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green hair algee..arghhhhh


Flexin5

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so my 10gallon has been up and running for about a month, i have a emrald crab, skunk cleaner shrimp, 4 blue legged hermits, 2 bumble bee snails, 2 astrea snails and 2 Dwarf Ceriths. 1 zoa aswell.

 

about 14lbs live rock, 10lbs live sand, aquaclear 110 with surface skimmer, only filter floss in the 110. yesterday i did a 20% water change with ro/di and reef salt. i also added a nitrate sponge in the 110 too.

 

now i was going to pick up some turbo snails and a couple of red legged hermits but both of my LFS have none. i was hoping to add my pair of clowns soon but i want to take care of this first. can anyone give me some ideas short of plucking it out to get rid of this stuff?

 

here's what it looks like but it's getting worse and worse each day. my emrald crab doesn't seem to be eating any of it either.

 

KY0C9811.jpg

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Scrubbing the rock and WC is the best option. The GHA means you have extra nutrients (Nitrates, Phosphates, Silicates) in your tank.

 

Are you running anything for chemical filtration? Chemi Pure/Carbon, or Phosgurad/GFO?

 

Have you tested lately?

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what do i scrub the rock with? do i take it out of the tank, scrub it down with something and then put it back?

 

i do have a bag of carbon but i did not put it in yet, right now just the nitrate sponge and filter floss.

 

i tested two days ago and off the top of my head i had 0 nitrate, 0 nitrite and 0 ammonia. PH was good too. i don't have a test kit for phosphates and silicates tho. thanks for the reply :)

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what do i scrub the rock with? do i take it out of the tank, scrub it down with something and then put it back?

 

i do have a bag of carbon but i did not put it in yet, right now just the nitrate sponge and filter floss.

 

i tested two days ago and off the top of my head i had 0 nitrate, 0 nitrite and 0 ammonia. PH was good too. i don't have a test kit for phosphates and silicates tho. thanks for the reply :)

 

If you have a clean toothbrush that will work, or any kind of brush as long as it is clean and not been used with any chemicals soaps etc. You can scrub it in the water you take out of the tank after a WC and rinse the rock when your done, then place back in tank. Good to go.

 

I got GHA right at about a month having my tank set up as well. Since you have no corals in the tank you can do a 3 day cycle of no lights and that will help you be rid of it as well.

 

If your sure the cycle is done I would get a good GFO (Purgen or the stuff Bulk Reef Supply sells) and Carbon as well. I am just getting mine under control and my tank is almost 3 months old. WC, manual removal, and the chemical filtration have gotten it under control. I also run lights on for only about 2-4 hours depending on how it looks, only for the clowns.

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oh wow, so this stuff is a pain in the butt huh. i'll give it a scrub this weekend when i do a water change. i do have one zoa in the tank now, i was thinking that i'm running the lights too long too but can a 2-4hr light schedual be ok for it or will it mess up the zoa? i'll throw the carbon in tonight, have you tried a phosphates and silicates remover called phosguard?

 

i'm also guessing that it's not a good idea to be adding anything like the clows to the tank at this time either right?

 

If you have a clean toothbrush that will work, or any kind of brush as long as it is clean and not been used with any chemicals soaps etc. You can scrub it in the water you take out of the tank after a WC and rinse the rock when your done, then place back in tank. Good to go.

 

I got GHA right at about a month having my tank set up as well. Since you have no corals in the tank you can do a 3 day cycle of no lights and that will help you be rid of it as well.

 

If your sure the cycle is done I would get a good GFO (Purgen or the stuff Bulk Reef Supply sells) and Carbon as well. I am just getting mine under control and my tank is almost 3 months old. WC, manual removal, and the chemical filtration have gotten it under control. I also run lights on for only about 2-4 hours depending on how it looks, only for the clowns.

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the clowns should be fine in all of this.. i would hold off on corals until you get this under control... Its very horrible.. mine is pretty unbearable - i thought i had it conquered.. until the horid storms/natural disasters we had here lately was unable to keep up on the tank and lost a lot of corals.. GHA outbreak city.. I still have a few colonies of corals.. and a couple frags that hopefully will start thriving soon.. All in all GHA is a mess to deal w/

 

I have turbos.. i have hermits.. i have u name it.. finally got a sea hare and he appears to be doing some good work thus far :)

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oh wow, so this stuff is a pain in the butt huh. i'll give it a scrub this weekend when i do a water change. i do have one zoa in the tank now, i was thinking that i'm running the lights too long too but can a 2-4hr light schedual be ok for it or will it mess up the zoa? i'll throw the carbon in tonight, have you tried a phosphates and silicates remover called phosguard?

 

i'm also guessing that it's not a good idea to be adding anything like the clows to the tank at this time either right?

