it seems that very few prefer hair algae as a food source.
 
My Foxface makes short work of all hair Algae. He cleans all new coral rocks and frags within minutes.

He's very well behaved too.

Maybe an option ?

(Assuming your water quality is good , tank is cycled and tank is large enough.)
 
I am afraid that you are fighting a losing IMHO. I had this problem with a number of tank and on my last one had to throw all of the rock out. Probably too much light, feeding, etc. The problem got worse when I added a couple of fish, probably overfed.

I started all over again with CaribSea life rock and similar rock from another vendor. Both were dyed pink and purple to simulate coralline algae. Even after 8 month I have yet to have one strand of algae and never any diatoms,
Currently have only soft corals in tank and their growth is not what I expected, too slow (but they are not dying either. Only use RO water.
Calcium is 410 in my alkalinity is a 9. I don't test for anything else.

Its a 40 gallon tank and I do 5 gallon water changes monthly with Tropic Marin salt?
 
This is somewhat controversial, but I'm a believer in BIG clean up crews. 1 (or more!) snail/hermit per gallon is not too big when you have a big algae outbreak.

Small clean up crews stay well fed from leftover food, fish poo, etc and aren't interested in the less tempting hair algae... big crews stay hungry and take what they can get! Including algae.

A lot of people will argue that that adds a lot of bio load to your system, which is true, but you just have to be ready to export the nutrients when there's a cuc die off. The good news is the resulting nutrient release from a thinning cuc is easier to export than nutrients trapped inside of algae!

My $.02.
 
My Foxface makes short work of all hair Algae. He cleans all new coral rocks and frags within minutes.

He's very well behaved too.

Maybe an option ?

(Assuming your water quality is good , tank is cycled and tank is large enough.)
Definetely want a foxface at some point. If its still bad in 3 weeks he'll probably be the next fish in. its a 125 6ft tank
 
First off, don't panic. Algae is absolutely normal. It grows everywhere in the oceans. If you had no algae growing in your tank, something would be very seriously wrong. Your tank is still very new and your nutrient levels are not way out-of-whack. Reefkeeping is a journey, not a destination. Settle down and try to enjoy the ride, even though it's not always a smooth one.

Second, your algae is looking very white. That generally means that for whatever reason, it is struggling. Leave it alone and observe one small area of it for a few days to see if it is actually wasting away or recovering.

Third, scrubbing your rock is a complete waste of time, and probably does more harm than good. You cannot -- I repeat, cannot remove hair algae by scrubbing the rock. In order to actually remove it you would need to remove the outer layer of material from the rock, which is not going to happen unless you're using a wire brush and taking the rock down to a pure white state.

Fourth, you can manually remove algae from areas where it's growing in large tufts. At water change time, start a siphon and use a long tweezers to grab a tuft of the algae. Twist the tweezers to remove the algae from the rock and let the siphon suck it up. This does not remove the algae entirely, but does remove the bulk of it, doing two things. It makes the tank look better, and exports all of the nutrients that the algae has locked up in its cells.

Finally, patience is key. This can be a long process, and there is no magic bullet. Grazer animals are great, but many consume algae without completely digesting it, which means they can actually help spread it around the tank. But they are still mostly beneficial. Most grazers are, however, pretty specific about what they don't like, and it seems that very few prefer hair algae as a food source.
Thank you by far my favorite response. Im trying a 3 day blackout only because I noticed something. So recently my fuge light died and there was obviously plenty of GHA down there too but I went to go see how the chaeto has been doing for a week without light and all the GHA vanished!
 
Increase your cleanup crew and add lawnmower blenny for assistance
Now to find cause:
What is Phosphate level?
Are you using tap or well water ?
IS THE TANK AT OR NEAR A WINDOW?
What is your light schedule and intensity?
 

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