Hair Algae Solution That Worked For Me
- Thread starter devoman
- Start date
rhunter513
New member
photo update
photo update
ok sorry for the delay. Here is some update pics. I am very impressed but still only think algeafix is only a tool not a fix. My HA has decreased but i still see some new growth and no real negative effect on the corals. I did 7 total doses then did a 50% water change. I am starting my second dosing round, did my 2nd dose this evening. My plans is another round of dosing but not more than 7 then another large water change then maybe go to once weekly. As with most who use this chemical, I have also tweaked other things on my tank - for me its been my photoperiod. My lights went from 10 hours daily to 5 hours daily with a 48 blackout every two weeks.
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photo update
ok sorry for the delay. Here is some update pics. I am very impressed but still only think algeafix is only a tool not a fix. My HA has decreased but i still see some new growth and no real negative effect on the corals. I did 7 total doses then did a 50% water change. I am starting my second dosing round, did my 2nd dose this evening. My plans is another round of dosing but not more than 7 then another large water change then maybe go to once weekly. As with most who use this chemical, I have also tweaked other things on my tank - for me its been my photoperiod. My lights went from 10 hours daily to 5 hours daily with a 48 blackout every two weeks.
rhunter513
New member
opps important detail I left out. I harvested all the algae that is not there now. The algaefix kills it but you will still need to pull it out.
FishHick
New member
Sorry for the long time between an update. The algae fix no longer seems to be working, the algae is back in full force even with the dosing. I also lost 3 fish... not sure if it had anything to do with it or not. Ive decided to get rid of the 65 gallon tank and go back to a smaller tank, trying to correct this one is just too much work for me right now. Good luck everyone with your tanks.
FishHick
New member
Sorry for the long time between an update. The algae fix no longer seems to be working, the algae is back in full force even with the dosing. I also lost 3 fish... not sure if it had anything to do with it or not. Ive decided to get rid of the 65 gallon tank and go back to a smaller tank, trying to correct this one is just too much work for me right now. Good luck everyone with your tanks.
I've just added the 6th dose and all my algae looks weaker. However than it feeling a bit weak rooted and easy to manually remove the algae fix has not killed it off yet. Like others have reported the algae doesn't seem to grow back quite as fast if at all once manually removed. Does anyone else have updates?
V. V. V. late update
V. V. V. late update
First let me apologize. I griped earlier in this thread, about lack of pics and follow ups. Now I am guilty of the same
Here's my pics and updates. I started Algaefix around the end of March. Here's how I did it:
- Dose every 3 days
- Turn off skimmer before dosing
- Dose right before lights out at night
- Turn on skimmer in the morning
- No carbon
- Removed Caulerpa from refugium
- Change filter sock every 2 days
I dosed the tank 11 times. You'll see from the pics that the first sign of the product working was the browning of the GHA. The bubble algae also started to brown a bit but not much. The first 5 doses or so did not seem to affect much else other than the GHA and bubble: Basically stunting the growth of the GHA and slowing the growth of the bubble algae.
I was hoping the GHA and bubble algae would disintegrate or detach by itself and get filtered out. NOT!
By the 8th dose I noticed my Hammer coral started to show some adverse affects. It didn't open up as much as it used to. Cyrano was also starting to take a hold. The GHA growth rate (if any) as definitely retarded. Bubble algae growth slowed down also but my tank was still a mess. I realized the bloody thing was not going to go away by itself. I got annoyed and went ballistic and scrapped and pulled a load of dead algae out of the tank. I scraped all the algae off of the overflow (left side of tank). Scraping off plastic as I went. :mad2:
I did my first water change at this point and I must say the tank looked a hell of a lot better.
Most folks on this thread seem to agree that once you hit the 11th dosing other coral in the tank seemed to be affected in a bad way. I could see GHA and bubble algae weakening. So I continued to dose the tank three more times - while keeping an eye on my Hammer coral. Three days after the 11th dose, I pulled as much of the GHA and bubble algae out of the tank as I could and did another water change.
Cyrano growth picked up like crazy after this point but GHA and bubble growth seemed to come to halt. Again, I got annoyed. Tried blowing the Cyrano off but it was too thick. So I whipped out a clean tooth brush and scrubbed the rocks and filtered off as much as possible. I'll post a pic of how my tank looks today - a little later today.
Conclusion:
I have to agree with a post that someone made over the past week or so; Algaefix is not a fix. It is a good tool. It retards the growth of GHA and in my case it retarded the growth of the bubble enough for me to get on top of things (I still have some now but it's getting manageable). YES, you do have to remove the dead and weakening algae yourself. Along with a turkey baster and pumps, I recommend a good tooth brush as a means to remove weakening debris from the rock work (make sure to filter out).