 

I did add clowns to my tank about 3 weeks ago, and have upped my WC to 2x a week due to that to keep ahead of the algae. They are doing fine, but if you want to get it under control first you can. Just make sure to add them either one at a time or get some really tiny ones. You have a 10g and clowns like the Gold Striped Maroon can get kind of big.

 

I have used it as Purgen was $$$ compared to the Phosguard at my LFS and I didn't need enough stuff to make an online order. It is very small so make sure your media bag is fine enough it doesn't get through. It works for me just changed out half of it the other day and will change the other half out next week. (about a month and a half running it as I had PHO4 at .5)

 

Just follow the dosing and after a few days if your phosphates are reading 0 your good. Get a phosphate test to be sure first Salifert is the best. When I get my next batch I will be buying the BRS GFO as it is more bang for the buck, and I need some more stuff anyways.

 

If you get it now before it takes over your tank your better off. A shorter light cycle for a day or two won't hurt the zoas, does the tank get any direct light from windows or anything?

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ah i see, great advice, i'll definatly pickup the phosguard this weekend or before if i can make it to the lfs, aswell as the test kit. i'll have to get a finer bag or two for the phosguard but should i also put in the carbon now too?

 

i was planning on getting two small tank bred ocellaris. hopefully i can get rid of the algee before they get too big. I'll start to run a shorter light cycle, i think that's adding alot to the growth right now and i'll try to keep ontop of cleaning it all off the glass as much as possible. during the day, its not in any direct sunlight, but the room is pretty lit up, i can just leave the curtins down. thanks so much for the help, in terms of the clean up crew, should i be adding something else perhaps?

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My Certh snails and Blue Leg hermits decimated it.

 

Run the carbon that's fine, it needs to be changed about every 3-4 weeks, the phosguard about every 3 months if you have no phosphates or algae growth.

 

You can up the WC to a 20-30% change once a week if you don't want to do the twice weekly changes.

 

GL keep up the fight! It's a dirty one!

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Hydrogen Peroxide treatment. Take out rocks, treat, put back.

CUC from reefcleaners

Cut back on feeding, do a WC after every feeding

 

 

see the thing is that i'm not feeding the tank anything right now, well i hand feed the shrimp 1 pellet but he eats that and that's it. i would like to get some stuff from reef cleaners but unfortunally they don't ship to canada...i'm stuck between a piece of live rock and a hard place (bud dumm cheeee).

 

My Certh snails and Blue Leg hermits decimated it.

 

Run the carbon that's fine, it needs to be changed about every 3-4 weeks, the phosguard about every 3 months if you have no phosphates or algae growth.

 

You can up the WC to a 20-30% change once a week if you don't want to do the twice weekly changes.

 

GL keep up the fight! It's a dirty one!

 

definatly a dirty one! haha thanks for the help, i just got off of work and im about to go ape #### and pull out as much as i can. i really think that i have the lights on for too long. i plucked out a good amout by hand two days ago and here's how it looks now:

 

KY0C9820.jpg

 

KY0C9821.jpg

 

i don't know, would you guys say that this is pretty bad? anyhow i'm pretty determined to get rid of it.

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fortunately for you its a very small tank to deal w/ try it in a 40b :-/ you cant just pick up a rock and 'peroxide poke' it.. you have to get a flame thrower out

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fortunately for you its a very small tank to deal w/ try it in a 40b :-/ you cant just pick up a rock and 'peroxide poke' it.. you have to get a flame thrower out

 

haha..ya i guess i should look on the brighter side of things huh?

 

well i plucked out a good amout of it, some remains, i also tossed in the carbon and checked params, everything seems to be ok, amm,nitrite,nitrate all at 0. i think the game plan for now is reduce the light, i'll only give it about 3-4hrs of light per day for the next couple of days, tomorow i'll try to make it to the LFS to pick up the phosguard and the phosphate test kit. if that doesn't seem to help then i'll peroxide dip.

 

thanks everyone for your help and suggestions! B) i'll update this thread as it goes along incase someone else has this problem.

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if you lift out the rock, pour regular peroxide on the algae while holding the rock over the sink, let sit for 4 mins, then rinse and put it back into the tank it will die by tomorrow, thats pretty fast. whether you pull some off while its in the sink and soaking, or not pull any of it off it will simply die overnight.

 

a small follow up treatment may be required, but your prob w be solved quite easily making no changes to the tank and its filtration or media or anything else. in these simple algae issues, youd be suprised how well attacking the actual biomass and not the tank water works. this tank doesn't look over nutrified, it looks like some natural green hair algae got inside, happened to us all.

 

if you do an external peroxide treatment, its dead white by this time tomorrow.

