Recommendations to get rid of hair algae

[gizzo12]

Hi all, I’m starting to develop a hair algae problem in my reef tank and at first it was just in one spot but now it’s spreading. I cut back feeding to every other day and it’s been about a week of that so far. Any other things I can do to get it to go away? I have been manually removing it maybe every week or so too.

 

[vetteguy53081]

My recommendations:
Pull as much as you can by hand, then reduce white light intensity a little.
Add clean up crew. 4 of each . . . . Turbo snail, astrea, trochus, nassarius and nerite snails plus about 10 blue leg hermits).

Other option: reduce white lights and use Liquid vibrant which works well on this type of algae

 

[Hugh Mann]

There are many invertibrates, crabs, hermits, urchins and I believe some snails and fish that eat hair algae. Just be sure to stock the right amount for to combat the growth.

Also better nutrient export, refugium, chaeto reactor or what have you.

 

[tsouth]

At the first sight I had of hair algae on a frag, I monitored it very closely and did the following:

1. Set my lighting to only peak for 3 hours, with ramp ups and downs before and after. Check your lighting, see if you can tame it a bit. For example:
LED's
8am - 1%
10am - 25%
12pm - 50%
2pm - 100%
4pm - 50%
6pm - 25%
8pm - 0%

Where from 11-4 I turn on 2 t5's, and 1-6 the other 2 t5's, thus my peak is 1-3pm with all lights on.

2. Reducing the type of food rather than their occurrences. Flake and pellets are apparently higher in phosphates than say frozen mysis. I cut feeding down to twice a day - 1pm I feed either pellet or flake, and then 6pm I feed frozen. This also encourages some fish (wrasses) to pick from the rocks and glass and forage.

3. Heavy skimming - increasing my skimming to be wetter will pull nutrients out faster

With these three things I am effectively reducing hair algae and watching it shrink before my eyes. Note - this has only been done for the past two weeks, but I can confidently say that watching the hair algae just shring more and more from the plug is so gratifying. It's also incorporates good habits!