Need Help with Hair Algae!

[Biglurr54]

I have been struggling with hair algae in my 175 reef for about 4 weeks now. The tank is 4 months old and it has hair everywhere. For the last 4 weeks I have been cleaning the hair off the rocks the best I can with a toothbrush. It knocks it down for 5 days and then its back. Due to the size of the tank I can only get ½ the tank clean at a time. The other problem is I cant take the rocks out as they are too big and have corals attached to them. My sump is full of hair as well but I haven’t been cleaning that out.

I brush as much off in the water with a tooth brush and then and i set all my power heads to 100 to move the hair around. I change the filter sock out ever 8 hours for the first 24 hours then every 10 hours after that for the next 48 then i remove the filter sock.

I have cut feeding back to the point where the fish are starving which I’m not ok with, the fuge light is running 16 hours a day (8h on 4h off 8h on 4h off) I have 1 ½ cup of GFO running in the reactor.


My params:
Salinity 35ppt (Calibrated Refract)
Temp: 78.5 (Apex)
Alk: 9.42 (Hanna)
Calc: 440 (Salifert)
Mag: 1400 (Salifert)
Nitrate: 0 (High Res Salifert)
PO4: 0 (Hanna Phosphorous)

The hair is mainly in the lower part of the tank. This is where the dry rock was and also where less flow is. (flow is 2 Icecap Gyres and 2 MP40QD and 2000gph return flow)


Some potential options:
1. Fluconazole treatment (have med in mail)
2. Add Sea Hare, and bristletooth tang and/or foxface and more snails
3. Continue with tooth brush
4. Add additional filtration (ATS, Carbon Dosing, Additional gfo reactor, Cheato reactor)

Any other ideas?

I have some money to play with if needed. I just cant be diving into the tank every other day with a tooth brush for 4 hours.

Here’s my build thread https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/biglurrs-175-build-with-pics.379567/

 

[Biglurr54]

I went from this

 

[Biglurr54]

To this

 

[Neo Jeo]

Thats to bad. The only thing I can think of is do you have green emerald crab? Maybe over feeding? I get a patch of it here and there and i instantly squirt 1ml of peroxide into it and its gone next day. Yours would be to much for that.

 

[cracker]

I think they will tell you to get the Po4/ No3 up just a little ,keep up brushing what You can reach & get more snails. Try this fist .
It worked for me.

 

[Brew12]

Personally, I would go with a combination of 2 and 4.

Algae grazers are great, but only if they are part of your longer term stocking plans.

I also think it is a good idea to run either a fuge or an algae turf scrubber.

I feel that Fluconazole is great for Bryopsis but it can take a long time to treat GHA. For GHA I feel the Vibrant by UWC works much faster.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/v...iscussion-thread.271428/page-238#post-4973530

 

[Biglurr54]

I have a scrubber from an old tank. It's sized for 2 cubes a day. Easy to set up though. I feed very little. 1 cube every other day. I fed 2 cubes every day in the other tank. I want to get my no3 and po4 up as my corals are looking terrible. I lost. A beautiful colony the other day. My Walt Disney won't extend it s polyps. My green goblin looks brown with a tinge of green.

Should I just start shoveling food in the get the no3 and po4 up?

 

[Biglurr54]

I had two emerald crabs. Haven't seen them in a while. That doesn't mean there not in there. A bristle tooth is on the permanent stick list and a foxface can be added in place of tooth brush!

 

[Biglurr54]

I have a 25 gallon fuge lit with a mars hydra led. The cheato2 used to grow like mad. Now it doesn't grow at all. Just floats around and is all dark green. No new growth. It stopped growing when the hair took over.

 

[CoralDanimal]

I've battled hair algae this year and while flucanazole definitely wipes it out temporarily, it comes back over time as the source of the issue wasn't fixed. Following along to learn any findings presented on this thread

 

[Mal11224]

I recently went through an algae outbreak and I feel your frustration. Your nitrates and phosphates are zero likely because of the algae.
I tried fluconazole and did not see results. Shortly after I tried vibrant and it worked much better.
I would reduce feeding a little and try to starve the algae as much as you can. I used a siphon to pull the loose GHA out to prevent it from just floating away and landing somewhere else. Increased water changes until it was under control. This was after I used vibrant. It takes time to see improvements so you will need patience. Having a fuge or scrubber will help as well. My GHA happened because I moved some rocks around and exposed the tank to detritus. Having good flow is also important. There are plenty of threads regarding vibrant on here and they are very helpful.
Good luck!

