Hair algae?

[tjmallory]

I have a large Sea Hair that I guarantee will take care of all your green hair algae. I am in need of renting him out so we can keep him fed.

I just like to see the tank prior to bringing him by and I take all sorts of trade in order to lend him to you for some cleaning.

Let me know what you need.
Thanks,
Tyler
email me at ([email protected])

 

[JasonD]

I am surprised you can keep hair algae growing with the tangs and foxface. The sailfin and foxface (used to be in my tank) absolutely would devoir hair algae. I used to grow it in a separate tank and feed it to them. I don't think a cleanup crew is the answer. You have an excellent crew for algae.

Did you post you specs on the tank.?
What you test for? Results?
Temp?
Water Changes?
RO-DI?
Skimmer?
Bioload?
Feedings?

It sounds like from you other thread you had SPS dying. That dye off would cause a sudden algae bloom. It might be as simple and reducing the feeding, water changes, getting the parameters in check, then letting you tangs and foxface take care of the cleanup.

 

[ac7av]

I don’t have the problem.

I am surprised you can keep hair algae growing with the tangs and foxface. The sailfin and foxface (used to be in my tank) absolutely would devoir hair algae. I used to grow it in a separate tank and feed it to them. I don't think a cleanup crew is the answer. You have an excellent crew for algae.

Did you post you specs on the tank.?
What you test for? Results?
Temp?
Water Changes?
RO-DI?
Skimmer?
Bioload?
Feedings?

It sounds like from you other thread you had SPS dying. That dye off would cause a sudden algae bloom. It might be as simple and reducing the feeding, water changes, getting the parameters in check, then letting you tangs and foxface take care of the cleanup.

:lol:
Hi Jason,
Actually the thread started out as a kind of joke between me and my brother but it went a completely different direction. Thats okay because it sill mite help someone with the problem.

Have you ever had a clown host a rock with lots of hair algae on it? I thought that was just the funniest thing when he called me about it. My brother actually has a serious hair algae problem but we can not seem to figure it out. We have been threw everything from water, food, lights, even setting up a new sump/refrugium, skimmer, twice the water volume in doing so and no change. It’s almost comical now because it’s been literally years with crazy hair algae in this tank and for what seems no reason. All the corals in his tank are doing great. He has lots of recordias, and lps and a sps or two and they all love the tank and lights. So does the hair algae.

BTW
All of his snails dye as soon as they touch the algae. Has anyone ever herd of that? I kid you not, I have personally seen it. My brother would pull a snail off the glass and place it on a rock with the algae. 10 minutes later if even that long, the snail falls to the bottom of the tank dead. I’m not kidding at all, dead never to move again dead.

 

[NC2WA]

Erik,

What type/model of skimmer does your brother have?

 

[ac7av]

Now that’s a hair algae problem if there every was one.

 

[ac7av]

Erik,

What type/model of skimmer does your brother have?

A supercharged modded backpack skimmer that is a in sump skimmer now with the mods it has. It tares it up and produces at least a cup every couple of days from a 29 gallon tank.

 

[NC2WA]

What color is the skimmate?

Is it clear or dark green?


if you break this question down to its basic component, "what causes HA to grow",
I come up with the following answers:

• overfeeding tank which contributes to nutrients
• lack of flow
• skimmer that is not removing nutrients from tank
• not using RO water (which can contribute to nitrate or PO4 issues which is a nutrient source)

with that said, here are the questions that I would ask:

• how is the flow in the tank?
• is there enough flow to move the nutrients to the overflow so that the skimmer can do its job?
• what is the TDS reading of the RO water that is being used to water saltwater?

somewhere, he is providing a source of nutrients, just need to find out where.

 

[ac7av]

Along with the flow from the sump he has going threw flow accelerator tips in the tank he has 2 power heads one on each side back of the tank pointing diagonally across the tank. Not as much flow as my tank but the water is moving pretty good.

The rock and substrate in his tank came form my tank.

He has three fish (clown, fire fish, and blue/green chromes) and 3 cleaner shrimp and I think 10 or so hermits and no snails (because they die if they touch the hair algae).

He does water changes regularly.

He uses exactly the same water I have since he gets it from my house out of my RODI water tank.

The skimmer produces a nasty green/brown very smelly nasty goop. He had adjusted it off and on to be lighter or darker to see if it makes a difference.

He got some greens from Todd’s house for his new refrugium/sump that we set up and it seemed to be working to help for a while but after the sump became full with the macros that we got, Ben cut it back and all of a sudden the hair algae took over the refrugium too. It completely covered the macros and is choking it out. For a while the refrugium looked like a beautiful oases and the display tank looked like crap. It was like they were not even connected. Then when Ben cut back the macros because they had filled the fuge the hair algae immediately took over the fuge. Just really strange.

It’s gotten to the point that he will leave the lights off for days with a sheet over the tank to block all light and it will help a bit but he can’t leave it off for too long because of the corals.

He will often go in and brush off the algae and clean out what he can get to and the filter sock gets plugged up with hair algae often and needs to be cleaned.