Day 1 (before first dose)
![url]](/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Freefcentral.com%2Fgallery%2Fdata%2F500%2F903973.jpg%5B%2Furl%5D&hash=ea24434b17e0441a965598a655cabbbe)
... more to come ...
V. V. V. late update
First let me apologize. I griped earlier in this thread, about lack of pics and follow ups. Now I am guilty of the same
Here's my pics and updates. I started Algaefix around the end of March. Here's how I did it:
- Dose every 3 days
- Turn off skimmer before dosing
- Dose right before lights out at night
- Turn on skimmer in the morning
- No carbon
- Removed Caulerpa from refugium
- Change filter sock every 2 days
I dosed the tank 11 times. You'll see from the pics that the first sign of the product working was the browning of the GHA. The bubble algae also started to brown a bit but not much. The first 5 doses or so did not seem to affect much else other than the GHA and bubble: Basically stunting the growth of the GHA and slowing the growth of the bubble algae.
I was hoping the GHA and bubble algae would disintegrate or detach by itself and get filtered out. NOT!
By the 8th dose I noticed my Hammer coral started to show some adverse affects. It didn't open up as much as it used to. Cyrano was also starting to take a hold. The GHA growth rate (if any) as definitely retarded. Bubble algae growth slowed down also but my tank was still a mess. I realized the bloody thing was not going to go away by itself. I got annoyed and went ballistic and scrapped and pulled a load of dead algae out of the tank. I scraped all the algae off of the overflow (left side of tank). Scraping off plastic as I went. :mad2:
I did my first water change at this point and I must say the tank looked a hell of a lot better.
Most folks on this thread seem to agree that once you hit the 11th dosing other coral in the tank seemed to be affected in a bad way. I could see GHA and bubble algae weakening. So I continued to dose the tank three more times - while keeping an eye on my Hammer coral. Three days after the 11th dose, I pulled as much of the GHA and bubble algae out of the tank as I could and did another water change.
Cyrano growth picked up like crazy after this point but GHA and bubble growth seemed to come to halt. Again, I got annoyed. Tried blowing the Cyrano off but it was too thick. So I whipped out a clean tooth brush and scrubbed the rocks and filtered off as much as possible. I'll post a pic of how my tank looks today - a little later today.
Conclusion:
I have to agree with a post that someone made over the past week or so; Algaefix is not a fix. It is a good tool. It retards the growth of GHA and in my case it retarded the growth of the bubble enough for me to get on top of things (I still have some now but it's getting manageable). YES, you do have to remove the dead and weakening algae yourself. Along with a turkey baster and pumps, I recommend a good tooth brush as a means to remove weakening debris from the rock work (make sure to filter out).
Day 1 (before first dose)
... more to come ...
firebirdude
User and Abuser
Look exactly the same to me. A little less green I guess....
Day 26. This is after scraping and pulling out the dead and the weak:
I don't know what kind of algae this was but I wanted to see if Algaefix would start to kill it... it did not. I ended up pulling this out at after the 11th dose.
I'll post current pic of my tank later today.
I don't know what kind of algae this was but I wanted to see if Algaefix would start to kill it... it did not. I ended up pulling this out at after the 11th dose.
I'll post current pic of my tank later today.
kylesmoney
New member
well that looks way better. Congrats
So after reading this thread I decided to give this stuff a try and I must say it has worked great. I had a small hick up with it when I left town and had my wife taking care of the tank though. I had been dosing ever third day per the instructions I was using a little extra per dose I have a 150 gal but was using enough for a 200 gal, but with my sump and all it wasn't that much extra. Long story short Saturday was the next scheduled dose and I was leaving on Friday so I told her add this to the tank tomorrow night ...well she added the full dose that night and every day after that until Monday so there were 3 straight days of her dosing this. Needless to say it was midnight when I came in and found this out I had no salt for a water change and nothing came to mind that I could use to neutralize it in my system. I don't know if there will be any long term negative effects from this but all my corals are expanding fine my inverts are all out cruising around and I have not noticed any odd behavior in my fish but time will tell I suppose. On the bright side ....a crap load of hair and bubble algae has shed itself from my rock since I had been gone and my water is crystal clear.
I was doing vodka dosing for 6-7months with no real visable results. My water was crystal clear but it did little for my hair a bubble algae. Mike and Joe what were the issues did you and your friends have with Algaefix so I can be on the lookout for potienial problems. I dont plan on using this as a permant solution but more so to give me a clean slate while making the approriate changes for longterm sucess.
For me, within a few days of starting Algaefix, every one of my astrea and turbo snails died, along with my coral banded shrimp. The replacement astreas and turbos also died, and I didn't have any successful replacements until making a number of water changes. Nothing else showed even the slightest bit of distress. My only guess was that eating the Algae-fixed algae was lethal for the snails, and maybe the CBS was a coincidence. My conditions were all normal and rock stable, so it's hard for me to blame anything else but the Algaefix.
