Bad Hair Algae
 

Hey guys,

I have a 10g tank with 72w 50/50, AC500 refugium with chaeto and halimeda macro algaes and live rock rubble, and a, AquaC Nano Remora skimmer. The tank has around 15 lbs of live rock, an inch of live sand, and various corals. Also in the tank is a BTA and percula. It has been running for around a year now and I have been battling hair algae the entire time. I try to syphon out as much as I can during weekly water changes, but it grows back everywhere, including the sand and glass. I am now only feeding twice a week.

Any ideas?

maybe switch to feeding frozen mysis and soak it in RO before feeding it? I found flake food a contributor to problems in any freshwater or saltwater tank I've kept.

I used to feed only frozen mysis shrimp that was soaked in tap water first, I thought switching to flakes would make things better. I dont think it is related to the food anyways, I feed small amounts a couple times a week. I am using RO water from walmart for top ups/water changes.

Could it be the high waste production from the BTA?

I only spot feed the BTA mysis shrimp once a week, so I dont think that would do it? Wouldnt the skimmer remove most of it and the macro algae suck up any left over nutrients. Seems right now like the skimmer and fuge are useless.

That idea came to me after remembering that vendors usually ship their anemones without water so that they cant pass waste and kill themselves. Which led me to think maybe in a smaller tank the waste would accumulate faster than the skimmer and macroalgae combined could remove it. Other than that I dont see anything else that could be contributing to it in such a big way.

I really do not think it is the anemone, I have been having these problems before I even had it in the tank.

Is the location of the tank in natural sunlight?

Nope, not in any direct sunlight at all

How big are you weekly water changes?

I had Cyano once...and used Red slime on it...it was totally gone in 2 days....and has never returned........it was on my 20 gal nano....and i just followed the instructions perfectly.

I used Chemi-clean which is suppsoed to remove red slime as well, but it did nothing at all. I do a 10% WC every week.

That's weird, I thought Chemiclean was supposed to do a pretty good job.

Could it be something else other than cyano? Can you post a picture?

Sure, Ill snap a shot tonight to post. On a side note, I have had a couple dead snails in the tank for unknown reasons. The shells are still in the tank, not sure if this is attributing to any of the cyano/algae problems, but they are in a hard to reach spot. I'll try to grab them tonight after my waterchange.

Here are the photos of the red slime.

http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/3641/dsc01409bi1.jpg

http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/923/dsc01410io5.jpg


And a FTS so you can see all the ugly hair algae on my rocks :/

http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/383/dsc01412yt4.jpg

I had a bunch of hair algae like that also.....I used Algae magic on it for 3 consecutive days.....and it has never returned either.....but I also added a Phosban reactor on the 5th day from treatment....so I would guess that is why it hasnt come back. That looks like Cyano to me...

I suppose I'm stating the obvious when I say it has to be a nutrient export issue. You could try "live rock in a bucket", or dosing iron to increase your Chaeto growth.

Also have a look at this thread.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...readid=1078532

Ya I spent $60 on a bottle of Algae magic that did nothing at all for my tank.

Ill try 3 days of darkness and post the results.

wow....I dont know what to tell you ......hmmm

can cyano also get all long and stringy too because i have like thick red slime on some parts of my sand that is like flowing with the water in strings?

Are you using tap water? That's an insane amount of nuisance algae. I would decrease the waterchanges and feeding, maybe even lower the bioload. Manually remove the Hair Algae, and use Maracyn antibiotic on the Cyano. I've found that too many or too large of water changes can contribute to this problem, especially if you use tap water.

Did you remove most of the problem Cyano manually? You should do this in conjunction with the Chemi-Clean. I've used Chemi-Clean with good results, and FWIW...have decided to use it regularly on a monthly basis...as the package suggests. Ya, I know....frequent chemicals in the tank, which some might not agree with, but it's working for me and keeping it in check.

Cheers,

Yes.

I helped a friend of mine with the exact same problem. His tank was two years old with a ton of algae and after this "amazing cure" his tank cleared up in less than a month.
Stop using water from Wally Mart, or Safeways, or Co Op. Unless you know exactly how often they change their filters then the chances are you are getting more than good RO water. Go fork out the money and buy yourself your own system. That way you can keep track and change filters accordingly.
That's my two cents worth tonight. Hope it helps:biggrin:

that is major phoshates in your tank get a refugium going and stick that HA in there and the will take it down some. that is what I did get some phosphate sponges to soak it up

Well I did the 3 days without light technique and most of the cyano is gone. All of the hair algae remained however. I have decided to change from fill it yourself RO water from walmart, to pre bottled distilled water that says 0.01 ppm on the bottle. This will be more expensive, but I will try it out and see what happens. I have also changed the flow in my refugium so that the water flows under the baffle and up throw the liverock and chaeto, instead of just overtop of everything like before (mis-read the DIY instructions).

