may get sea hare, opinions?

[Rbaker1325]

Hello all,
I have a gha issue. I have a 40 gallon breeder. I cut back on feeding to 1 cube of mysis every 3 days. I have a pair of clowns and a hawk fish. My coral is a duncan, some frog spawn , some zoas , and a bubble coral . all my parameters are reading good now and the algae doesnt appear to be expanding but i wanna get in there and clean it up with out trying to pick it all out myself.My solution is a sea hare, I would like to purchase one and then sell it back or give it to another reefer in need. The question is what kind of sea hare do i need to buy and is this even a good idea to begin with? I also have carbon and gfo dual cannister reactor from brs that i run for weeks at a time. if anyone has any questions please ask, and thank you for your help in advanced. I almost forgot to say that the tank is roughly 2 years old.

 

[boxfishpooalot]

You can try a sea hare, but be sure it's not a toxic species they can murder your tanks inhabitants. I don't think it will do much very fast. What you need is to get a big clean up crew of trochus snails and others. And use gfo phosphate remover. It will slowly dissappear. Also do water changes with saltwater (obviously)

 

[Rbaker1325]

You can try a sea hare, but be sure it's not a toxic species they can murder your tanks inhabitants. I don't think it will do much very fast. What you need is to get a big clean up crew of trochus snails and others. And use gfo phosphate remover. It will slowly dissappear. Also do water changes with saltwater (obviously)

Which species of sea hare is considered non toxic and where can i get one online?

I was looking into getting this pack from live aquaria
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=420+2732+494&pcatid=494

I believe this would be a good start to getting a clean up crew better established in my system. I Have been having a bit of trouble with cuc's in my tank, is there anything i should be testing for specifically?

Thank you so much for your time.

 

[boxfishpooalot]

Not too sure which is toxic. That pack is ok, however crabs may kill your snails, and turbo snails are going to be a pain in the... When they fall they can't get up. Torchus snails can get back up though.

 

[Bryopsis]

There is no super fix to prevent you from having to clean it out. Sorry, but this is a truth of the hobby.

Spare a hare, take stuff out of the tank, and grab a toothbrush. (use a 15-30 second 1:1 peroxide dip on the areas after manually removing what you can; those softies won't care too much)

 

[viper12775]

try a lawnmower/sailfin blenny

 

[fishhuman]

Sea hares are not good to get. I made the mistake of getting one in my old 100 gallon tank that was full of hair algea, it took a week to eat all the algea and then starved. I don't think it will live long in your 40

 

[Rbaker1325]

Sorry I should've specified my full plan. I was going to get it, let it work then pass it on for free to another reefer in need, however given the feed back in this thread I believe I'm passing on getting one

 

[Sk8r]

Never had one work. They just die. My advice is just get a gfo: if you want bare-as-eggs rocks even in the crevices, this will do it. My blog (blue number under my avatar) has advice about using one.

 

[Rbaker1325]

I have the dual chamber gfo and carbon reactor, however I haven't noticed a huge difference. There has to be something I'm doing. I'm going to work but when I get back I'll run more tests and post all parameters

 

[Sk8r]

Question is how big a tank and how much GFO. It can take several months, but GFO 'charges up' with phosphate and doesn't advise you it's full and can't take any more. This is why I say if it's bad, change your medium monthly. It can take a number of months, but when it goes, it can leave very fast, as in within a week. This is because when the phosphate hits a critical low, the algae can't sustain itself...seems to start losing phosphate to the now phosphate-poor water. And then it dies.

 

[Rbaker1325]

I do change about every 3 to 4 weeks, I have been having issues with it going solid in the reactor even though it's tumbling lightly. What your saying makes sense though. So in your opinion should i increase water flow to tumble it a bit more and try to keep the media for 3 months? Also how do I know when it is ready to change it? Final question is should i change the carbon at the same time as the gfo?

 

[Sk8r]

Definitely: it's supposed to be a 'fluidized bed' meaning the upper half of it tossed up about halfway up the column, in a state of suspension. This is why it's not working for you: the water's not getting to all the surfaces of the GFO, so it's not absorbing. Increase that pump strength until half of it is in definitely constant tumbling motion, and the motion is coming from the very bottom of the reactor, in a slower way. I don't know how much it may have absorbed (or not) because there's no color change or way to tell. But get that stuff floating and tumbling constantly. I change my medium about every month while the algae is bad precisely because there's NOT a clue as to when it's absorbed all it can. If it's full-up with phosphate, there's no visual clue, but it can't absorb any more. SO when you throw it out, you're throwing out the phosphate. I changed mine 3-4 times. I have a hundred gallon tank so I used a double reactor with a double load of Phosban. Took about 3-4 months, I went off leaving my tank to a tank sitter for a week, and came back to rocks bald as eggs, with no warning at all.

