Hair Algae prob

[Jack]

A new tank should experience a few algae cycles in the first few weeks/months but there is definatley something wrong if you've got hair algae all over the place.

Algae feeds on nutrients so you gotta find the source first.

[Son Of Skyline]

If your tank is only a month old there's not too much you can do. Manual removal isn't going to solve the problem. It's pretty normal in a young tank. Just do lots of small water changes, make sure your not pushing water too fast through your DI filter, and wait. It'll burn itself out eventually.

Then you'll get another algae bloom of some other type and you'll go through this all over again. It took my tank about 7 months before things really started settling down.

Have fun

[dekay]

Had two hermits die on me. Don't know why, but they were out of their shells and were in some crevices. Possible they died while they try to molt??

btw, i couldn't find the corpse for one of them, could that be the reason?

[Son Of Skyline]

Originally Posted by dekay

Had two hermits die on me. Don't know why, but they were out of their shells and were in some crevices. Possible they died while they try to molt??

Or possibly they're just molts. The molt looks just like a real crab...only dead.

Either way I'd make sure there's no dead animals in your tank.

..and again. Keep doing small water changes until the algae dies off.

[Pete]

i had the same problem like you would not believe. all my rocks cover in green alge and thousands of little bubble alge. what i ened up doing was with a soft toohbrush scrubbing them in salt water. and i had to do this a few times along with more water changes and it all slowly went away. also bought a few left handed hermits and african red legs. as well as 2emerald crabs and i havent seen one bubble yet. i all so changed my filter to GREEN-X phosphte remover and green alge grows of lots of phosphates.

[pocilipora]

Yor algae has to have a source of nutrience and light to make it grow. Id sugest finding the source of the nutrience and remove it.

[smokinreefer]

i once had hair algae for a long time, and boy it is not fun when all your rocks are covered.

good advice given here...find the source and remove it. and i dont just mean that one particular piece of rock.

it needs light and nutrients.

IMO I feed my tank alot, which = lots of nutrients.
do you feed heavily? if so, do you really need to?
try cutting down feedings.

water changes? how often do you do them?
try increasing your water changes.

you mentioned you use DI water. as in tapwater purifier?
if so, think about going RO or even RO/DI...in the long run you will save money and you will get purer water as well.

i think i read that this is a fairly new tank right? true most all brand new systems will go through some sort of algae cycle(s), but dont discount this problem to a "normal" thing, not everyone suffers from hair algae.

whats your lighting? and photoperiod? all new bulbs? kelvin rating?
maybe change bulbs to newer bulbs, or try cutting down the photoperiod a bit.

i have ran photoperiods varying from 8hrs a day upto 12+hrs.


HTH or atleast gives you some ideas as to how to fight this.

but yeah, i would still yank that rock out and scrub the living sh-- out of it.

[TANGOMAN]

I battled hair algae in my 90g for longer than I care to mention... .
I played with lighting, feeding, manual removal...it kept comin' back. With your tank still being young, algae will have cycles. My culprit ? Insufffient biological filtration. I replaced a canister filter that was long since removed as I wanted to slowly convert to a reef set-up. I had a lot of live rock and a lot of flow so I figured it was "good to go..." Ammonia and/or nitrates were never detected but they had to be the source of the problem ? The algae was gone in four weeks and the coraline once again flourished. I really missed the hairy look so I again removed the canister filter and I was glad to see the rapid return of my hair... . The canister is again back on and I'm goona' settle with a fish only system.
Good luck and be patient...

[Bob I]

I really missed the hairy look so I again removed the canister filter and I was glad to see the rapid return of my hair... . The canister is again back on and I'm goona' settle with a fish only system.
Good luck and be patient...

Now if that would only work on your head.

[TANGOMAN]

On my head...? Says the the pot to the kettle !