Having a frustrating battle with hair algae

[JTM4UG]

I have 2 ai sol and a kessil 360x over a 90g. 0 phosphates and 0 nitrates consistently but its taking over like crazy. I feed once per day a cube of frozen brine and a small pinch of pellets. Have been reducing lights gradually and they are on for about 7 hours right now. I do s water change every sunday and rodi water is testing 0. My skimmer was not running for the last couple weeks due to a jammed pump but its back running. Anyone have any insight to what might be causing this and any additional things i can do to get rid of it.

 

[JTM4UG]

I am running purigen and carbon and trying to manually remove it. My tangs are eating it like crazy also but seems like they cant keep up.

 

[thrillreefer]

How old is the tank? It actually doesn’t look that bad? I’ve definitely had worse and it is frustrating. But more turbo snails, manual removal, and more flow probably will knock it back. I found GHA really good at trapping decaying stuff/detritus which fuels growth, even when N and P read zero.

 

[JTM4UG]

Tank is 4-5 years old. I have 3 mj1200 powerheads. I guess maybe its time to upgrade to an mp40. I just removed the really bad rocks on the sides. All the rock is pretty much covered right now though. Killed / is killing most of my corals.

 

[thrillreefer]

Hydrogen peroxide will absolutely destroy it, but has to be either used on rocks pulled from the tank, or held in place a few mins by a small inverted cup/syringe setup. In-tank, you’ll have to work a small area at a time but you can quickly make a clear buffer zone around key corals.

Turbos though, in my experience are just GHA eating machines. 5-10 will make a huge dent

 

[SteveDola]

Microbacter 7 and clean. follow directions and do waterchanges. pick the heavy HA off and give it time. worked amazingly for me. chemical medias are bandaid fix and cause other issues. need consistency.

 

[JTM4UG]

Thanks for the tips. Just ordered a bottle. Will see how it works.

 

[cablez]

Do you turkey bastor the rocks out? Also what size tank and how many fish/inverts in there? If you are feeding a full cube+pellets a day. It looks like things arent getting eaten by the livestock. And instead fueled by the algae. I would do maybe 3 smaller feedings a day. Take that cube in the AM thaw it, and feed it morning afternoon, and night. That way more of it gets used as growth fuel. Rather than 1 giant meal per day which gets turned to waste.

 

[serwobow]

It took over my tank a couple months ago. After falling behind in the manual removal, and the turbo snails preferring other stuff, I used fluconazole, and followed the general advice (no skimmer or carbon). It mostly disappeared starting at about 2 weeks, and it has stayed at a very low level since then. If I had any herbivorous fish, I think it would have disappeared even faster and more completely. I usually agree with the "no chemical fix" idea, but fluconazole is very useful when the problem reaches plague levels.

 

[Mixed Reefer]

So your phosphate and nitrate are either bound up in algae or they’re way low. I believe Hermit crabs and Sea Slug Hare also can help. I borrowed one from a LFS at one time. You need to add more clean up crew. Are you dosing chaeto grow? Or any iron? This could be an issue. Fix the problem so not reoccurring naturally

 

[SteveDola]

adding a foxface and some mexican turbos/trochus were helpful too when i was battling.

 

[GasGuzzler]

I agree with the cleanup crew/microbacter recommendation. It's my guess that the nitrate and phosphate are being consumed by the algae as fast as its produced as Mixed Reefer stated. All that being said, I've done some experimenting in other tanks with hair and turf algae with peroxide as mentioned above. In my experience, 1ml per 10 gallons was enough to kill the algae over a week or so period and didn't upset any corals, even the acros. Take that for what it's worth, but manual removal, some tangs and microbacter will get it under control.

 

[Mike Lemming]

Once you get to the point where maintenance and herbivores aren’t doing the trick, look into Fluconazole. It works wonders. I did a YouTube video on it a few years back and my tank was much worse than yours and it cleaned it up completely. Reef flux works okay but, I had much better luck with buying through pet supplies plus.com. (I think).. didn’t have ill effects on anything accept the gha. Not even my cheato was effected. Might be worth looking into. Good luck!

 

[salthobby]

Tank is 4-5 years old. I have 3 mj1200 powerheads. I guess maybe its time to upgrade to an mp40. I just removed the really bad rocks on the sides. All the rock is pretty much covered right now though. Killed / is killing most of my corals.

I don't believe the Hair Algae will care about more flow. When I get it it grows right in my Mp 60's

 

[JTM4UG]

Update: the Microbacter 7 worked wonders. Have been removing bad areas, dosing mircrobacter and reduced light by 1 hour per day. Also have been thawing my cube and straining off liquid instead of throwing it right in. Seeing a huge difference already.

 

[GasGuzzler]

Good to hear! Stay with it!

 

[SteveDola]

I dosed both MB7 and Clean it worked amazingly well. We were astonished how the tank rebounded in a month or so after the green grass fields I had in my tank when I first started the tank. Glad to hear its helping. Our little friends...bacteria.