My algae is getting out of control

[vetteguy53081]

Over the weekend, I saw many posts with reefers battling or getting frustrated with algae, mainly GHA (green hair algae). There are many causes for hair algae such as lack of maintenance, over-feeding, excess light, excess nutrients and more. Having a tank at or near a window does not help as UV will do a number with algae promotion and growth.

What are you doing to help control or battle algae? Do you use a cleaner crew and what are members of your crew?

I have many tangs in addition to astrea, cerith and nerite snails. I also keep mag near 1380 and have side of tank blacked out with black construction paper and stickers on it from trade shows so it doesn't look odd. I am Always algae free.

 

[CWalters]

I'm currently in the battle with it. To manage it I do the following:

Scrub my rocks every water change
Weekly water change (10-15%)
CUC (Hermits, astrea, trochus, nassarius, conch, Tomini tang, and lawnmower blenny)

It's an uphill battle for sure. I don't want to go the chemical route and introduce something harder to take care of like dino's.

 

[52728299]

My big tank has two small tangs and a foxface which I believe help. I also have hundreds of snails in there. Small tank has like 20+ hermits and snails and a Tuxedo urchin. There was tons of gha in there and they wiped it out in like a week.

 

[GARRIGA]

NoPox solved mine and now I've been trying to grow it since February when I stopped dosing. Red turf took over but I find that appealing. I'm not turned off by algae. It's how nature solves nutrients for us and provides oxygen while removing co2. Bet if someone developed a colorful strain and named it some crazy name like "Galactic Fuzzy Maniac" that we'd all be buying that up then trying to figure out how best to frag a hair so we can maximize profits although remember to raise prices just before that big Memorial Day sale.

 

[fodsod]

Good post. I had an algae issue in my 50g cube but just mostly on 1 side of the aquarium. Turns out, the sunlight was coming through the blinds on the door it's next to and causing an algae issue. I've since installed a black out curtain and the problem resolved itself.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I'm currently in the battle with it. To manage it I do the following:

Scrub my rocks every water change
Weekly water change (10-15%)
CUC (Hermits, astrea, trochus, nassarius, conch, Tomini tang, and lawnmower blenny)

It's an uphill battle for sure. I don't want to go the chemical route and introduce something harder to take care of like dino's.

Often chemicals are alternatives and not solutions and lead to other issues. Im seeing many using fluconasal (FLUX) which can often kill off algae quickly and cause other issues with water. Im not a fan of algaecides in a reef tank

 

[beesnreefs]

I'm currently in the battle with it. To manage it I do the following:

Scrub my rocks every water change
Weekly water change (10-15%)
CUC (Hermits, astrea, trochus, nassarius, conch, Tomini tang, and lawnmower blenny)

It's an uphill battle for sure. I don't want to go the chemical route and introduce something harder to take care of like dino's.

I can relate to this

Battling horrible GHA for about four months now. 225g mixed reef system just under a year old. Our current approach (which feels like might be finally making headway):

• Reduced light intensity by 20%. Reduced duration by 1.5 hours.
• Eliminated all white and red from light spectrum. Pretty much just blues now.
• Added about a dozen turbo snails to the 10 or so we already had.
• Added about 30 trochus snails.
• Added who knows how many ceriths (large and small), nerites, and nassarius
• Added 3 baby tuxedo urchin. Have five more coming this week from Vosson
• Scrub all rocks with smoker’s toothbrush every weekend. Use fish nets to grab as much out of water column as possible. Siphon out as much as possible through a 5 micron sock.
• Added a bag of Chemi Pure Elite (which has GFO) this past week
• Running Moonshiners to keep trace elements at proper levels. Running mag at around 1450.
• Added AquaBiomics live rock and IPSF live sand and mud (plus some coralline plates) to help boost biome to compete with GHA for real estate

 

[Gtinnel]

I have a tank that is currently a fowlr with the intention of adding coral eventually that has an awful gha problem. I can’t use clean up crew because they become a snack for the single fish that is in the tank. I’m too lazy to keep up with manual water changes, so I am in the process of building one of the Donovan’s nitrate destroyer. I’m excited to see how it works, and if it works well I may try to incorporate one into my reef tank that has a small bryopsis problem that I’m trying not to use fluconazole for.

