Hair Algae/Corals

[Abbysmom]

I have hair algea in my 72 bow front. I have scrubbed the rocks to the best of my ability but it is already growing back. I just added 40 astrea snails and 40 blue leg crabs and 3 giant snails(because they looked awesome!) Anyways i'm going to Home Depot today to get some tubing to hook up my UV sterilizer. I checked everything inthe tank that i was able to and everything was great but something is off for me to have algea like this. What causes hair algea? Also i was going to leave the lights off for a couple days then slowly start bring them back on gradually with a few hours each day to help kill off the algea. Will this also kill my corals and anemones?? I won't do it if that is a possibility. Any suggestions would be great!! I want to get rid of this stuff so bad!!

 

[mskohl]

Welcome to Reef Central and to COMAS.

I can tell you up front, that we all feel your pain with this hair algae. As you may have found there is another thread on this page at the moment that is addressing the same issue.

Basically, everything holds true for all nusiance algae:
water changes
flow
reduction in feeding
clean detritus
and get some critters to help (lettuce nudibrachs, sea hare, & lawnmower blenny have all been known to help).

It will take a while, but hopefully with these changes you'll get rid of the stuff.

A few days without lights won't hurt your corals. The high nitrates and potential die off from the algae may though. I would pull and syphon off as much as you can before you turn out the lights.

 

[OkR33Fer]

When I had my hair algae problem it was because of too much light. How is your light regimine?

 

[JimmyS]

Can you give us the specifics of your tank? What are your water parameters? How many fish? Whats your lighting cycle? Stuff like that.

 

[Lightsluvr]

Magnesium

Magnesium

I read on several reliable sites that you can wipe out hair algae by gradually increasing your Magnesium to 1500. Maintain this level until you see the HA begin to pale and it will eventually die. Then you siphon the dead HA off your rock during a 10-20% water change and then maintain normal MG levels for your tank...

LL