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GHA bloom A-N-N cycle ???
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Krish
RF STAFF
No problem!
And if it is encouraging to you, I've seen tanks worse than this with hair algae make a turn around. It just takes a bit of time to allow the tank to find it's balance. You trim that back a bit every week or so to export the bound up nutrients and be sure not to over stock, over feed or allow waste to accumilate, and it should subside over time. I see you have what looks like floss in your sump and a filter sock. Is that right? If so, that can work against you if not taken care of properly. What happens there is it traps waste and if left to sit in there too long, the waste it traps will begin to rott and degrade water quality so that floss and filter sock will need to be either cleaned or changed every 3 days or so. I never ran any sponges, floss or anything like that because of this. I just ran really high flow bare bottom tanks (one was just over 100x turnover rate which was about 4,000 gph in a 38 gal) to keep waste suspended in the water column and what my skimmer didn't catch, either my corals did or I removed with weekly water changes of about 10%. Anything that traps waste needs special attention so as to not allow the waste to sit in the tank trapped too long. Being trapped doesn't help anything if it is still in the water so be sure to stay on top of keeping those things cleaned. It will help keep nitrates down a lot.
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It is that blue sponge material filter pad. I clean them once a week with my 10% water change. I just went ahead and removed them. They were pretty dirty from just 2 days. Thanks alot. So again I don't mean to beat this into the ground but do I just remove the light colored GHA or should I be harvesting/trimming the bright green stuff as well when it grows out long. I don't want to do anything to prematurley creating adverse affects.
When you harvest the algae you will be also allow it to kind of spore, or loose peices will float away and settle somewhere else, So harvesting comes at a bit of a price unless you can figure out how to do it and not allow any to get away. Personally if it were me I would just add the snails and let them do their thing until it goes away and then only harvest when it starts to loose that darker green color, but be carefull
Mike
Mike
Krish
RF STAFF
As Mojo pointed out, it comes with a price. This is partly why I set up the fuge section I spoke about. One was to get the algae out of sight and two, you can release spores easily with some algae. Unfortunately with green hair algae, it isn't as easy to remove from the tank as some other algae's are to remove. I use to have to take my rock out of the tank and scrub them in a bucket to remove it which may not have ben the best method either because as the rock is exposed to air, you can possibly experience some die-off as well. First time around with this stuff just totally wiped me out. I got out of the hobby for about a year. Just couldn't beat the algae do to lack of knowledge and experience. Second time around which was when I set up that fuge section was a lot different. Snails as Mojo mentioned may help clean it up a bit and "mask" the problem and so will stuff like grazing fish like tangs if you have the space for them and other inverts like blue legged hermit crabs. They can all make quick work of algae. With that said, they too can release spores into the water as they eat/graze as well as they poop so you have to weigh out your options and do what works for you best.
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baker89
Well-known member
If you do choose to harvest the GHA then I would suggest using a siphon to do it. you can just go to lowe's and grab some tubing start the siphon and suck the GHA into it and use your thumb to pin it against the siphon to pull it off the rock and then just let the siphon take it away. This method worked really well for me and very little got away from the siphon. I would not recommend just pulling it out by hand because of what Mojo and Krish said you risk them floating off. Also be careful as the healthier stuff is attached to the rock pretty well and you can knock your rocks around a bit.
Dennis
Dennis
Krish
RF STAFF
Purple up is more of a "gimmick" than anything. If you want to promote coralline growth you will have to have some spores to begin with. If there aren't any on your rocks, then you can get some scrapings from another members tank and sprinkle it into your tank and let the flow distribute it. If you do this, I would suggest turning off your sump so that the coralline can be distributed throughout the tank only. Coralline needs good water chemistry in terms of alk, calcium etc and of course lighting. You may not get much to grow on your rocks with the GHA attached to it. You may even have some underneath the GHA, but you just can't see it. The GHA will block some of the light as well so I'd probably get your GHA under control first before you worry too much about coralline. It will eventually grow and may even become a nuicance to you
. If you go on the home page, I did an article on coralline algae if you want to take a peek. It's off to the left side of the screen under the past article box. It should give you all the info you need on coralline algae.
Krish
RF STAFF
GHA Treatment
Well so far I have pulled out most of the lighter colored stuff and trimmed back the green hair. In addition I dropped a lawn mower blenny in there and he has been bitting away at the algae. I came accross Algae Fix Marine and it got s lot of reviews on Foster and Smith, but I am a little skeptical on using it. I am sure this would only compound the problem, but thought I would throw it out there just to see what would be said.
Well so far I have pulled out most of the lighter colored stuff and trimmed back the green hair. In addition I dropped a lawn mower blenny in there and he has been bitting away at the algae. I came accross Algae Fix Marine and it got s lot of reviews on Foster and Smith, but I am a little skeptical on using it. I am sure this would only compound the problem, but thought I would throw it out there just to see what would be said.