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Flex, I had this same look and problem recently. I hand picked what I could off the rock, put in some phosphate remover media and introduced a Lawnmower Blenny to the tank. It wasn't long before the green was gone and now my Blenny constantly works the tank for algae and will eat brine shrimp as well when I feed.

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Flex, I had this same look and problem recently. I hand picked what I could off the rock, put in some phosphate remover media and introduced a Lawnmower Blenny to the tank. It wasn't long before the green was gone and now my Blenny constantly works the tank for algae and will eat brine shrimp as well when I feed.

 

 

lol my blenny ate some for a little while.. and then found the liking of my brine + flake + other foods that they get.. and now he almost refuses to eat gha anymore.. bastard.. so i went and got a sea hare who seems to still have an interest in it :)

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Ok, first off: DO NOT get the clowns yet. You've obviously got some sort of excess nutrient problem, the last thing your tank needs is more bio-load. Adding bio-load now could drag this out for months. Get it fixed, then get your fish.

 

How long are you running your lights? Your zoas will be fine with 6 hours a day. Do a 3-day blackout immediately. The zoas will be fine. Next, get a phosphate test kit and test your tank water and some clean water change water before it goes in the tank. Your nitrates and stuff are going to read 0 because the hair algae is soaking it up, but its coming from somewhere otherwise you wouldn't have GHA. You've got to find the source of the problem first. I wouldn't add any phosban or any other chemical to the tank yet either. That stuff is only going to be a bandaid and if you've got a nutrient import problem (like your WC water) then you need to nip it in the bud now before you rely on chemicals for the rest of your tank's life. If your water change water tests 0 for phosphates then keep using it and do a 50% water change ASAP after doing another round of manual removal. A clean-up-crew won't touch that long stringy stuff, you've got to get it manually short enough so that they'll eat it. How many water changes have you done since your cycle finished?

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The only *problem* here is this thing called 'new tank syndrome'.

 

New tanks don't have an established ecosystem that can 'fix' the excessive nutrients produced by the end of a cycle. So, higly competitive and fast growing nuisance algaes rapidly take over because there's nothing to fight with. In established tanks, especially those with large amounts of softies, or growing heaps of cheato nuisance algaes have to fight it out for every molecule of nutrient. There is nothing broke here.

 

My suggestion is to be conservative about the solution and not get radically out of step with letting the tank mature. A single *big* turbo snail will likely regard the mess as a tasty salad, and a single big turbo can easily scrub a 10 gallon clean of HA in a couple of days. When I mean *big*, I mean get the biggest turbo your LFS has in their tank. The bigger the turbo snail the denser it can chomp through HA.

 

I've had less success with hermits handling HA, but you can try a couple blue legs and see if they start munching on it.

 

A 3-4day 100% black out period (cover the tank) will also devastate the HA and not disrupt existing corals. They can take it.

 

As always, make sure you are using good quality RO/DI water. Tap water phosphates in a new tank are asking for trouble.

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+1 to the big Turbo Snail. Everything else in a "standard" CUC is a waste of time IME with GHA. I agree, nothing drastic. Find a turbo snail, big round of manual removal, big water change, then black out. After that let's see how things are.

 

Still test your WC water, too.

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+1 to the big Turbo Snail. Everything else in a "standard" CUC is a waste of time IME with GHA. I agree, nothing drastic. Find a turbo snail, big round of manual removal, big water change, then black out. After that let's see how things are.

 

Still test your WC water, too.

 

Yup on the turbo.. Def not enough to warrant a Sea Hare yet, he would starve in an hour

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Thanks guys for the help!

 

to answer some questions,

 

-only have use RO/DI water since the start. i cannot for the life of me find it in grocery stores, so i've been getting ro/di from my LFS.

 

-i've done about.....4-5 WC's since the tank was started? (that incluedes when i acclimated the CUC etc)

 

i went to my LFS today, no turbo snails. -_- but they did have the red legged hermit. i diden't get them.

 

i did pick up a phosphate test kit, they only had the API brand. after work today i will test both the tank water and the ro/di water that i get from the lfs. i also picked up (since i was there) a bag of the phosguard, well, not the actual phosguard but the API brand of the same thing.

 

i also left the tank lights off today (only lunars, should i turn those off too?) the plan is to buy some hydrogen peroxide (hydrogen peroxide is what i use exactley? that i buy at the drug store?) and i'm going to pull that one top rock off, and do a peroxide dip of it. when i do that i was thinking about adding the phosguard stuff to keep the phosphates down so that it doesn't come back. sound like a plan?

 

i'm going to hold off on the clowns after this is all delt with, i just don't want to take the risk of them getting sick or dying. plucking it by hand is becoming a pain because the loose strands float around the tank and eventually end up in my intake for the surface skimmer, so that needs to come out to be cleaned aswell which is a pain in the ass.

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