Again, if you are having a hair algae problem, I strongly suggest you try prodibio bio clean. Getting rid of hair algae has all to do with eliminating nitrate and phosphate from the system. Prodibio is totally natural and merely consists of bacteria and carbon (food source) for the bacteria. It is very reasonably priced. For up to a 52 gallon system, it will cost you only about $30 bucks for an intensive 6 week treatment. After that, the cost gets cut in 1/2. This totally eliminated nitrate and phosphate from my system and helped to rapidly break down organic waste before the waste could feed the algae remaining. The algae then simply dies.
Using critters to eliminate hair algae is often unsuccessful because the critters do not get at all of the algae, and the algae often still re-grows because you have not eliminated its source, the excess nutrients. Prodibio will eliminate these nutrients and greatly assist in breaking down detrius and other organic waste in the system which feed the algae. My system was completely, and I mean completely covered with thick hair algae (every rock) and tons of turf algae on the substrate and cyno. I tried every normal method which all helped but were simply not enough to to get the problem under control. I have now just about completed a 6 week intensive weekly dosing of prodibio, and about 80% of the algae is gone. In 1 week I will then switch to dosing every two weeks.
Once your system gets infested with hair algae, it is very hard to get rid of it because any dying algae helps to feed living algae. You really need to run an extremely low nutrient system for a number of weeks to get ahead of the curve. The problem is that even if you keep your phosphate and nitrate at 0 readings the organic waste from the dying algae and phosphate leached into your rock and substrate are usually enough to keep the algae alive so that you just cannot get ahead of the curve. Prodibio breaks this organic waste down so rapidly that it gives you the ability to starve out the algae. Once you do get ahead of the curve, you do not have to run such a clean system to prevent the algae from re-growing. In other words, it is much harder to eliminate enough nutrients in the system to cause the algae to die off (and even harder to get the dead algae to be broken down quick enough not to feed the living algae) then it is to keep nutrients low enough to prevent the infestation from taking hold in the first place.
