I just had a GHA explosion. Please help!!!

[AL210]

I was managing an outbreak of what I thought was GHA starting 2 weeks ago. My tank is 3 months young. 120Gal 35" high cylinder.
All water is from my RODI that says its 0TDS. Fritz Reef Pro salt. Benn doing weekly/bi weekly water changes and running a skimmer.
I do have a UV as well ready but not sure it works on GHA?


Well, Its GHA. Over the last several days it exploded and took over the tank. Tried brushing it over the weekend but not much came off.
I had started dosing NoPox a week ago but obviously has had no effect thus far. Maybe I should stop. My 2 hermits, 6 snails are not making a dent in it. I have 2 Turbos and 4 more hermits coming tomorrow and stated a lights out routine.

Tomini Tang and baby Yellow Tang can't keep up. None of my other fish are algae pluckers.

Not sure what else to do. I have Microbacter7, Live Rock Enhance, Dr Tims Waste Away and Vibrant all on hand but not sure which or any of these products to try.

 

[Webslinger]

pick it off , feed less, get you parameters in check, RODI?

 

[Retro Reefer]

I would recommend the vibrant but it will most likely take many months to completely eradicated the GHA.. you will also need to manually remove algae and do water changes during the treatment process.

 

[New&no clue]

What is your CUC like? I had a small outbreak and added 30ish assorted snails to my tank and it was all gone within a week.

 

[AL210]

pick it off , feed less, get you parameters in check, RODI?

I was afraid this was going to happen. Been only feeding twice a day and the fish look like they eat almost everything I put in. I have a 3 stage RODI. TDS always reads 0 my incoming TDS is in the 90s,

 

[AL210]

What is your CUC like? I had a small outbreak and added 30ish assorted snails to my tank and it was all gone within a week.

(2) Blue leg hermits, (4) Trochus snails & (2) Nassarius snails

I have 2 Turbos and 4 more hermits coming tomorrow.

 

[Crustaceon]

This is going to sound really low-tech but....

Do a water change using a smaller diameter hose with a ball valve on it. Start the siphon and close the valve about half way. This will give you more time to work. Put the hose end near one of your rock and scrub the algae with an old toothbrush. How you beat this stuff is a combination of maintaining water quality and especially manual removal. It might take 3-4 10% water changes done like this before you really see lasting results.

 

[Cell]

That is quite the outbreak for just a 3 mo old tank. At that point, I'd pull the rock and give it a good hydrogen peroxide scrub with a toothbrush. Rinse it good and back into the tank.

Also consider cutting lighting, feeding and I'd personally recommend Vibrant. It solved my GHA problem.

@brandon429 might be willing to go into way more detail/nuance on the rip clean procedure

 

[AL210]

That is quite the outbreak for just a 3 mo old tank. At that point, I'd pull the rock and give it a good hydrogen peroxide scrub with a toothbrush. Rinse it good and back into the tank.

Also consider cutting lighting, feeding and I'd personally recommend Vibrant. It solved my GHA problem.

@brandon429 might be willing to go into way more detail/nuance on the rip clean procedure

Thanks for the suggestions. Rip clean not an option. My whole rock structure was cemented together inside the tank.
Plus its a 35" tall cylinder tank. Man is it tough to do maintenance in there. I have to use a step ladder to access it.

 

[Chandlertank108]

No3 and Po4 level?

 

[NightManCometh]

Unfortunately i think your best bet is to get in there and start scrubbin. If you GHA is exploding you most like have extra nutrients.

You can also go lights out for a few days. Total blackout. I've added some hydrogen peroxide. 1 ml per 10g sometimes less. Then do a water change after.

Do slight changes. Its like guiding a boat. And itll take time. Sometimes stuff happens.

 

[Spkarim]

Try a bunch more turbo snails. Crabs haven't done much in my experience. Also consider a sea urchin or also lawnmower blenny. I would try to avoid additives that you don't know what they contain.

 

[andrewey]

You can check out BRS Tv- they have a pretty good video on HA treatments. To be honest, it's a multi step process if you really want to get it under control. The most important is going to be manual removal for an outbreak that big. Even if you threw every turbo snail/urchin at the problem, you would simply be rereleasing the nitrate/phosphate trapped in that HA in the first place. I would manually pull as much as you can (I know it's a pain) and use the toothbrush one hand, siphon in the other hand technique to remove as much as you can. You'll likely have to do this 3-5 times or even once a week. That's going to be the most important thing you can do.

At the same time, you're going to have to check your phosphate levels, nitrate levels, lighting and feeding. Those will work to eventually get it in check and keep it from coming back (plus this is where the CC crew is important), but it's likely not going to be an overnight process. Mentally, I would prepare to fight this for a couple months at least. There isn't anything besides manual removal that's going to fix this overnight. There are some other tricks like magnesium levels and the such to help, but ultimately you're going to have to hit this from a lot of different sides at once and be very systematic about checking your nutrient levels, photoperiod, etc.

 

[andrewey]

Here's the video. Worth the 7 minute watch.

 

[PR_nano]

Manual pull and Mexican turbo worked for me.

 

[AL210]

No3 and Po4 level?

No3 = 0ppm Po4= 0.02

 

[Adam H Sherman]

I was afraid this was going to happen. Been only feeding twice a day and the fish look like they eat almost everything I put in. I have a 3 stage RODI. TDS always reads 0 my incoming TDS is in the 90s,

I have several fish over 20 years old. I feed small amounts once or twice daily, generally pellets added little a time. My fish look fat and never get more that 3-5 pellets at a time, I try to never let food hit the bottom of the tank. Once a week they’ll get brine, mysis or krill, still added in small quantities at a time, again an effort to add slowly so nothing goes uneaten. Over feeding is easily done and never has positive results.

Andrewey’s Post 13 is where I’d start to work on the GHA, manual removal while verifying your water source is clean would be my first tasks.

 

[andrewey]

Just watch out interpreting those values. It's good to follow them, but when you have so much Algae growth, a lot of your nitrate and phosphate is locked up in the hair algae. As such, your values before the hair algae could have been substantially higher. In a sense, you've turned your entire tank into a ATS

As you remove the algae, that's when you'll want to watch those numbers each week to see what your baseline is and how quickly they increase.

 

[Phildago]

Flucanazole

 

[Dan_P]

I was managing an outbreak of what I thought was GHA starting 2 weeks ago. My tank is 3 months young. 120Gal 35" high cylinder.
All water is from my RODI that says its 0TDS. Fritz Reef Pro salt. Benn doing weekly/bi weekly water changes and running a skimmer.
I do have a UV as well ready but not sure it works on GHA?


Well, Its GHA. Over the last several days it exploded and took over the tank. Tried brushing it over the weekend but not much came off.
I had started dosing NoPox a week ago but obviously has had no effect thus far. Maybe I should stop. My 2 hermits, 6 snails are not making a dent in it. I have 2 Turbos and 4 more hermits coming tomorrow and stated a lights out routine.

Tomini Tang and baby Yellow Tang can't keep up. None of my other fish are algae pluckers.

Not sure what else to do. I have Microbacter7, Live Rock Enhance, Dr Tims Waste Away and Vibrant all on hand but not sure which or any of these products to try.

Add Mexican turbos. 5 would clean these rocks in a few days. Maybe the most straightforward way to control GHA. I do not know what the “rules” are for quarantining though.

Also, these beasts might need to be fed after they stripped the aquarium of GHA. I recently added 20 from Live Aquaria to a 75 gallon aquarium overrun with GHA. In less than a week the aquarium is approaching squeaky clean and I am scrambling for ways to feed these monsters . Ten might have been a smarter choice.