Hair algae

I've been battleing brown hair algea for a month now and no matter what I did, water changes, siphoning it out, turning the lights off for days, changing my bulbs, nothing killed this stuff.
Then I went out and bought some Mexican turbo snails at one of the LFS. Its been about a week now and slowly but surely they are eating it. One rock was completely covered in it but now its nice and clean and you can see the coraline again YAY!:)
 
Turbo and Astrea snails. The real question is WHY are you getting hair algae? I would test for nitrates and phosphates and also look into your water source. Many nuissance algae problems can be avoided by using pure water, RO/DI. If your tank is new, hair algae is part of the cycling process. If your tank is established then I would look into the above. ;)
 
Turbos did for me when the tank was young. They are pretty amazing HA eaters. Now at 18 weeks and NO3 approaching zero and the same for phosphate, I plan on trading half of the turbos for some corals before they starve. Point is, the real answer is lowing nutrients.
 
The tank is about a week and a half old. I took down my 55 and started with a clean slate(kept the live rock under water with plenty of water movement) and moved up to a 75 with 20 gal sump with 2 150W
HQI and the rock seems to be shedding some slime and growing green hair algea....is this part of the cycle? When I started a reef in my 55 it was already mature with DSB and fish only......
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10064676#post10064676 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by carib
phosban reactor did much more then just taking care of h/algea for me.
Click to expand...

Care to elaborate?:)
 
Just give it some time dude. A week isnt even close to the amount of time it takes.....even if you're using cured lr. After 4 years here you should know that.
 
yea I guess...its just that I never really had to battle this crap going from fish only to reef...it was a smooth transaction
 
Hi There - am also having a dreadful problem with Hair algae - my tank is 8 months old, could this be as a result of still cycling.

Am worried it's going to take over the whokle 120gal tank, and ruin my beautiful soft corals/polyps.
 
I do not think its anything to do with still cycling, it does not take that long to cycle a tank. I believe its more to do with excessive nutrients.

Do you use a sump? I am currently installing one to battle my hair algae. I'll use chaeto in it to out-compete the algae.

I am also looking at getting astreas (hard to get here in Dublin) and have ordered a sea hare -- from t'internet -- they work really well.

regards
Conor.
 
Get a sailfin molly. (brackish) Take a day or two to acclimate it to your water (salinity). They are cheap, different, and a glutton for any algae in my tank! I also love it when someone walks in and says, "Isn't that a freshwater fish?"
 
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