Hair Alge out of control

S

scottio

New member
I set up a 125 about a month ago and transfered everything from my 90.
Then hair alge started and I can not keep up with it.
I've changed the water, checked the ph, etc. and everything looks fine.
I've bought over 50 Astrea and Turban snails and blue leg hermit crabs to help with. They are eating it, but the alge is growing to fast.
I've also shortened the light cycle and only keep on the atinics now.
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Scott
 
what kind of water are you using? just straight tap with the conditioner? if so you might want to consider going with an RO to have better water quality. frequent water changes and making sure your not over feeding will help greatly. what kind of filter setup are you using ( sump, HOB, etc)
 
agree> First check your water source. Check your phosphate at the source also, tends to feed into hair algae.

Have you completed your cycle? I always, always have hair algae outbreaks on new tank cycles, it lasts about a week and then dries up or i suck it up
 
Hair alge

Hair alge

Sorry I did not mention that in my first post. Yes, I use only RO water with new filters.
Did not know if there was a "magic solution" out there that I was missing.
I've reduced the feeding, shortened the light time and made several water changes..... I hope I'll start to see some results soon????????
 
rabbitfish. poisonous, but far ore ravenous than any yellow tang. However, once you run out of algae, they may ea your leathers.

keep your tank cooler......under 80, and you'll slow the growth rate.

anything over 80, and growth can be exponential under right conditoins......
 
Hair Alge

Hair Alge

Have a yellow tang and he does not touch it. Not big on getting a rabbit fish, but thanks for the suggestion.
Temp of the tank runs at 78.
 
Had the same problem a couple of years ago, bought an emerald crab and it was all gone in days. The emerald crab lived (may still be alive??) for at least a year afterward with no problems with him picking on anything. I wonder if he is still in my tank.......
 
i used the kent tech-m mag and mine was gone within weeks, raise the mqg levels to like 1600 and it will all die off
 
did you use new sand or did you just move you old sand to the new tank. i heard that can cause problems and i did this before with moving the sand to a different tank and had a hair algae problems for a few weeks after.
 
While phosphates can be an issue, they certainly aren't the only factor. I'm going to guess that you also had a lot of die off on the rock you used and that the excess nutrients were being taken up. Even that, though, by itself can't be the only problem because when I added a frag tank to my system with RO/DI water and no phosphate or nitrate anywhere to be seen, I STILL got hair algea on a fairly short light cycle. I think it's just something you gotta deal with with a newly established reef tank...
 
Thank you all for your help and suggestions. I will keep pulling out what is growing and hopefully, over time, things will balance out "cycle" and it will go away.
I do have to say, I did go out and buy to emerald crabs, wish I would of bought more, and from the second I put the both of them in, they started eating the hair alge like crazy.
thanks again to everyone,
Scott
 
Algae is a tricky thing to beat, and there really isn't 1 guaranteed solution, as so many things can help fuel it. Do you have any idea what your current nutrient levels are (Nitrates/Phosphates)?

By far, the easiest adjustment to make is limiting the amount of nutrients you are adding up front via water source, feedings, etc... As well as making sure you have a proper filtration system (appropriately sized skimmer, maybe a refugium, etc...), and adequate flow to prevent dead zones where excess food and deritus can settle.

If you're not running GFO (Granular Ferric Oxide), it may help some. Elevating the Magnesium level is a treatment for eradicating Bryopsis, which is different than regular hair algae.

Adding livestock to take care of an algae problem is always a gamble. I personally had a Yellow Tang that went nuts anytime anything popped up, and quickly took care of it. However, as you are noticing... not all Yellow Tangs act that way. I personally don't like Rabbitfish because they get very large, and grow very fast. Since you have a 125, a few tangs may be a good gamble. Perhaps try out a few of different genus in addition to your Yellow Tang to cover all your bases. Acanthurus (Powder Blue, Convict, Eibli Mimic), and Ctenochaetus (Tomini, Kole). Who knows, maybe some competition for the available algae in the tank may snap your Yellow Tang back in line.

Also, Sea Hares are supposed to be very effective at mowing down algae, but will need to be removed once the algae supply begins to dwindle, as they will starve and die without a constant supply.
 
Don't a lot of tangs actually prefer brown algea to green? I thought I read that somewhere. My sailfin went to town on some of my algea, but left others alone. As you can tell from TJ's avatar, you might not want to take his advice on algea issues :) JK TJ, it's just the envy speaking again...every time I see pictures of your awesome tank, it makes me say mean things. Like a reef-geared terret's I guess.

If your tank can handle the eventual ammonia spike, flipping rocks upside down can also be a way to handle these kinds of algea issues...but of course a lot of people can't.

I still believe (and this is a belief based on my mom's reef tank that's been running for over two years with 20ppm nitrates and somewhere between .02 and .035 phosphates with water straight from the tap and no algea issues whatsoever) that algea is often times a hit and miss kind of thing that most frequently fires up when a tank is new (defined here as less than 12 months old) without warning, and sometimes attributable cause. While limiting nutrients is great, and definately can and will help some of the time, I just wish people often pointed to the fact that every healthy and happy aquatic ecosystem in the world that has sunlight also has algea. When the kind we don't want grows...well, that's just nature doing its thing, and not necessarily indicative of a bad ecosystem. The reverse may actually be true.
 
Funny... Experience leads me to suspect my current algae issue is just a cycle, and will disappear on its own in a few months. Primarily because a lot of the rock was purchased new (not from an established system).

I've had luck with tangs in the past. As far as I know, the various types of algae the tang will consume depend more on the genus than a blanket statement regarding tangs in general. Zebrasoma are supposed to go after the longer strand type algae, whereas the Ctenochaetus genus is supposed to prefer shorter turf like algae they can scrape off the rock.

The Eibli Mimic Tang (Acanthurus) I added in the tank seems to go after everything.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15646515#post15646515 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tswifty
Funny... Experience leads me to suspect my current algae issue is just a cycle, and will disappear on its own in a few months. Primarily because a lot of the rock was purchased new (not from an established system).
Click to expand...

Mine was introduced from a frag I bought from somebody. was so small I didn't even catch it until it was too late. :mad2:

Definitely a +1 to the cycle thing though. Kinda part of what I was trying to say
 
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