last resort

[Crakeur]

Well, the hair algae is still winning the battle. I pull, trim, yank, scrub and still it keeps on growing faster than I can remove it. The lettuce nudibranch clears out an area and the crap sprouts up somewhere else. Rather than put another two or nine nudis in the tank (they are supposedly delicate and my success with this one might be a fluke) I have decided to get myself a third fish (9 1/2 gallons including refugium) to eat the algae. I know the bio load will be huge but I plan on doing water changes every other day or, if needed, every day. As soon as the algae is under control I will move one of my fish to a larger tank (might keep the algae eater if it won't get too big).

 

Any suggestions for a real grass cutter that won't grow to biblical proportions?

[logicalreef]

yo Crakeur!

 

How much live rock we talking here in lbs?

 

Any possiblility of trading it / selling it and fully replacing the rock?

 

I know money plays a role in everything we do, but I'm thinking you're in the neighborhood of 10lbs or so.

 

Heck, worst case is I'll trade some tonga plate or Fl. Aquacultured if need be if shipping wont kill us I use ugly hair rock in my sumps.

 

I don't really have a tried and true fish method. Are you skimming?

 

just thinking outloud, Bryan

[BCOrchidGuy]

You wont like this advice but I swear I was fighting the same battle with my 45 a few years ago, I was pulling off a pound of hair algae a day, I had 50 blue legged hermits, about two dozen snails, I had a yellow tang and some other algae eaters and I wasn't feeding the tank. Phosphates were zero, nitrates were acceptable but the algae was growing in leaps and bounds. Finally I gave up, I change out my expensive pet store flourescent tubes for daylight deluxe hardware tubes (6500k) and kept the two actinics and waited. A week later I noticed the algae wasn't growing as fast, a week after that, there was no algae. Go figure, once I gave up it lost interest in tormenting me. I lost some polyps to it, it just covered them and choked them. BTW I was doing 5% w/c every two days. Now I change a gallon a day and so far no algae in my nano.

[tinyreef]

hey crak,

 

what are your specs again? inhabitants? bulbs (temp & age)? what are you feeding/dosing? source water?

 

quick fix would be continuous phosguard to starve out the phos but that doesn't address the input problem. i don't agree with the addt'l fish, it's just more bio-load fixating the nutrients vs. exporting them imo.

[Crakeur]

all parameters are good. water is distilled and never had a problem with it in the past. lights are a 32 watt acitinic pc and a 70 w hqi. they are a couple of months old.

 

regarding the trade for live rock, I would but I have stuff growing all over the rock . zoo's, xenia, capnella, shrooms, acros and a leather.

 

the fish would be a temporary fix, so that I don't have to feel like puking every time I look at the afro tank.

 

Not dosing at all anymore. just doing water changes weekly or more when the time allows.

 

I will go thru thanksgiving with the water changes and see if anything gets better. might be moving to a larger tank so, if that happens, I will have to break down the tank a bit and get a real scrub down going.

[kimura]

I'm currently in the process of battling massive hair algae. I did several water changes. I believe the cause of this was when I did some changes to the rock placement. I did notice several dead pods floating in the tank the next day then the following day the algae came in full force. I did the following: 1) several water changes 2) poly-filter 3) added more snails 4) scrubbed rock with toothbrush 5) Cut back photo period 6) cut back on feedings 7) remove the mat on the top surface of my sand bed.

This was all in a period of a week. I'm in my second week now and (knock on wood) It seemed to stop growing. I will soon add a refugium to the tank as soon as possible.

[Dave ESPI]

Kimura is on target.

ALL alga runs in cycles. You could try adding a skimmer on it temporarily, The Phosguard is solid advice, and add some higher level consumers ie: caulerpia algae to compete with the hair fer the fuels. ALSO, adding another fish is not a good way to deal with it.

Try a Tuxedo (royal) Urchin, or cut way down on the photo period fer a few days. the corals will live quite well w/o light fer a few days, Monitor yer PH though. Since you have a fuge, it shouldnt be big deal. I know that a lot of people dont like chemicals, but sometimes it can be the only way. Look into possible algacides....

As a LAST DITCH EFFORT.... I had to on 3 tanks after a 3 month exhaustive battle. A SMALL sailfin tang will eat hair. see how small ya can find, and then Lend/Lease it. If I was closer, Id give ya one of mine.

HTH.

[Crakeur]

I have a refugium that is overloaded with caulerpa, I have phosguard up and running for a week (little or no phosphates before or after adding) and the baby sailfin was what I had in mind. It is an absolute last resort but it will cut down the algae and then, hopefully, my algae eaters will keep it in check.

 

Thanks for all the advice.

[BustytheSnowMaam]

This is only a brain fart, but someone who writes an advice column for FAMA once suggested that if you have hair algae problems to be sure not to use ammonia-based cleaning products around your tank.

 

Tasha

[Crakeur]

hmm, that might be the cause. I will have to talk to the cleaning lady when she comes this week.

 

 

Thanks tash.

[Caesar]

Crakeur I feel your pain. I'm currently fighting red bubble algae and I'm ready to break down the tank and scrub everything!

[Dave ESPI]

Its all fun and games 'till someone starts pulling Hair...

