Hair Algae

[renman303]

I would be very interested in how you remove Hair Algae? My tank has been rampant since day one, the first of July! I keep removing the rocks to scrub it away but it still returns?

Water movement is provided by two Eheim 1262's returning to the tank from the sump, a Tunze Wavebox, Tunze Stream, SEIO 1100, SEIO1500. Seems like enough water movement to me?????

I'm getting frustrated with removing rocks everyday to scrub them and sifting the sand that has a film over it. I'm about to pour Round-Up in the tank! ha ha.

I think I'd like to schedule the January meeting at my home to get everyone's input?

Thoughts?

Dave

Edited January 3, 2009 by renman303

[cmanning]

Dave,

Sorry to hear that your still battling the algae problem. Good idea on hosting the meeting at your place. An opportunity for some insight on how to deal w/your problem.

-Cindy-

[fishypets]

Dave,

Can you tell us about your water quality? Do you use RO/DI for top off and mixing salt? Do you test your MG levels? How much do you feed? What skimmer are you running and how wet are you running it? What's all in your clean up crew?

A new tank typically goes to a period where hair algae breaks out but should go away after a few months. H.A. can be a real PITA to get under control especially if somethings out of wack. Good luck man.

Clint

[renman303]

Hey Clint,

RO/DI water for all changes. Setup by Kingfish. Problem is I was growing algae from minute one and Kingfish was actually good enough to bring the initial H2O from their place so, I know it was good. Half the LR was new from them and the other half came from my old 55 gal. Never had an algae issue there...

Water parameters are good. Calcium is at 430, pH 8.4, Magnesium good, Phosphates=zero, I have to buffer quite a bit though...usually sitting at 6 DkH.

Tank was set up on July 2 so it's now 6 months old.

Dave

[Cool Breeze]

The rock I just got had a lot of hair algae on it. My tang and clean up crew made quick work of it. Maybe you just need a few critters to get it under control. That and make sure your water is perfect.

[subsea]

Dave,

I second what coolbreeze told you about algae consumers: pods, snails or herbivores higher up the food chain. To quote Daniel Knop, "Coral reefs would be algae dominated if the herbevoires were removed".

Pat

[renman303]

I don't have much of a cleanup crew to speak of. AndmySailfin Tang could care less about the algae!

[fishypets]

Get you a good sized clean up crew. Make sure to get a few Mexican turbos as well.

[subsea]

I don't have much of a cleanup crew to speak of. AndmySailfin Tang could care less about the algae!

Dave,

Without knowing your bio-load and feeding habits, you may want to consider feeding less for a while. What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?

Nutriants balancing is required: cycling or removal. I am a proponant of natural systems and do not use protein skimming for removal of nutriants. I do harvest macros which is a "nutriant removal. I prefer nutriant cycling: feed the same macro to your tangs. Nutriant cycling depends on many different variables and pathways. Coral growing, macros growing, micro fauna and fana reproducing in DSB or refugiums are "nutriant cycling". Biodiversity and multiple nutriant pathways take time.

Addicted to reefing,

Pat

[caferacermike]

Dave I feel your pain. I almost got out of the hobby after having 2 major issues, back to back and caused from one another. First was a huge a hair algae outbreak I got when getting frags from another reefer. I did not knwo that the tank was a complete mess as another friend picked them up for me. I tried most everything to rid the tank of algae. For several months I ran a large Ozone reactor in my skimmer. After I moved I hooked the ozone reactor up same as always and in the morning every fish and every coral was DEAD. The house smelled horrible and my tank was a mess.

After the meltdown I figured who cares right? I'm trying to set up a 400g tank anyways. Work on that. So for about 3 months I left the lights off. I kept working on the new tank tearing up and rebuilding my home to fit it. After that 3 months I decided to buy some anglers I had my eye on. I dropped them in and turned the lights on. After 3 months of not feeding, strong skimming, no lights some snails and lots of hermits, I still had all that hair algae. Well guess what, I find out my foundation on the house was falling apart and I had to stop playing with the new tank. I then understood that for awhile I'd have to refocus on the 75g tank. So I ordered several large cleanup crews and added a few large tangs, kole eye and a yellow mimic tang. Nothing would work at all.

