Hair algea
 

I seem to be having an outbreak of hair algea. It actually looks like moss growing on some of me live rock and corals. Can anyone recommend a method to get rid of it? Is there a cleaning procedure I should employ? Is there a fish that could accomplish the cleanup?

What might be causing my green hair algea? Tank chemistry seems to be alright, so I'm stumped.

Thanks

MoMan

cut the light duration down and don't feed the tank so much. It is just excess nutrients in the water column

get a sea hare . they work wonders

I've never heard of a sea hare. What is it?

Here's a great link you should read. Tells you everything you need to know.

http://saltyzoo.com/HairAlgae.html

Those lettuce nudibranchs work great too, or is that the same thing as a sea hare? Some people experience short life expectancys with them but they do great work while they are around.

lettuce nudi does not hold a candle to a sea hare . min removed 95% of my hair algea in one week

Different animal. I'm not suprised at the difference golden69_ca has observed either, given the size and body shape of the slug versus the hare (the lettuce sea slug has thin little ruffles, the hare is a fat bastard; it's a lettuce sea slug, not a lettuce nudibranch). :mrgreen:

I've got a fox face, damn thing eats everything that's an algae. He (she) ate all my calupera with in a couple days.. great fish.

Doug

Alternatively, you could deal with the cause of the algae, which likely lies in insufficient nutrient removal. :smile:

Not feeding much simply isn't an option for many people with fish and coral, you must find some way to export nutrients, whether that is skimming, macroalgae harvest, frequent water changing etc. etc... :biggrin:

Had a bad bout of hair algae for a bit there. Firstly removed as much as humanly possible. Used a bottle brush on the end of that stretchy stuff they sell at the hardware store for stringing curtains. (sorry i dont know what it is technically called). Put it on my drill on very low speed and it wrapped around the brush quite well. Bought a lawnmower blennie who seemed to like the stuff pretty well. Stopped feeding my tang nori and he even picked at it a bit. Put my skimmer from second tank in my sump for a while and that helped too. This brought it pretty well under control. What really fixed it was switching to a very blue bulb in my metal halide and finally a foxface that has picked at every little bit of hair algae left anywhere he can reach it. Main casuality was my colonial polyps that got choked out. They seem to be recovering slower than my pipe organ which has come out stronger than ever. Good luck.