 

[swhobbie1]

I tried 2 sea hare. Both didn't clean up the GHA and both went missing and I never could find them. To get rid of GHA I would recommend sticking to the basics ... WC, GFO, don't overfeed/over stock, good skimmer and maybe vodka dosing.

 

[MorganAtlanta]

I've never been able to keep a sea hare alive, even with plenty of hair algae. You could try an urchin. Concept is the same, but they seem hardier.

On the GFO, I mix 2/3 carbon and 1/3 GFO together in the same reactor. The carbon keeps the GFO from clumping, so you don't have to tumble it. The guys from BRS do the same in their video on their video on setting up their clown fish tank-- can't remember their ratio though.

 

[Rbaker1325]

Yea, I'm using the same reactor in the video your referring to, but it has 2 cylinders so I've been putting gfo in one and carbon in the other

 

[dthorn]

Also make sure you turkey baste your rocks at least once a week otherwise the algae eats phosphate coming out of the rock before the gfo can have a chance. I've recently learned the best algae eater I've owned has to be a sailfin tang. Seems in my previous three smaller set ups that even when I stayed on top of everything there was still a little gha in a few places that didn't get good enough flow where detritus would settle. It didn't spread much but was near impossible to totally eradicate.

Your tank is too small for a tang and the tang police won't like this suggestion but get a sailfin. It will be the algae police and once he cleans house you can take him back. You'll still need to give him a head start. Taking the rocks out is a last resort for me though. All the waste you'll stir up that way will just fuel the fire.

Just grab the big clumps and pull them out while trying not to let any get away. Then at water change time use an air hose to start siphoning. Let air hose suck in the hair and pinch the hose, pull it away and let go. Magic algae vacuum. After a couple weeks or a month tops, the sailfin will have you forgetting you ever had algae. And he will have the pointy mouth to get into all the places you can't.

As much as I hate to recommend a fish for a system that's too small. I hate that half as much as all of the owners of big tanks full of tangs talk about how easy algae is to get rid of. Now that I have a big boy tank I see why they all laugh. And yes my 90g is too small for a tang too. But they are still right when they say address the cause not the problem. They never seem to mention flow being the problem though and I'm starting to believe that in many cases this is the cause. Bigger tanks also have high enough flow to keep anything from settling on the rocks.

In my 56g I tried nearly everything and built the system to be a ulns so never expected to be fighting algae in the first place. Turned out the system was perfect aside from the small dimensions creating flow limitations. This was allowing waste to settle on the rocks and algae was keeping it there. I started turkey basting the rocks twice a week which I never had to do on my 30g hex with turbulent circular flow and things started improving within a couple weeks. After about a month the algae was almost falling off the rocks and just sucked it all out with the big siphon hose.

On a final note if you are running gfo and carbon in the same reactor it doesn't work. To run them together they can't tumble and you end up with a rock hard block that does nothing in about a week. Hope some of this helps and good luck!!

 

[dthorn]

The brs dual reactor with their gfo and carbon is what I was running. It might work with a much more powerful pump but not with the cobalt 1200s that came with them. Brs says that you can't tumble carbon and gfo together so you have to losely compact them with a sponge to keep the carbon from grinding away the gfo or maybe the other way around I don't recall. As I mentioned before after about a week flow is reduced to a trickle and it's all packed together. If I opened the reactor and broke it up it would be good for a few days.

 

[ViktorVaughn]

Looks like I might be the only one who had luck with sea hares. I had one take care of a pretty bad GHA problem in my 40 breeder that no amount of snails or manual removal was working on. Sea Hare went to town and got the tank spotless in about 2 weeks. I became really attached to him so I put him in my refugium for a while. The refugium was getting a little GHA mixed in with my chaeto, he took care of that as well. I just took him back to the LFS when he was done.

 

[A sea K]

Never had one work. They just die.

I tried 2 sea hare. Both didn't clean up the GHA and both went missing and I never could find them.

I've never been able to keep a sea hare alive, even with plenty of hair algae.

My experience with sea hares have been the same so another vote against using them.
Plenty of other reliable course of actions already posted. Time and diligence will eventually get the job done.
One thing I don't believe was mentioned was the age of your bulbs. Conventional(MH, T-5 and power compacts)bulbs will shift spectrum as they age and will really fuel nuisance algea growth adding to the problem. If your bulbs are fairly old change them and procede with some of the other methods already mentioned.