However, I JUST WON THE BATTLE. Here is what I did. I emptied my sump all the way out and then used a wet vac to make it squeaky clean. Then I added 20 mangrove pods to the refugium. I then hooked up my Euroreef CS12-5-RC skimmer rated for a 1,200g tank (see my skimmer pics in another thread). I made up plenty of salt water and drained my tank down to about 6" of water (mind you I still had the anglers) and used the wet vac to remove all the sand from the tank. I then placed the sand in a 100g tank I had around and then put my Euroreef RS 180. The sand was only about an inch thick in that tank. I constantly kept in stirred for a couple of days. I had filled the tank back up with fresh salt water after removing the sand. After about 1 week I drained the tank back down to about 6" again and replaced the sand. I also removed the rock work for a few minutes and pulled/scrubbed as much as algae as possible, then put it back. By now I did not want to just dry the rock out in the yard as I had some mushrooms and zoas come back, plus I had hoped to keep as much bacteria and "critters" as possible. For the following week I ran 2 Tunze 6060 powerheads about an inch above the sand bed. Literally for a week you could not see into the tank as it was a complete white out of sand. Then one day I came home and I noticed a strange thing. Sure all the sand was still floating around in total sand storm, but I could see between the particles of sand. I then shut the powerheads off and in about 2 hours the water was so clear it hurt my eyes. I pulled about 25 gallons (is truth) of gunk from my skimmer in 2 weeks. As of today, about 1 month after I started, I have almost zero algae.

I spent about $800 before doing all of this. No matter what critter I added or other methods I tried, nothing worked. One thing that does help is kalk paste. Just like putting it on aptasia, smearing it on like frosting seems to cause hair algae to weaken and die off. Just make sure you have a skimmer tweaked to pull the excess nutrients from the dying algae out of the water so it does not feed the rest of the algae.

Oh yeah it was not easy. Very frustrating. Wanna borrow that skimmer.

[renman303]

Mike,

Sounds like what I have been doing albeit, not quite to the extreme that you took. I may have to though!

I have been pulling rocks one at a time to remove the algae. It is starting to cover the corals and I have to use a soft toothbrush to remove the algae from these.

Here is my Blog: Renman's Blog

Here is my setup:

225 gallon tank

100 gallon sump which has about 45 gallon refugium. (NOTE: Sump is algae FREE!)

Skimmer: Deltec 851

Water Movement: 2 -Eheim 1262 pumps to the tank.

1 Tunze Wavebox

1 Tunze Stream

1 SEIO 1500

1 SEIO 1100

Critters:

1 Sailfin Tang (5")

1 Swallowtail Angel (4")

1 Scooter Blenny

1 Oscellaris Clown

1 Pink Bar Goby

2 Blue Line Cleaner Wrasse

1 Tiger Pistol Shrimp

1 Gold Coral Banded Shrimp

3 Peppermint Shrimp

1 8" Black Serpent Star

20 Various Snails

20 Various Red and Blue Leg Hermits

Feeding: 1 standard frozen cube, shrimp/octopus/Brine Shrimp

Every other day, greens for the Tang.

Water:

Water parameters are good. Calcium is at 430, pH 8.4, Magnesium good, Phosphates=zero, I have to buffer quite a bit though...usually sitting at 6 DkH. Temp 78 degrees. Water changes have been every ten days at 65 gallons (~20 %).

Pat, I'm really curious about your methods? Sounds very interesting??? I would like to load the sump with more Mangrove plants for filtering.

My sump has lighting as I keep an overload of Gold Polyps Green Star Polyps and about 50 additional pounds of LR. The sump has lighting for about 8 hours a day and has great coraline growth! This is what is perplexing? No algae in the sump?

Here is a link to a reef care package that was suggested by John at Kingfish:

Reef Care Package - Reeftopia

I could host a meeting and get everyone's opinion on this? Besides, you have to see this killer tank with external overflow that Kingfish had built for me. It's plumbed through our dining room wall and all equipment is in the garage.

I could do this on Saturday the 24th at noon (have to work by 3pm) or Sunday the 25th?

Edited January 4, 2009 by renman303

[subsea]

Dave,

I have never used mangroves but I know that they work.

With respect to my reef tank husbandry, I am "old school". Yes I have used protein skimmers, ozone generators and uv sterilizers. I use the "KISS Principal" (keep it simple). I do use a calcium reactor and a small amount of carbon used 24/7.

The addittion of an alkalinity product means it is going somewhere. Good places would be coral growth and coraline algae. However, many products which dose, cause calcium phosphate to precipitate out of solution into the sediments. This phosphate can come back into solution. While it is the sediments it will not show up in your bulk water testing. I suspect that the remedy which Mike describes was due to phosphate from this source.

