Green Hair Algae

[Braun036]

Good evening, my fellow reefers. I hope you all are doing well I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything. I want to share some of my advice with people who might be going though an ugly stage in their tank. I have a Red Sea nano max 21 gallon I guess if we are being technical. I have had it just packed with corals, I have done things in my tank that people say isn't going to work. Well they were wrong! My corals are really just thriving and growing out of control. If you are willing to really put in the hard work than really anything can be done. So anyways getting back to the ugly stage in your tank. I have read countless hours of articles telling you to buy this and do that. Heres the honest truth you might get lucky and that stuff might work. last year I got very busy with work and sad to say neglected my tank for a good 6 months. I had more green hair algae then I knew what to do with, not to mention bubble algae. I tired this and that and nothing seem to work. I got snails and crabs and that didn't seem to help with the GHA. So here is the secret to success. Stick to weekly water changes it is seriously the magic you are looking for. Yes it is slow, but it is the best way to fix the problems. But I am telling you if you stick to a weekly schedule with in 12 months your tank will be back to beautiful. Also watch your daily feeding habits. I will share one more thing with you that actually did work for the bubble algae and that was a product by API Algae Fix and I think I double the dose and with in a month all the bubble algae was gone. And I mean GONE I had at lease 1000 little bubbles. I tired crabs and all they did was eat and screw up my corals. I hope this helps some of you dealing with algae issues. 

 

Thanks and god bless

 

p.s. you will also want to run GFO it doest have to be some fancy reactor, just put some in a mess back and make sure it is in a good place in the back of the tank or in your sump.

[Tired]

Keeping it simple is good advice, but water changes and GFO will only fix it if the problem is nutrients being too high. Sometimes hair algae grows everywhere when nutrients are too LOW, because its potential competition (other algaes) is suffering. 

Some peoples' tanks do very badly with weekly water changes. Badly as in, nitrates and phosphates hit 0, and everything in the tank starves. Nitrates and phosphates are vital to reef aquariums. 

 

Water changes, and maybe some GFO, are good to use when nutrients are too high. When nutrients are too low, increased feeding, less water changes, and removal of things like GFO are the best thing to do. Snails and manual removal are a good accompaniment to both. Either way, avoiding dumping any sort of algae-killing product into the tank is a very good idea- it won't fix whatever led to the problem, you're just putting poison in your tank. 

 

Your tank looks really nice. I like the big ol cluster of green star polyps. Are those Sunny D zoas in the sandbed there? 

[Braun036]

wouldn't you agree that many new people who get into this hobby love to feed their tank and they over feed more times than not. After doing a lot of reading and making house visits to peoples home and helping them fix their tanks. 9 times out of 10 their nirates are 80 or higher with their phosphates 1.00 or higher. I am only giving at advice from what I have experienced. I am not saying you are wrong I agree with everything you said. I still strongly recommend the water changes and feeding the tank reef roids and other things depending what the person has in the tank. 

 

thank you the green start polyps are getting out of control they are half way up both sides of the glass now. I will cut it off in and give it to the LFS. Yes those are sunny d and I have green dragon eyes and blue hornets that I will really like all of which are down in the sand bed on plugs. the green dragon eyes unfortunately are being taken over by the GSP so I will have to do some surgery on them lol. 

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Hm, good to have one anecdote about Algaefix actually working for you. I've never ventured in algaecides until recently. I've used fluconazole to some success. Cool tank nonetheless.

 

I liked Pittsburgh when I visited last Labor Day. I forgot how much of a rust belt city it was and a lot of stuff was quiet or closed for the holiday. Luckily the PPG Zoo and Aquarium was open and I found a good spot for pierogis. It was at that restaurant/brewery that converted from an old Catholic church.

 

Go Steelers.

[Tired]

Like I said, if the nutrients are too high, water changes are the right route. But if someone's nutrients are too low, water changes could kill their stuff. It's opposite strategies depending on what's going on, so the most important thing to do is to test water parameters, to figure out which of the opposite strategies to use. 

