Help! Green Hair algea bloom
 

Can someone tell me an effective way to rid my tank of green hair algae? Last time I had a bloom I spent hours pulling and scrubbing my rocks. :evil: I don't want to do that again, its too stressful on my tank. Do I need a certain snail or crab or fish?

You need to stage a multi front attack: assess your filtration, feedings, lighting photoperiod, bioload & h2o changes. these all contribute. Next keep a healthy population of detrivores to keep wastes from piling up & fowling the tank water. Consider adding an urchin, in my experience one of the best algae destroyers out there. Add a quality <phosphate resin to your sump. I have been algae-free for three years using this approach & I was plagued by hair & Bryopsis. Scrubbing the rocks will just spread algae like wildfire, pluck it off & try what I've mentioned. I also have a large UV on my set-up, like'em or hate'em, my tank is loads better since I added one. :cool:

Id say time. i had a horrible aglae bloom
everything was green, just do your water changes and patienice.
if you wan critters i found turbos and trouches worked really good.

reply
 

Well, the water changes aren't a factor. The green algae bloom as well as a brown algae bloom has all occured since I did a large water change after treating for cyano. the total change was about 45% over a couple of days so there shouldn't be any real No3 and waste problem. I did however stir up my sand bed a bit, causing either a ditritous fallout over my tank. Or I killed enough nitrifying bacteria to warrant having the bloom due to under nitrification. This is one of my therories, ther other is my photo period as mentioned. In the past 2 months I have gone from 180 watts of NO and Pc lighting to 380 watts of MH and Pc lighting. The MH bulb is new but the PC was purchased from a fellow reefer in Calgary and I was told that is was 4 months old at the time, 6 months old now.

I do have a lot of hermits, and cerith snails, and a couple of tourbon snails in my sump. I will consider and urchan, but will a tang eat hair algae? This is my real question.

You might want to consider a lower-form of algae eater rather than a Tang, Danny. That's a big commitment - seriously... What about the snails/sea hare route?

And yeah, that big a change in lighting will often give what you have now. I took 2.5 weeks to ramp up when I got my MH, and it wasn't a problem for me. (Of course, you want to turn them on NOW, and get that full photoperiod you paid so much money for... :biggrin: )

Do you have any kind of macroalgae in the tank to help soak up the nutrients?

I have a seahare I could "rent" out if you want Danny.

$5 til he's done and just bring him back. Gauranteed to eat bryopsis (I grow it in a Rubbermaid tub for him). Lemme know if you're interested.

Thats the problem with using chemicals to get rid of cyano. You don't find out what causes it and just end up with a different type of algae.
I would suspect a combination of, lights and nutrient build up , maybe in the rocks or sandbed

heres a pic of my tank during the end of its cycle.
http://www.canreef.com/photopost/sho...php?photo=1404

fuge worked from me also.

Does it eat normal hair algae though?

Steve