help with my hair algae

[nightfire]

hey guys i need help with my hair algae here. i know the main problem is the tap water i used for a year now and it finally cought up with me,bout a month ago i started using my rodi unit which still wasnt 0ppm but 50ppm is better then 160ppm, anyways i cant get a new membrane and di till this coming month and hopefully it'll come out 0ppm. my hair algae isnt too bad i suppose, once i manually take it out with a water change it looks better but the crap grows fast and now is on my sand some....i know im putting in ammonia and trates with every water change so thats helping it to survive in my tank plus the phospates from the water i use isnt great either, my inverts look pretty good, my peppermint just molted again last night even, one of my turbos finally figured out they like eating hair algae lol. my corals look nice but then aagain they are weed like anyways being they are xenia,gsp and button polyps lol..... is there anything i can do to help my hair algae not to grow as much other then putting in 0ppm rodi water and killing the lights in the tank? thanks guys

 

[mixer911]

You pretty much know what you have to do. Get the RO/DI at 0ppm and then just wait until the Hair Algae burns off the rest of what it is feeding on.

 

[New Wave]

You're in for a long difficult and somewhat costly fight... It's probably saturated into yur rock... Your rock will probably be leaching phosphates for a while... You need to start with rodi... Oppm... If you're using dts... Or other phytoplankton... Stop usig it... Lighten up on your feeding... Water changes at at least every other week... 10 percent... And you need to get gfo... Or some other "effective" phosphate remover... And use more than recommended... You don't have to worry about pulling too much phosphate because the rocks will continue to leech... But get a po4 test and keep track...

I had the same problem... But with 700+ total lbs of sand and rock... I opted to throw away the sand and rock and get new... In the long run... It was cheaper... And MUCH faster oh... And yea... Cutting back your light will help... But not as much as all the other stuff I listed ... Hope that helps

 

[nightfire]

it does but what worries me is that im not feeding because i dont have fish in there but on monday i will be putting 3 in there and well....that means start feeding the tank, if it gets bad though i can see just putting new rock in there and cooking the ones i have maybe......i dont have too much, infact my tanks not even full.....later ill post pics of it

 

[Pickupman66]

Mario, you are on the right track. Nothing as major as this will happen overnight. You will see the effects for months to come. Patience is the biggest name of the game here. Trust me I've been there. It took mr 6 years of toiling my old 75 to finally get it to take off. However, once I was rolling on it, the growth was uncontrollable. I'm gonna post you a link here in a few that will show the history of my old tank.

 

[Pickupman66]

Hre you go Mario. while this leaves out a few years, teh tank was purchased new and setup in 2000. if you notice when I get the lights, that is 2005 or 2006 somewhere in there. prior to the move to the new house in 2006, I used tap. I didnt have a hair algae issue, but I couldnt do much else either. I had a massive bubble algae outbreak that was only cured thru time and a few emerald crabs and using RO/DI water. I wish I had photos from that time.
http://www.3reef.com/forums/show-of...scing-about-my-old-tank-97246.html#post992607

 

[nightfire]

thanks alot,i will post pics of my tank in a bit and let ya guys take a look at it,nothing special, in fact ya'lll tanks look awesome compared to mine

 

[nightfire]

here is a link to my tank's pics and a vid, it's easier to post them there then here and i'll apologize right now for the front of my glass having coraline on it http://s92.photobucket.com/albums/l31/queeniepaula/ i havent cleaned it in a bit...the pics and vid are after almost a week where i do 7-8 gallons of water change, i'll do another sunday or monday before i put in my new fish

 

[Pickupman66]

Mario, the point was not what it looked like in the end, but what it looked like for years till I got it right. sad part was I didnt have this website or this club then. not until I got the new lights did i find out about the club. Reef tanks take Years of experience, know how and time to look awesome. fortunately, my new tank is benefitting from my previous failures. I have lost more $ than I have success in it I think.

point is, it wont change over night. do what you need to do and slowly it will come around. remove by hand, or let it burn off the bad once you get all the good water in there.

 

[nightfire]

i will,ive notice there is a huge differance between having a FOWLR which i've had before and a reef tank,i dont think the HA is too serious so hopefully once i start pumping clean water in there it'll burn out quckly

 

[John_A]

Like everyone said its not gonna be a over night thing you can pull the rock out scrub it all of that but untill the stuff that is making it grow is gone has left it will just keep coming back you can also do this dont know if it was suggested as I skimmed the thread and thats turn off all your lights for 3 days then on day 4 just start easing back into full on light I do this 1-2 times a month wont hurt coral and could help some of the algea die off hope this helps would post more but I feel like dookie dang weather Good Luck!

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Have you tried Rabbitfish? They are voracious algae eaters.

 

[sal-t-dawg]

I've had good luck with Sea Hares. Only prob. is once the HA is gone its hard to keep them alive. We had one being passed around the club for awhile. Not sure who has it now.

 

[sal-t-dawg]

I also ran an Algae Turf Scrubber on my 75gl and had really good results with it. I never did a water change for the year and a half that I set it up and never had any algae or high reading issues. Theyre pretty easy and cheap to build. Theres quite a few videos on Youtube.

 

[nightfire]

i thought of a scrubber before,maybe ill try that, as far as a sea hare goes it would die pretty fast in my tank i would think,love to try one though just to see how fast it does eat it lol