Hair Alge Be Gone!

nighttimenick

nighttimenick

Starting over
I have been fighting hair alge for a while! I would like to know if it would be ok too, move some of the water and corals that are not attached to the rocks to a 29Gal? Take the power filter with the live rock rubble for a filter off the 55 and put it on the 29 till I am through? Take the rock out and scrub with a fine wire brush and dip in fresh r/o water? Place back in tank after I clean the tank and put in new sand or put down egg create or something to go bare bottom? What would you suggest? Thanks Ricky :o
 
i hate to say it but, i fought this battle 2 years ago.
the only way is to solve the problem for me was

make sure you use RO/DI water.

change you lights on time

don't over feed

make sure you have a good skimmer and its working properly

it still was months for mine to clear up after making the changes
good luck and hope this helps
 
there are two crabs that got me through my hair algae problem. Emerald crab an I can't think of the other one so I will look it up when I be home. But I know I dropped these guys in there and they where like lawn lowers eating that stuff up
 
Re: Hair Alge Be Gone!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14223487#post14223487 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nighttimenick
ITake the rock out and scrub with a fine wire brush and dip in fresh r/o water? Place back in tank after I clean the tank and put in new sand or put down egg create or something to go bare bottom? What would you suggest? Thanks Ricky :o
Click to expand...

Scrubbing the rock will work pretty well. I basically did that when switching to a new tank.
So far so good.....Knock on wood.......now my tank will be over-run with algae by the time I get home.
 
I would say that very rarely is it possible to successfully combat a major hair algae problem without doing manual removal, as you are planning. Your idea sounds like a good one, but make sure you're only moving rocks and corals that for sure have ZERO hair algae on them. The worst mistake you can make is scrubbing every rock but one really well, then you've got a rampant problem again in 2 months. Do it right the first time, and with exceptional husbandry combined with a truckload of luck, you won't have to do it again.
 
I have a sea hare aka "The Poop" as named by my daughter who is a lawn mower - ugly sob! Appetite is unbelievable, my algae got out of control because I had no snails. Right now he's my algae CUC, when I get some snails I'm going to pass him on so that he stays well fed. I can't spare him at the moment, but you might look into one.

It's a husbandry game though - adequate CUC + 0 nitrates + 0 phosphate + good mg levels seems to be the ticket.
 
I has a little bit of hair algae and red slime. I started using a lot of rowaphos and within a few weeks, it was all gone.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14224124#post14224124 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cczarnik
I have a sea hare aka "The Poop" as named by my daughter who is a lawn mower - ugly sob!
Click to expand...

You desperately need to add some commas here.
 
Well it's too late- you all quoted me, I guess I have to live with it. I'll proof better next time :).

Sea Hare is "the poop." He's ugly, and he eats lots of algae. Much better. ;)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14224124#post14224124 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cczarnik
I have a sea hare aka "The Poop" as named by my daughter who is a lawn mower - ugly sob!
Click to expand...

Try this: I have a sea hare who is a lawn mower but he is an ugly sob. My beautiful daughter named him "The Poop".

How 'bout that?
 
Raising your magnesium level to 1600 ppm with kent tech m seems to work too. I bought a small bottle to try it and mine all died. I just ordered a gallon jug to keep my magnesium level up.

Other magnesium brands don't seem to work. Only kent tech m. There are articles about it in the chemistry forum. Not sure why only kent works and at this point don't care...
 
Hair algae is easy to fight. When i first started this hobby, i didn't kw nomuch about hair algae and bought a bunch of live rock with hair algae all over it.

I also bought some astrea snails but they would keep moving to the glass instead of eating the algae on the rock. So everyday i removed all the snails (about 20) from the glass and put it on the rocks again. In one month all the hair algae was gone.

Emerald crabs also eat a lot of algae.
 
I am telling you my hair algae was so bad it looked like i had grass in my tank. You could not even see the sand. Along came a sally light foot crab and ate it all away. That is the method i used and it worked great. I put on in my new tank right after it was through cycling and he went right to work and cleaned it all up in a week. That would be the first and easiest way that i would try. I think they are about $11 much less time consuming than scrubbing rock
 
I put in about 30 astrea snails and about 25 small blue legs about a month ago, and it seemed to work for a little while! they cleaned about half the tank and know it is starting to grow back. I still count 30 snails but only about 10 crabs. Its so bad I could cut it and bail it like hay! If I do as I talked about, do you think it would help to do the fresh r/o water dip? I do have bristtel worms too! Thanks
 
Today I got new sand and it changed out in the 12 gal nano. I took out everything in the show part. I pulled all that I could get off the rocks and out of the corals. We will see if the blue legs and the lawnmower blemmy can take care of the rest. Tomorrow I think I am going to remove everything out of the 55 and put eggcreate in the bottom, scrub the rocks and replace. I am going to try bare bottom and see how that works.
 
You could try a blue and gold rabbit fish, or scribbled rabbit fish, or any of the fox faces, they all love green hair algea. Just not a orange or blue spot rabbit fish, they will most likely pick at corals. As mentioned above, sally lightfoots are great and sometimes when you take snails off the glass, and put them on a patch of algea, they go to town. Hope this helps
 
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