Frustrated with Hair Algae

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Wow, water changes every day! That sounds like too often & bad for stability.

[Reefer Rob]

Try basting patches of it with hot (boiling) RO/DI water. Just stay away from any corals. Within a day the patch will be dead. You can slowly work you way through most of if this way. The down side is it also kills your coraline algae.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I've had a sea hare for six months. It's still alive and eating any algae that pops up on the rocks.

[sonymdcdvcd]

lol sorry for the typo, i do water changes every week lol. it just happened after i came back from my vacation. it may be just my neighbor thinking that my damsel and clownfish are always hungry so she overfed them. lol. i'm thinking of picking up a tang, i wonder if tangs eat hair algae as well.

[tknude]

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]

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!

[naesco]

Originally Posted by Der_Iron_Chef

I've had a sea hare for six months. It's still alive and eating any algae that pops up on the rocks.

It is slowly dying if you do not have lots of algae to eat.
Lend it out to the reefer that has a problem and if the algae becomes a problem again get it back.

Sea hare are the best solution for hair algae but they will die if there is not lots of it to eat.

Remember to turn off your powerheads for a while and very slowly acclimatize the hare before you place it in the tank