[Xavier]

no no.. it's all fun and games until someone puts an eye out........ then it's just fun...

[luv2jeep]

I had the same problem and PhosGuard worked for me!

[kimura]

DAMM! DAMN DAMN!!!!!! I was lazy yesterday so I grabbed some water from Scripps pier, and Now the hair algae is BACK:*( Apparently there are traces if not high amounts of phosphate that have been found there.

 

I had to get some phosphate pads and am now getting my normal SW mix ready. I'm gonna siphon alot of my gravel and replace it later. I'm soo disappointed with myself:*( I should know better.

[gobies]

> all parameters are good.

 

How old are your test kits?

 

 

What's your snail population like?

[kimura]

Well all my test were normal and verified by LFS. I also did one for my Alk and CA Which were not so good:( All reading above normal. (Water change should correct that) I have one snail per 2 gallons. I could attribute the outbreak by two things 1) Incorrect dilution of BioPlankton 2) Introduced phosphates from Water change.

 

I will now Cut-off feeding for 2 days as well as no photoperiod. Afterwards I will scrub rock with toothbrush and siphon rock and gravel out, just to get as much algae off. I've already added the phosphate pads along with carbon and polyfilter. After adding new mixed water, I'll add a bag of phosphate removing gravel or whatever it's called. Hopefully that Will work.

[LiQuiD]

Never had a problem like that so I can not speak from experience but I was talking to the owner of a small LFS a couple days ago who I remember had some real bad alge problems (red slime, brown hair, green globs, etc.). When I was in there his tanks were totally clean. He said a buddy who does huge maintenance jobs in Manhattan turned him on to this stuff called chemi clean or something like that I do believe it was chemi-clean. Any way, he showed me a small white package of it and said "This s**t is great". I am not one to add chemicals as are most, but hey, it did wonders for his show tanks very quickly and everything (except the algea)did fine. Just my 2 cents.

[Crakeur]

I bought all new test kits just to ensure that my readings were accurate. Doesn't mean the ones I bought weren't old too tho.

 

Snail population is good. 4 trochus snails, a few bumblebees and nassarius snails, two fighter conchs and I might put the golfball (turbo) back in the main tank. I was also thinking of moving a sea hare into the main tank. The downside to the turbo being in the main tank is that it will knock my acros around and I don't want to lose any more (lost the tri color and the purple tip to snail bulldozer tactics - knocked them over and they got stuck between two rocks).

 

Anyone ever heard of Algone? I might even give this stuff a shot.

 

In the interim, lights are off (actinic is on for two hours a day), feeding is finished, no additives and a one gallon water change every other day is in the works.

 

I will update on the progress.

[gregmoeck]

I just tossed all my live rock in the back yard and bought all new rock. I couldn't take it no longer. Hair algae sucked all the life out of my rock and coral.

 

Greg

[kimura]

Hey Crakeur, I'm still battling algae just as you are. But this time I'm trying no light for 48 hours. I placed a towel over the tank to make sure it doesn't get any light at all. Today will be the last day and as soon as I have a chance to I'll go in and scrub the crap out of the algae and try to siphon the rock and gravel. I getting sick of all the long hair algae. I'm tempted to try chemical warfare on it. I'll let you know how it goes. Oh and I just seen your other post, good luck with that, I know what you're going thru. I have two of my own.

[Dave ESPI]

You get 3 packets of it. rotate them untill the nutrients is gone. Ive had limited sucess with it on a few tanks. It never hurts to try something after all else has failed. Actualy, I had forgotten about that stuff... I think I even have some ...... somewhere...

 

Kimura, be VERY VERY CAREFULL about light denial. you can have very bad PH swings and low O2 content. in a sparcely populated or "new" tank, it is fairly safe. In Steves case, he has established animals, and a drop in ph nad a massive die off of alga culture will crash his tank badly.

[gregmoeck]

Hair alqae is evil stuff. I never really had a problem with it before until now. I took over a reef from someone who really didnt keep up with it. I moved the tank, increased lights and the alqae exploded. It suffocated the live rock.

[DeskJockey]

Kimura,

Stop feeding the BioPlankton!! I was in this very same situation a few months back. It all started when I switched to Bioplankton. I thought it was a fluke and after a month of clean up and it was all gone I bought another bottle just to make sure. And sure enough it broke out again long hair algae and red cyano. I went nuts!!

 

I stopped feeding phyto, I fed fish only everyother day, I cut lights to only 5hrs a day, used a polyfilter in my overflow box, took out all other media, and cleaned up as much of the crap off the sand that could. I didnt take out any rocks to scrub them just used my hand to get the long stuff off and my snails took care of the rest (fighter conch love the stuff). Oh and I did a w/c everyother day.

 

Hope this helps

 

In case your wondering Im using DT's again and so far no problem.

[BCOrchidGuy]

I've been following this with interest and a few comments, and suddenly it occured to me, .... What power heads are you using, and have you checked for iron.

 

The post about what power heads to use made me wake up, when I had some trouble with the Hagen power head shaft it had turned black on both of my power heads. I had a massive aglae bloom and it went away when I went to Rio power heads if I remember right. The LFS did say I had iron in my water but they refused to accept the Hagen Power head shafts as the cause.

 

Just a thought.