I hate you green hair algae...

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Good start/growth on the scrubber Reef N
Mcarrol, I have a 75 gallon tank about15 months old. The algae is definitely HA. I added a tuxedo urchin about 3 weeks ago found an empty shell today
water tests, No3 3, Po4 <0.2 , alk &.7 or 8, Ca around 360/370.
here is a pic in a lower light corner
HPIM8556.JPG
 
Travis Stewart said:
What's the best way to make this given you're not hard plumbed
Click to expand...
You can build a drop in scrubber given you have a sump. If you dont have a sump you can just use an old empty tank to have the scrubber sit in. (youll obviously have to incorporate some sort of overflow and return pump to cycle the water back into the display tank.)You can build a stand out of pvc that you hang the plastic mesh from. Then tie in a submersible pump you can drop in the sump with the scrubber stand. Go on youtube and search "diy algae scrubber". There are so many results and documented builds its great!! Also many different ways to build this and the concept is easy. Running water over scuffed up mesh for algae to cling and grow onto with sufficient lighting.
 
Can I put in my two cents???? I just solved a hair algae problem in my 120 gal mixed reef tank. It took 5 months to solve.I tried everything...Read books, R2R, LFS etc nothing worked. No3 5 ppm (Nyos) PO4 0.00 (Hanna). Only feed once a day. Manually removing the algae. Spent a lot of money on more CUC. Nothing worked. Then I relate really started to crashad somewhere to raise my Magnesium To 1800 ppm. (I never got it that high though). Started to raise the Magnesium. I started to remove the rocks that I could remove easily and washed them with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. Got a big bottle with a squirt top and would squirt the rock down and let it set for about 4 minutes and put it back in the tank. Still manually removed as much as I could. Kept raising Magnesium. (it got to about 1500 pp when I stopped dosing).I was starting to win.... Then I decreased my photo period. Algae really started to crash. Kept up with the H2O2 treatments and the manual removal. I now have 99% of the Hair algae gone. But I keep asking the important question....What actually got rid of the hair algae? A combination of every thing or just one thing? If I had to guess....reducing the photo period had the biggest effect. I hope this helps.
 
Nikko said:
Oh it totally sucks man!! I hate it so bad!! I shook things up BIG TIME today. Tore apart my entire tank and brushed all the live rock very thoroughly, then threw them in buckets of freshwater so they don't completely die, captured my wrasse and put him in QT (poor guy has had a terribly stressful day) because the shake up dropped oxygen levels and he was gasping, and I also suspect an spike ammonium, although it was odd to me because it read zero on my liquid test kit a few hours (would probably be smart to test it now..). Hopefully my inverts don't die.... will check on all the corals tomorrow morning and put in my hopefully still live rock.
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While you had all the rock and fish out of the tank you should have vacuumed the hell out of your substrate. You mentioned a lot of dead animals and things that went missing. You definitely DO NOT want rotting particulates trapped in the sand/gravel. That will always keep your phosphates & nitrates sky high and you'll never get rid of the algae. You should've also done a massive water change to get any spores out of the water (if your tank isn't that big). But being you basically had an empty tank with just water and sand, it would've been the perfect time to completely clean the substrate and replace a lot of the water.

The fish probably wasn't gasping from lack of oxygen, he was probably just very stressed. Wrasses usually dart underneath the sand when they get frightened and when they sleep. I had to put a small pile of aragonite in the corner of my QT tank for my Wrasses to sleep under so they felt comfortable. Unless it's a Wrasse like a Harlequin Tuskfish, they need a sandy bottom to do well.

By any chance, do you have the tank in visible range of any windows or doors? Because natural sunlight will fuel algae like wildfire.

I made the mistake when I set up my first tank to have it directly across from the big living room window. The window was 3 rooms away, but had a direct line of sight to the tank and no matter how low I got my nitrates & phosphates I still had algae on the glass.

Just a few things to keep in mind.
 
Man i cleaned the heck out of that substrate! Super thorough... felt horrible tearing apart my beautiful aquascape but it was a necessary evil and i used it as a an opportunity to perform a major cleanup which i followed up with a 40% water change. Thanks for the info on the wrasse. Felt horrible seeing that guy scared out of his wits (btw he is a rainbow fairy wrasse). He is pretty happy in short-term QT hiding in some pvc and he came out with reckless abandon when i fed him a little mysis this evening so he is all good. The official QT nitrates are still just a tad to high so going to wait a little before moving him again and in the meantime will monitor water parameters in short-term QT. I set up my tank about 25 feet away from my relatively large front window. No direct light but realized that could still be an issue, so i always keep the curtains closed. I am aware how light can exacerbate the algae issue... If i was to do it over again, i may have chosen a different location, although it is in the perfect location in my home in terms of aesthetics. Is it crazy talk to consider having that window and possibly the exterior of the tank UV coated to reduce the light effects? I really, really don't want to move it if possible. It would be a huge undertaking not to mention im not sure what would be a good alternative.. thanks for the very thoughtful response!
 