 

[Leadfooted]

Listen, do yourself a huge favor and today find a Sea Hare. You need to sort f trim the grass first because they don't like long grass. If you get one that's not eating, swap it for another one. These are the best for you and yes emerald crabs will help so get 3 of those little hulks and a sea hare. Give me an update in a week, this will help control while your tank goes through stages. Keep up the water changes too.

 

[Biglurr54]

Water changed are automatic and have been occurring 2xs daily at approximately 1.5 gallons a change. I picked up a sea hare 3 weeks ago. Acclimated him and let him go. he ran around for 3 days then disappeared never to be seen again. he was quite large so i am wondering if he was nearing the end of his life cycle. A different lfs has smaller ones. I will pick one up tonight along with come crabs.

I am looking form something to knock the algae down. Then work at fixing the issue. I think the hair got out of control (lots of it everywhere) which took nutrients away before the chaeto could. I want to take out the hair so the chaeto can take over. Then have some sort of herbivore to keep the hair algae in check once its managed.

I really dont think it is over feeding. If i cut back anymore my fish will die. They have lost weight and bellies are starting to look pinched from staving them. My clowns stopped spawning, and i lost a cleaner shrimp due to what i believe is starvation. all the food is gone within a minute of dropping it in. nothing gets to the sand or rocks. I was feeding every other day for 3 weeks. I just started with every day feeding as the fish look poorly.

 

[ZoWhat]

Had the same problem bc I had low amts of good bacteria. and TOO MUCH ORGANICS floating around converting into GHA before it became NO3

I dosed Dr Tims WasteAway per the instructions. In conjuction I started dosing 1oz of 80proof vodka + 1oz of vinegar each morning. After about two weeks my tanks LR was clear of any GHA.

The vodka+vinegar idea came staight from Randy Holmes Farley who said Red Sea's NoPox is basically a 50%/50% mix of vodka (ethanol) and vinegar.

I'm now dosing vodka+vinegar until the end of time.

 

[Biglurr54]

I like that skim jim. I have the available dosing heads. What vodka and what vinegar? Anything special or just run of the mill stuff?

 

[ZoWhat]

I like that skim jim. I have the available dosing heads. What vodka and what vinegar? Anything special or just run of the mill stuff?

Vodka = make sure its 80proof and NOT 40. Buy the CHEAPEST vodka on the shelf thats 80proof. Youre only using it as a carbon source for its ethanol properties.

Vinegar = food grade thats 3-5% acidity. I buy a 2gallon pack of vinegar from SamsClub for like $6-$8... i cant remember exact pricing as I just grab-n-go. Vinegar is also a GREAT nontoxic cleaner that can be used to soak powerheads clean, etc etc. I ALWAYS have 2-3 gallons of food grade vinegar on hand.

HTH

 

[Cory]

These made my rocks white! Your best friend. When the algae is gone feed it kelp wafers or nori. They can live a long time

 

[Biglurr54]

I agree with the vinegar as a cleaner. I have a bunch laying around. I also use acid for cleaning. The Vinegar is easier to use! I will do some research and look into this. Ill have to get a dosing schedule/amount down. I have been toying with this idea for a while. I was just hoping that I wouldn't need to get to this point.

Did you have No3 or PO4. I have always heard to do carbon dosing to remove No3. I have no detectable No3 so im leary of dosing to lower something that is already too low!

 

[Cory]

Here is a cool video

 

[ZoWhat]

I have no detectable No3 so im leary of dosing to lower something that is already too low!

Any detectable NO3 is being eaten by the GHA and fueling it.

Search this forum using keywords "vodka vinegar dosing"

In my case..... I have built up an army of good bacteria that attacks the GHA (where the GHA uses trace amts of NO3 to keep itself sustained).

My vodka+viengar dosing fuels the good bacteria to DEVOUR the GHA, not giving it a chance to sustain itself. That's about as deep into reef chemistry I go, LOL. All i know is that it WORKS!

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