I would enjoy seeing your system. Due to moving pains, I am not sure about the last of January but Febuary sounds good. I am on short term disabiloity from my work until Feruary. Afterwhich, I go back to a 14 days on 14 days off schedule.

Pat

[GKarshens]

I agree with Clint. You need more of a clean-up crew. Even if they won't get rid of all the hair algae they will help with other things, The recommendation is 1 cleaner for every gallon. I am a big fan of Ceriths as they will clean all parts of the tank and don't knock stuff over.

[renman303]

Thanks for the reply. I'm sure I need to invest in a cleanup crew.

What do you think of these: John at Kingfish said this was a great deal.

Reeftopia Cleanup Crews

[fishypets]

The only regret you'll have when you buy that clean up crew is not adding it sooner. When my tank was cycling I had a nasty algae outbreak and the moment I added the crew they went to work. Three days is all it took. Now I'm not saying your H.A. will be gone in three days but I think you'll be amazed at how well they work. If reeftopia doesn't have the Mexican snails I know most of the LFS do. The Mexican's really mow it down!

[renman303]

The only regret you'll have when you buy that clean up crew is not adding it sooner. When my tank was cycling I had a nasty algae outbreak and the moment I added the crew they went to work. Three days is all it took. Now I'm not saying your H.A. will be gone in three days but I think you'll be amazed at how well they work. If reeftopia doesn't have the Mexican snails I know most of the LFS do. The Mexican's really mow it down!

I'm not sure if Astrea Turbo Snails are the same as Mexican but here is what I'm considering from Reeftopia:

Total Reef Care Special #2

75 Turbo Snail [astrae],, -36 Cerith Snail, 12 Tegula Snails, 18 Nassarius Snails, 4 Emerald Crabs, 75 Small Blueleg Hermits and 12 Nerite (tesselatta) Snails. Free Shipping & Box via FedEx Priority Overnight. You may purchase additional items along with this special and get free shipping & box for those items as well. Only $149.00

Edited January 4, 2009 by renman303

[subsea]

You will be happy with reeftopia. I have ordered from them many times. Ordered by noon and received the next day at noon. Very hard to beat that service, as well as having a good product.

[fishypets]

Dave that's the same package I ordered. You will have to pick up the Mexican turbos at a LFS as they are different from the Astreas. The Mexicans get real big so if you decide to add some make sure your corals are secure or they might get knocked over.

[JEN H]

One thing that we have used in the past which has helped alot is the Chem Pure bag. We needed to replace it this last time and went with Purogen instead. It doesn't do it when it comes to keeping hair algae at bay. We are going to get another Chem Pure bag to help combat, as everything else we have tried (additional clean up, water changes, etc) hasn't really helped much. Good luck!

[Dena]

I put a few large rocks in my tank that were covered with hair algae a month ago. Within two days it was gone. My yellow tang is the master at cleaning up stuff. Those crevices he couldn't get were covered by the little blue leg hermits. I've been pretty lucky and only get the cyano...that has even stopped recently.

Dena

[renman303]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to try a bit of everything. First thing tomorrow I'm ordering a Cleanup Crew.

Dena, your Tang is better than my Tang. My Sailfin follows me around the tank like a puppy when I scrape the sides, he's there to eat it up. But you think he'd get a fork and feed himself?????? No way! I even have two Urchin's, one of them is a green algae urchin and it only eats the very short algae. The clumps of long hair algae are unreachable in some spots...at the back on the bottom rocks...go figure?

Dave

Edited January 5, 2009 by renman303

[GKarshens]

Do you have much of a sand bed? If so I would go with Total Reef care #3. Nassarius are great for keeping your sand clean and stirred up. Also you get the Lg Ceriths instead of the tiny ones.

[renman303]

Do you have much of a sand bed? If so I would go with Total Reef care #3. Nassarius are great for keeping your sand clean and stirred up. Also you get the Lg Ceriths instead of the tiny ones.

I actually ordered Total Reef Care #2. Didn't think about the large vs small snails. I have about 20 Nessarus now so, that should give me enough of those. I also ordered another two-dozen turbos to add to the 75 coming to ensure that there are enough to clean this algae.

Funny how my sump is totally clear and it's lighted as well????? Things that make you go hmmmmm????

[fishypets]

Good luck Dave.

[jsr]

I may have missed this, but have you tried running a phosphate reactor with some GFO? Total investment is about $50 for the reactor, GFO, and a small pump.