He hasn’t always had the same lights over the tank ether. The first set he had was 2X65 watt pc lighting with blue moon lights. Now he has a 175 HM se bulb and uses aquarium blue led lights for better color.

He has tried a verity of foods from flake to frozen and feeds sparingly.

BTW in-between all the changes we have made we also removed everything from the tank rinsed clean the substrate and boiled (literally on the stove) all the rocks to kill and clean them out.

 

[NC2WA]

and we are sure this is HA and not bryopsis ??

do you have a pic??

just curious, what is the Mg level?

 

[ac7av]

95% sure
depending on the length it can be up to a couple of inches long single strand filament green strands before it will break off from water movement or just fall of for some reason. It is very fine and soft and waves easily in the water.

It looks like a tangs wet dream. Or is that a dry dream?

 

[ac7av]

sorry
mg 1250
And no pictures with enough detail to make an ID.

 

[Hythe1000]

Hi
Sounds like my Green Hair Algae problem is just as bad or perhaps worse than yours. I'm just about to install a more powerful SICCE return pump from my 100L sump to the 500L tank.
I also bought some a product just on the market from Red Sea. It's a new test system for Nitrate (NO3) and Posphate (PO4) the algae nutrients that need controlling. And a product called NO3O4-X seriously, that's it's name! It contains Methanol as a carbon source.
As far as I can see you measure the NO3 and PO4 with the test kit and that indicates how much of the NO3O4-X to dose.
I'll let you know how it goes with these. The little pamphlet is like a mini science course. But first it's the new pump and a general muck and algae suck out with a siphon. Why don't any manufacturers make a good pair of grippy tongs for pulling algae off rocks? £1.00 for the first correct answer. Here's a pic I took earlier:

 

[mal1099]

I blow my rocks off with a turkey baster 2 times a week. I had an issue where dietrus was building up and feeding the hair algea. Now that i use the turkey baster i have no hair algea. Also bought a huge clean up crea to keep it under control.

 

[Hythe1000]

I spent just under £300 a month ago on various snails and crabs - I think they avoid the GHA in case something jumps out and bites 'em. The trouble with a big tank in an office is you cannot devote the time you want to on it.

 

[arman]

:lol:
All of his snails dye as soon as they touch the algae. Has anyone ever herd of that? I kid you not, I have personally seen it. My brother would pull a snail off the glass and place it on a rock with the algae. 10 minutes later if even that long, the snail falls to the bottom of the tank dead. I’m not kidding at all, dead never to move again dead.

This is the exact same problem that I have! At first I thought I was crazy or I had a mantis shrimp that was killing my clean up crews, but every herbivorous invert put in my tank I'll find dead after it crawls on the rock. And I know that its not a predator because the snails are still in there shell untouched by anything, just dead! I have tried astrae and emerald crabs, and even a sea hare once, but they all end up dead. What makes this really weird is that I dont think that its a chemical in the water becasue i have an orange spot snail that does fine, and TONs of those little brittle stars in my tank, and last time i had my water checked my magnesium was low not high.

 

[bens63imp]

So I am assuming this my tank in question here, thanks ac7av for putting it out there. So here are the params as of yesterday.
salinity 1.022
ph-8.4
amonia-0
nitrate-0
MG-920
phos-0
calcium-220
carbo-143.2
what to do now?

 

[NWDiver]

You probably don't want to hear this but here I go anyway
Get the water parameters in check, once you have that, you are working from a baseline that is relative to our experience.
Salinity bring up to 1.026
PH is good
Amonia is good
Nitrate good
Mg bring to 1350ish
Ca bring to 400-450 particularly since you have some sps
Phos is 0 because your algea is gobbling it all up.
I know you are using the same water as your bro, but just the same, test it for TDS, I have a meter if you want to borrow it.
Bring a water sample to your LFS and see if the parameters match your home tests.
Increase your flow overall, and clean an area with a toothbrush put direct flow on the clean area and see if the hair grows back.
As stated before, scrub everything that you can before you do your water change, blow the detritus off the rocks and siphon out as much as you can. your filtersock should catch the rest if the flow is good.
spend some time cleaning the refuge really well, and get some more greens in there to soak up the phosphates, keep it growing as best you are able.
How heavy is the tank stocked?
How old is the bulb?
Is the bulb a decent brand?
I had an algea issue in my frag tank (I used cheap bulbs) like magic the algea stopped when I changed lighting.

 

[bens63imp]

thanks nwdiver, I think he does check the ro/di water and all is well. yes I know now my mg and Ca is pretty low i'll check at the lfs so see what they got. As for the lighting the bulb may be kinda old? who knows how. I started using a cf 50/50 also and the purple coraline has seemed to really take off wich had none noticable before is this good? And finally I have scrubbed the rocks off several times and got as much out as possible and within a day or two seems to grow right back to where it was, it's killing me. I thought when I got this new set up all previous problems would go away and I could look forward to having an immaculate dt, boy was I wrong!

 

[NWDiver]

Sure
Look into a new bulb, I didn't have hair, it was a furry algae, and only in my frag tank. New lights solved the problem instantly.