Buying Live Rocks with of hair algae. How to get rid of them?

[godzen]

I'm buying live rock that has a fair share of hair algae for a great price. Seller will scrub them off for me before selling it. This will go into a FOWLR tank. I want to control/kill the hair algae but at the same time, preserve the nice pink Coralline Algae on the live rocks. Will have low bio load with only two fishes. Any recommendations?

1. I will be using RO/DI water with the intention of doing 10% WC weekly. Is this adequate?
2. Originally was going to go w/o lightings for a couple of weeks but that would kill off the nice pink algae too? Any recommendation here?
3. Any livestocks that can take care of the hair algae?
4. Like mention, the hair algae will get the "toothbrush treatment" before going into the tank but I would like to stop/minimize their future growth. Other recommendations?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

The only real way to rid it of hair algae short of sterilization, is by keeping it in a light free filtered container such as a covered plastic garbage can with a skimmer and heater.

 

[senji]

thats what i did and also scrubbed with live rock prep. no light is key though.

 

[josh88]

I got like 3 turbo snails, and shorten the length in time which my MH was on. Seemed to Do the trick.

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[godzen]

I'll check out the snail. How long is your light on? Is it a FOWLR too?

 

[josh88]

No nothing but the snails in it. And a emerald crab, which I'm like borrowing to Do the same job as the turbo snails. And my light is on from 10 am to 5 30 pm. Which will change once I stock the tank. But I use the sunrise, and fall as my adjusting in between the mh and my moon lights

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[Somethings Fishy]

when i hooded up my phosban reactor it reduced the amount of hair, hope this helps

 

[godzen]

yeah, got the turbo as recommended and they sure can scrub those GHA off

 

[Crack31]

I've lucked out with a recent group of hermit crabs.

In the past, hermit crab really haven't eaten much hair algae. However, this group does a really good job.

I've got a secondary tank with a hair algae problem and have been putting pieces of rock in my main tank. Within 2 days, all the hair algae is gone. I have put zoa and plays in that had algae growing on them and they are generally free of algea in a few days.

 

[josh88]

My turbo snails demolished my gha in one day, and I had a lot. They also did a number on my diatom blooms, but think I'm going to take two of them out to decrease the bio load in the tank

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[rukis]

I also had a problem with a few pieces of live rock that I had got, that had hair algae but I added a few nice size turbo snails and it demolished the hair alagae.. there are some pics of how much they ate in my thread... Check it out.. cuz this way you don't need to scrub the rock...

sent from ruk's HTC Sensation

 

[N1Husker]

My emerald crab pretty much took care of my GHA.

 

[godzen]

do you guys normally keep one emerald for a tank? I have a 65gal. Would one emerald with a score of snail works? I'm not planning on getting hernits

 

[N1Husker]

I just have one but I have a 36 gallon tank. A 65 gallon tank would keep him plenty busy, but if you don't have hermits I might go with two. Mine just tore through all of my GHA but had help from the hermits, but he made a greater impact, you could see him just rip chunks off of the live rock, pretty cool.

 

[eartaker]

I have 2 green emeralds in my 75 and thinking about adding a 3rd since I had 2 in my 55 before this. I also just added a rock that had some hair algae on it, and they are the only things in the tank that are picking away at it. They don't bother anything and are fun to watch. Add some emeralds to your tank.

 

[N1Husker]

My emerald just mowed down my GHA, he still picks at the rocks and doesn't bother anyone. When one of the hermits get to close he will just either move or snap his claw and knock the crab away, just like, leave me alone. Every once and awhile I feed him a shrimp pellet and he grabs onto the tweezers while he grabs the pellet, then he releases. He's funny.