Nikko said:
A few months ago, the fish in my 90 gallon reef tank (corals all LPS/soft) got decimitated with Ich and I lost all my fish except for my wrasse. Tough lesson learned - a quarantine tank is essential and that matter has since been addressed. When I noticed Ich was taking over, I overfed the fish with "Ich Shield" resulting in a mega nitrate explosion, consequently resulting in a green hair algae bloom. I dealt with minor algae issues prior to that but they all came and went. This is a new nightmare which I feel i'm losing to... I do 30% water changes biweekly (attempted to rip out as much GHA as I could, which was is being syphoned) and have a minor bio-load since i'm down to one fish and a CUC consisting of maybe 15 hermits, 2 emeralds, 1 fighting conch. I also had a sea hare, but sadly, it has been MIA for over a week now and I fear he passed away. I have a protein skimmer that seems to be operating effectively. I also have an ATO coming in the mail. No carbon. My salinity stays around 1.025, little to no phosphates (I am aware the green hair is probably consuming the phosphates), alkalinity in proper range, all that jazz... everything on paper, seems ok. I've read that hydrogen peroxide helps, but the GHA is really breaking me down with its maddening resiliency. I've also cut down my lighting to 4 hours a day and reduced the feedings of my wrasse to a couple bio-pellets every two days. I don't know what to do and understand there is no easy fix. I've had this tank for 6 months (i'm a newbie) and don't want to surrender this hobby to this hairy garbage like many do around this time. I've read plenty of posts from people, but looking for any success stories to renew my hope. Any help for this demoralized rookie hobbyist would be greatly appreciated!!
Click to expand...
I had the same issue, i bought 5 turbo snails(i have a 55 gallon tank), a yellow eyed tang, and adjusted my lights and it seems to have stemed the problem.
What type of lighting do you have?
 
BRS
I have 2 T5 fluorescent and 2 T5 blue actinic bulbs. Fortunately, all my corals are doing fantastic. Although i've been considering switching to LED because i have a lot of wiring in my canopy and sometimes the lights are sort of janky and do funny things (like suddenly go off and stay off and need to be tapped to go back on.). Plus i think LEDS are just cool with the various spectrums of light you can use.
 
ReefNo0ob said:
You can build a drop in scrubber given you have a sump. If you dont have a sump you can just use an old empty tank to have the scrubber sit in. (youll obviously have to incorporate some sort of overflow and return pump to cycle the water back into the display tank.)You can build a stand out of pvc that you hang the plastic mesh from. Then tie in a submersible pump you can drop in the sump with the scrubber stand. Go on youtube and search "diy algae scrubber". There are so many results and documented builds its great!! Also many different ways to build this and the concept is easy. Running water over scuffed up mesh for algae to cling and grow onto with sufficient lighting.
Click to expand...

I have a sump and have tried this before. I had trouble finding the mesh
 
Steve McGlamery said:
Can I put in my two cents???? I just solved a hair algae problem in my 120 gal mixed reef tank. It took 5 months to solve.I tried everything...Read books, R2R, LFS etc nothing worked. No3 5 ppm (Nyos) PO4 0.00 (Hanna). Only feed once a day. Manually removing the algae. Spent a lot of money on more CUC. Nothing worked. Then I relate really started to crashad somewhere to raise my Magnesium To 1800 ppm. (I never got it that high though). Started to raise the Magnesium. I started to remove the rocks that I could remove easily and washed them with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. Got a big bottle with a squirt top and would squirt the rock down and let it set for about 4 minutes and put it back in the tank. Still manually removed as much as I could. Kept raising Magnesium. (it got to about 1500 pp when I stopped dosing).I was starting to win.... Then I decreased my photo period. Algae really started to crash. Kept up with the H2O2 treatments and the manual removal. I now have 99% of the Hair algae gone. But I keep asking the important question....What actually got rid of the hair algae? A combination of every thing or just one thing? If I had to guess....reducing the photo period had the biggest effect. I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Man GHA is no joke at all... it was really depressing me looking at all that nastiness. Good to hear you have almost won your battle! Hope that last 10% gets out of town soon [emoji37]
 
Deltec
ReefNo0ob said:
Okay good to know! Hasnt even been a full week after cleaning it and the growth on the screen is crazy its like cleaning it gave it a turbo boost!!
Click to expand...

