The One and Only Thread for Hair algae control

[Dad2Wyatt]

Well sometimes it is darkest right before the light of day . So don't worry it will get better.

Just limit the food going in your tank . Manually remove and even scrub your rocks outside one at a timeinto a bucket with a toothbrush will help too .

NOPOX is good at starving your GHA however its a fine line because if you are not careful it can zero out your nutrients and then you will be battling dinos which is worse .

Yes. Definitely would rather hve the GHA than Dino’s. Under the right lighting the GHA looks kind of pretty if you don’t know what you’re looking at lol

that’s why I’ve only been trying one thing at a time. Since it has gotten even worse, I’m thinking about doing a full out rip clean

 

[Dad2Wyatt]

What worked for me? Peroxide at night, bottled bacteria in the day. Plan on this regimen for about 2 weeks.

Honorable mention: a hungry Sea Hare or two.

How do you use the peroxide? Dose the tank or directly on the GHA? Will it have any adverse affect on coral? I have about 3 or 4 frags that are starting to suffer, but I do still have a few healthy ones that I want to keep that way!

 

[Dad2Wyatt]

I've had success controlling nitrates in my 24g AIO with water changes 20% weekly, phosphates with GFO. Trying to find the right balance of GFO, as it bottoms out my phosphates if I'm not careful.

I directly attack GHA by taking out individual rocks and "painting" them with 3% hydrogen peroxide. Kills GHA like a charm. I avoid getting peroxide on corals.

Somehow skipped over this on my previous reply! “Paint” the GHA and avoid corals! Got it

 

[Jedi1199]

I had GHA or Bryopsis bad in my 55g. 1 treatment of FluxRx and it was gone.

Here is a link to my thread on the subject which includes pictures:

Let's hope this works

My 55g is infested with either Bryopsis or GHA. Most of the natural predators ignore the stuff.. The only one that seems to be interested in the pencil urchin. I am usually not a fan of chemical treatments, but I have been doing some reading on the subject and decided to give it a try. I...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[TWOODZ]

I should start by saying, I do not have all the answers, in fact, I hardly have any.

After combing the forums daily for weeks, I realized that there are hundreds(thousands?) of threads concerning GHA. Unfortunately many of these threads have either gone unanswered, or the answers varied greatly between threads with little to no discussion regarding effectiveness. Furthermore, in almost all of these threads, the OP never followed up with what, if anything worked.

One thing I can say for certain, is that a rip clean would almost certainly fix not only GHA, but pretty much any algae problem. Unfortunately this is not always practical, and for others the initiative to do the task is not there.

I would like for this thread to be the go to thread on fighting GHA for those who may not want to commit to a rip clean just yet. That’s where I would like for you, the Reef2Reef community, to chime in.

Please share your solutions in detail and feel free to generate a discussion if you really like (or dislike) a particular idea. Try to be specific, rather than saying “lower your phosphate and nitrates” expand on how you personally would go about doing this.

as we all know, each tank is different, so while you may not agree with another’s idea, it may have worked for them. Let’s remain respectful and hopefully help out a lot of our fellow hobbyist!!

My 55 gallon set up is currently fighting a losing battle with GHA. As I near closer to a rip clean, I’m curious to see if there is anything I have yet to try! Below is a photo of my tank today, after about 15-20 minutes of manually removing GHA.

I have Sea Hairs and they would eat that up within one month and it would all be gone, I feed them Nori and steam softend veggies when there is no algae for them to eat, they seem to be happy .

 

[GillMeister]

I'm sold on fluconazole. Scrub rocks before, dose fluconazole, scrub rocks again after a couple weeks once the algae is turning gray.

Never had CUC that could put a real dent in a real algae bloom. Never lost corals or inverts when dosing fluconazole.

Flucanazole decimated my SPS so i would excercise some caution when using it. Vibrant is effective but requires some patience.

 

[kaos14]

Somehow skipped over this on my previous reply! “Paint” the GHA and avoid corals! Got it

I have had great luck with this. But I use a small baster for candy and turn off all pumps and mechanical filtration for about 30 minutes.

 

[Nachopapa]

I had a forest of GHA during the very ugly phase last year and I tried the easy way out with chemicals and only managed to kill the things I cared about.

I then decided on a cuc and a blue tux urchin… with manual scrubbing once a week. This worked for me. The urchin is a tiny eating machine. I take care of the long stuff.

this approach was slow, but I was happy doing the work and seeing my results.

edit: my tank is almost 4.5ft long so it’s an hours worth of cleaning a week

 

[Duncan62]

I should start by saying, I do not have all the answers, in fact, I hardly have any.

After combing the forums daily for weeks, I realized that there are hundreds(thousands?) of threads concerning GHA. Unfortunately many of these threads have either gone unanswered, or the answers varied greatly between threads with little to no discussion regarding effectiveness. Furthermore, in almost all of these threads, the OP never followed up with what, if anything worked.

One thing I can say for certain, is that a rip clean would almost certainly fix not only GHA, but pretty much any algae problem. Unfortunately this is not always practical, and for others the initiative to do the task is not there.

I would like for this thread to be the go to thread on fighting GHA for those who may not want to commit to a rip clean just yet. That’s where I would like for you, the Reef2Reef community, to chime in.

Please share your solutions in detail and feel free to generate a discussion if you really like (or dislike) a particular idea. Try to be specific, rather than saying “lower your phosphate and nitrates” expand on how you personally would go about doing this.

as we all know, each tank is different, so while you may not agree with another’s idea, it may have worked for them. Let’s remain respectful and hopefully help out a lot of our fellow hobbyist!!

My 55 gallon set up is currently fighting a losing battle with GHA. As I near closer to a rip clean, I’m curious to see if there is anything I have yet to try! Below is a photo of my tank today, after about 15-20 minutes of manually removing GHA.

Urchins and nutrient control will help.