 

[steveschuerger]

I had a horrible battle with gha and bryopsis. Used a combination of cuc-
astrea snails, couple dozen
turbo snails, 2 smaller one ginormous
cerith, both dwarf and regular sized
a few trochus snails
3 emerald mithrax crabs
1 tiger conch
numerous other oddball snail types
2 cucumbers
and switching over to finally using RODI water . Also use use some distilled for quick top offs.
‘lately I’ve had an slight increase of growth due to nutrient increase, but it still is pretty good control

 

[Stephen8169301]

I just finished my battle I upped my water changes to 5 gal a week scrubbed and siphoned rocks reduced lighting by 2hrs

 

[paragrouper]

I have a good CUC army and I do weekly water changes. I am finding the odd clump of bubble algae (my Emerald Crab is slacking), which I eradicate when I find it.

I also have a few bits of Macro Algae (Halimedia, Pom Poms, and Dragons Breath) in addition to the Chaeto in my HOB refugium.

 

[Dburr1014]

Fluconazole;
I'm done fighting.
Bye bye GHA!

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Spot on with those reefers who suggested that “chemicals” would be a last resort. I occasionally help maintain 200 tanks here in Az. One day a client called in for an emergency. All of their fish were dead. Long story short, they were periodically dosing Algaefix. I began looking at every possibility as to what killed the fish. After exhausting every possibility, I took a look at the shelf life date on the side of the bottle. This chemical was well over a year expired. The client thankfully took responsibility for the ongoing error.

 

[twelvefive]

Fluconazole;
I'm done fighting.
Bye bye GHA!

This is where I'm at.

I've been fighting it over a year and a half, complete rip clean with new sand once, just cleaned rocks with peroxide once, put a huge cuc and dwarf angel in, still can't beat it. I dosed fluc two weeks ago and have been manually removing some a few times a week , it's finally not growing back faster than I can pull it and I feel like I'm making progress. In the process of this, I also started feeding fish and corals way more to keep my nitrates and phosphates from being bottomed out since the algae was consuming all of it as far as I can tell. IDK if I'll do a second dose of fluc yet, depends on what everything looks like next weekend.

 

[GARRIGA]

I have a tank that is currently a fowlr with the intention of adding coral eventually that has an awful gha problem. I can’t use clean up crew because they become a snack for the single fish that is in the tank. I’m too lazy to keep up with manual water changes, so I am in the process of building one of the Donovan’s nitrate destroyer. I’m excited to see how it works, and if it works well I may try to incorporate one into my reef tank that has a small bryopsis problem that I’m trying not to use fluconazole for.

Donovan just copying what Aquaclear used to sell. Run water slowly through different media to exhaust oxygen via nitrification forcing denitrification of anoxic conditions where bound nitrates could be used. However, entire process was based on feeding carbon. Carbon dosing solves that without the need for denitrification which is a slow process to establish and filters at a very slow pace. Carbon dosing much easier. More equipment isn’t always the solution.

 

[Rugops]

I scrubbed the GHA off the rock and upped the Mg to 1600 mg/l. It worked out but really don't know how.

 

[GARRIGA]

Here’s the old filter design.

 

[Bruttall]

I followed along with what I saw a few guys here doing. The one who stands out is the author, Vetteguy. Gave me great advice early on, tangs and snails. I turned my white lights on for longer to grow more algae for my tangs this week.

 

[j.falk]

I let it grow. I like the natural look of it.

 

[KrisReef]

GHA is kinda pretty waving in the current but when it grows over corals it can become a real problem. About 5, maybe 7!years ago I purchased a sps colony with a tiny tuff of beautiful red wire algae on it. I watched it spread out around the tank before I realized that it was going to be able to grow over everything and kill stuff just like GHA. I didn’t try urchins but slugs, snail’s and Mg did not stop it. I scrubbed the tank a few times and lowered nutrients but when I gave up the fight and let the tank go it’s thing red Cyanobacteria covered it up and smothered it out, completely?

I didn’t see red wire for a few years and then it would appear now and then but it has never returned to plague the tank like it did at first?

I recently had another outbreak which lasted about a month or two before the Cyanobacteria appeared and smothered it out again?