Growth keeps the light out so cleaning it weekly is a good idea...or so they tell me! Took me forever to get everything together which I now have but just not got around to putting it all together. Better do it as my hair algae seems to start growing when I take food out the cabinet...

PS I moved house a while ago so decided to cook my rocks before putting them back in. They came out spotless after a couple of weeks so I decided to put them back. Two days after doing that we had a power failure and I estimate no power for roughly 4 hours. Temp went up to about 27 which is way above the normal 25...so needless to say couple of days later and my tank resembled the green green grass of home...but not in a nice way! Some large water changes seems to keep it in check but need that scrubber to kill it once and for all. OK this was just a little pep talk to myself and you guys unfortunately had to share in it!
 
There is a thread on here that fluconazole kills it. Ordering some is on my list of things to do.
 
Orphek OR3 reef aquarium LED bar
Steve McGlamery said:
Can I put in my two cents???? I just solved a hair algae problem in my 120 gal mixed reef tank. It took 5 months to solve.I tried everything...Read books, R2R, LFS etc nothing worked. No3 5 ppm (Nyos) PO4 0.00 (Hanna). Only feed once a day. Manually removing the algae. Spent a lot of money on more CUC. Nothing worked. Then I relate really started to crashad somewhere to raise my Magnesium To 1800 ppm. (I never got it that high though). Started to raise the Magnesium. I started to remove the rocks that I could remove easily and washed them with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. Got a big bottle with a squirt top and would squirt the rock down and let it set for about 4 minutes and put it back in the tank. Still manually removed as much as I could. Kept raising Magnesium. (it got to about 1500 pp when I stopped dosing).I was starting to win.... Then I decreased my photo period. Algae really started to crash. Kept up with the H2O2 treatments and the manual removal. I now have 99% of the Hair algae gone. But I keep asking the important question....What actually got rid of the hair algae? A combination of every thing or just one thing? If I had to guess....reducing the photo period had the biggest effect. I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
This is pretty much what I had to do. Even when I went from my 5 gal. to my 75 gal. I put in new rock when I started it up. NOTHING except fish & 3 corals that were clean went to my 75. I have lived this nightmare with my 5 gal. I got a piece of dry treated rock from my lfs & a couple of weeks later I have a freaking (*/$÷!/) rock with a new fur coat of hair algae!!!!! This really ticked me off to make such an effort to make sure & not put in anything remotely resembling HA.

Well, it is getting the H2HO soak with a very good scrubbing (I have a lot of anger issues to resolve) then, it is going onto my sump! That will put it in its place!
 
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SaltySue said:
This is pretty much what I had to do. Even when I went from my 5 gal. to my 75 gal. I put in new rock when I started it up. NOTHING except fish & 3 corals that were clean went to my 75. I have lived this nightmare with my 5 gal. I got a piece of dry treated rock from my lfs & a couple of weeks later I have a freaking (*/$÷!/) rock with a new fur coat of hair algae!!!!! This really ****** me off to make such an effort to make sure & not put in anything remotely resembling HA.

Well, it is getting the H2HO soak with a very good scrubbing (I have a lot of anger issues to resolve) then, it is going onto my sump! That will put it in its place!
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear.

I keep my lights on the lower end (~100 par at the sb for like 5-6 hrs with minimal reds) and magnesium 1,200 up to 1,400 if there is a major algae issue. Only have HA on the back side of the overflow and the bottom of the heater but no where else. It doesn't grow either. (At one point it literally grew overnight and replaced itself). I did have some cyano growing. I removed the rock it was mainly on completely and it hasn't returned back as violently since. But it is still there in smaller portions. That's in a 10 gallon though. Also my tank doesn't receive window light.
 
Tidal Gardens
I have a small rake tool that works well on my sand bed, I rake it over the surface of the sand and the algae follows pretty easily. I then bunch it in a corner and the siphon it out. I always empty most of the water in the bucket to leave the algae barely wet, and let it sit for a few minutes (sometimes as long as 20 minutes) while I finish up doing other maintenance, then I get a flashlight and double check I didn't scoop and siphon ay of my snails or crabs in the bucket before I discard the remainder of the contents. The crabs will usually come to the surface and when you flash the light they hid in their shell making them easy to spot. depending on how long and how thick the algae in the bucket is, I usually thin it out across the bottom of the bucket to be sure not to trap and critters within.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Travis Stewart said:
I have a sump and have tried this before. I had trouble finding the mesh
Click to expand...
You can get the mesh at a craft store its called knitting mesh i believe they sell it in big sheets where you can cut to size. You REAALLY have to scuff it up bc its so smooth algae wont cling to it so take it outside and use your foot or something to scuff it on pavement or a sidewalk(both sides)
 
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