Frustrated with Hair Algae

tknude · #1 05-31-2007, 03:01 PM

I am have been working on getting my hair algea under control as well. I made some changes that seem to be helping me. I went BB so I can more easily see where the crud is that needs to be vacumed. Also gave away my sand sifting goby. As well I had one nanostream 6025 in my tank and I added another one. So far it seems that things are better. Just before I made these changes (about 3 weeks ago) I took all my rock out and scrubed it down under running water. I have no coral yet so this was not too hard to do. I now have a 33 gallon with 2 clown fish and one cleaner shrimp. I do my water changes with RODI water once a week.

Thanks to Albert for giving me these suggestions!

Hope this helps.

Ted.

Delphinus · #2 05-31-2007, 04:19 PM

It's been suggested a few times already but I'll add my opinion to the hat as well. A seahare will do you better on the filamentous algae than your rabbit or your lawnmower blenny. There are two main problems with seahares: 1) when the food source runs out they do tend to starve, more often than not. 2) They likely eventually will encounter a powerhead, pump intake or stream with sad results. And it's weird, because they can, for months, be fine walking all over pump intakes and walk off, but eventually they seem to run out of luck. But they are incredible algae eating machines that not much can compare to.

Rabbitfish are good at removing algaes but they tend to be particular to certain species.

Lawnmowers, as a rule, do not actually eat filamentous algae. Some may develop a taste for it but what they actually are eating when they do that lawnmower-gulp thing is going after slime algae. If you let slime accumulate on your glass you'll see the their kiss marks all over it.

How old is your tank? It's basically not uncommon for a new tank to go through a hair-pulling (sorry for the pun) phase of nuisance algaes. Hang in there!