The lights out thing seems to totally annihilate cyano, I don't know for how long. I think it might help with your hair algae if you did it regularly, say once a month. Did the lack of light have any negative effect on your corals?

Nothing negative as far as I know. Yesterday was the first day with them back on, and I only put actinics on, so it is hard to gauge. My toadstool and xenia werent standing as tall as they usually do, but I think that is just temporary.

The hair algae still looks the same to me as far as I know. How does it look when they are dieing off?

I didn't wait for mine to die off. I only had a few patches, and I basted mine with boiling RO/DI water (my remedy for everything :mrgreen: ) The next day there is nothing but bare rock.

I dont think you should use distilled water....I cant remember where I read it but distilled is not good....I use a RODI unit but in a pinch if I need water I use my Canadian Springs bottled water(demineralized using RO).
Never had a problem using this...and maybe someone else has also heard about the negative effects using distilled.

Anything negative about basting with boiling water? Besides making sure the fish arent near it when you are basting? Will it harm the rock or my tank in any way?

If you have a small tank you need to be careful not to raise the temperature too much. In any case just do a small patch at a time. The rock will be bone white for a while after, but coralline will re-establish again. Protect your corals with a shield such as an oyster shell, but the water isn't really that warm except right where you're basting. I would start by pulling as much out as you can, without letting any get loose in the water. When it's nice and short baste what remains on the rock.

Ya I tried basting a patch with boiling water, and that did nothing at all to it. I also added some nitrate media in a bag and a phosphate sponge to my refugium. I'm beginning to think that this algae would survive a nuclear holocaust. I am getting very frustrated here!!

I thought that it wasn't possible to win too. I pull out algae every day. Some rocks that were infested I turned over so the algae was in the dark and slowly but surely I'm winning. Good luck with your problem, don't give up.

Likwid....I have a sea hare that you are welcome to "borrow"...he loves hair algae, and now that my tank is pretty much free of it, is not finding much to eat. A couple of weeks, and I can guarantee he will have eaten his fair share. He poops, but it is a lot easier to clean than the HA :biggrin:

If you are interested just shoot me a pm.

Jason

Thanks for the offer, but I am in Lethbridge and do not go up to Calgary very often.

All of my levels are good, I just dont know what to do anymore. It does not spread, it just keeps growing in the same spots all the time. Whenever I yank it out during water changes, it just starts growing back in the same spots days later. There are areas of the rock that have never seen any hair algae, but the spots with it, just wont lose it.

Have you ever researched high magnesium levels as a solution to hair algae? Check this out: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...lgae+magnesium

Aside from that, all we have are some basic details from you about your tank. If you're not into trying the Magnesium idea, then take the time to write down all your daily maintenance, weekly maintenance, monthly maintenance...everything you do to your tank and how often. Include amounts like size of waterchanges, amount of food, dosing of any additives, etc. Also include brand names, and product names. List all specs - all testing from the last 6 months; ph, amonnia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate. Also salinity, temperature, lighting hours, hardware, bulb brands, last time bulbs changed, etc. Don't leave anything out.

No problem, for some reason I missed that and thought you were in calgary.

I would get a phosban reactor. It really will STOP it from growing. My sea hare ate away, but the phosban really stopped it from growing. The key was to keep the media changed during the beginning, and after a couple weeks it all pulled right out, and has not come back.

Phosban, sea hare, and hermit crabs and it will be gone!

the high magnesium solution is for bryopsis only, which is what i am batteling right now, i am trying the high mag solution, but it depends on what mag you use. apparently kent tech-m is the best solution for this, followed by epsom salts because it is magnesium sulphate and not magnesium chloride or whatever magflake is. i wish it was just high magnesium that was the solution, because then my OPP salt that was 2300 ppm mag would have taken care of it. so after lots of water changes using reefcrystal i am now able to does tech-m to battle the bryopsis. i will let everyone know as to my progress.

I had that exact same problem, so I know what it feels like.

What seemed to be my problem was phosphate, I started to use RO water from the local grocery store and that helped alot, but at the same time it seemed to hurt coral growth which I thought was weird.

So I mixed half and half (well water and RO water) and that made a huge difference, I also increased my lighting to 120 Watts, because I noticed the hair algae was bleaching that was closer to the light, This seemed to clear all the hair algae out but the red slime started to grow like crazy.

I then bought another powerhead, and that seemed to take care of all the red slime.

Oh and I also started to pour tons of seachem's reef complete which raises calcium.

I live on the east coast so my make up water might be different then your's but I really hope this helps

Matthew