 

I agree that people often cause problems by overfeeding, but I've also seen plenty of people on here who say that they can't grow coral and they have an algae problem, and the reason is that they have basically no nutrients. People trying to keep the tank too clean also causes problems. Some people do weekly water changes and find out that their tank doesn't do well with that, and some people need to be doing weekly water changes. 

[Crys]

I had out of control algae. Felt very defeated, but followed Tired's advice and now a few months later things are well under control. It's such a pleasure to be gone for a week and come home to a tidy tank. And although it may seem counterintuitive that clean tanks = algae I can attest to this being true. 0 nitrate and 0 phosphates were my constant numbers and I had a very green tank. I still struggle getting phosphates up. Not sure why.

Thanks for the good advice Tired

[f1PaceCar]

I have to say, your post comes timely to my search.

I am in a battle with GHA for the past 6 months on my 1.5 years Fluval 13.5. They started to show after I transitioned from Aquaforest Sea Salt to Aquaforest Reef Salt. My change was necessary as I felt I could give more nutrients to my corals and make sure they grow faster. 
The 2 initial months they did grow a lot faster. Fantastic result but soon after GHA also started to be happy about the extra nutrients. I was always conservative on the feeding habits.

I do my water changes bi-weekly with manual scrubing of the rocks to remove the GHA, but that is not working. Even after adding GFO for the past 2 months I feel like I am loosing this battle.

 

My filtration side has Seachem Phosban, Seachem Matrix, Chaeto (growing extremly healthy), the nearly useless Fluval skimmer and an upgraded returned pump Eheim 1000. 

My Corals are Anemonas, Monti, Mushrooms, Ricordea, Candy Cane, GSP, green stylophora, kenya tree, Frogspawn, hammer, zoa, Chalice and Toad Stool. + GHA ;D

My life stock, Goby and his pistol shrimp, 2 clown, Porcelain crab, cleaner shrimp and the usual army of snails 

 

Would you believe that weekly water change would solve my issue?

 

[j.falk]

On 8/31/2020 at 3:38 PM, Braun036 said:

thank you the green start polyps are getting out of control they are half way up both sides of the glass now. I will cut it off in and give it to the LFS. Yes those are sunny d and I have green dragon eyes and blue hornets that I will really like all of which are down in the sand bed on plugs. the green dragon eyes unfortunately are being taken over by the GSP so I will have to do some surgery on them lol. 

What kind of coral is to the right of the duncans in the photo?  Frilly mushrooms?

[Crys]

When I started just manually removing the gha and not scrubbing the rock things improved. (Slowly 🙂) when you scrub the rock it blows more tiny pieces of gha to circulate and find homes than is removed. I have also discovered that gha doesn't grow on coralline algae. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So definitely don't take the rock out of the tank to scrub. I did that in the beginning and kept wondering why my coralline didn't grow fast. I will allow some else with more experience to comment on increases water changes. Hope that helps. It's slow but it does get better.

[Tired]

Increased water changes will help with hair algae if the problem is that your nutrients are too high. If your nutrients are at a decent level, or too low, water changes will potentially make it worse. Check your nitrates and phosphates. Sounds like they're OK if your corals and macros are doing well, but it's still worth checking.

 

Snails can't eat hair algae once it gets too long. Pulling tufts of it out by hand (preferably by tweezer) will help them keep it short.

 

Coraline is hard for many types of algae to grow on, but not impossible. Definitely stop scrubbing your rocks, it only messes up the growth of things that will help you outcompete the hair algae. When you scrub the rocks, you make it a nice clean surface, and hair algae is great at spreading onto nice clean surfaces. It's much worse at spreading onto harmless-algae-covered surfaces.

[j.falk]

On 9/11/2020 at 8:50 AM, j.falk said:

What kind of coral is to the right of the duncans in the photo?  Frilly mushrooms?

Can anyone else identify that coral for me?

[mcarroll]

22 hours ago, j.falk said:

Can anyone else identify that coral for me?

Looks like Mushrooms to the South and a Euphillia to the East.

[j.falk]

12 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Looks like Mushrooms to the South and a Euphillia to the East.

Thank you.  👍