Out of control

LouPhoenix

LouPhoenix

New member
Hello everyone,

I was out of town this whole week and had my nephew come and feed my tank... apparently he waaayyy overfed it because, to my horror, I came home to find most of the LR covered in hair algae, which I thought was getting under control, but now there's whole sections with 1 1/2 to 2 inch hair carpets. I started running chaeto but it isn't much and I can't remove any of the LR without dismantling the whole thing... SEA HARES, I need one or two badly!! Does anyone have one or seen one at a Miami LFS? I just can't seem to find them anywhere.... I wonder if a lawnmower blenny will actually work or just add to my bioload..? help!
 
Dude the trick would be turbo snails or some blue legs....but you can't expect from any natural resolution to occur over night. If you get say about 10 blue legs expect the algae to go down at a pretty decent rate and figure within 2 weeks to 1 months time.

Also if you don't have a phosban reactor you may have some in the tank contributing as well to the algae growth. Get some of seachem phosphate media and place in a micron bag for about a week. Place it in a location of your sump where the water flows through it.

these are alternative choices from dismantling your tank...

Good luck man...


Nick
 
i think thats why i don't have anyone feed while i'm gone, afraid to leave tank in hands of someone else. I top off as much fresh water as tank can handle and leave it be. If i'm gonna a long time i just have someone come over one day and give rations and instructions.

although this probably won't work w/ some peoples tank w/ a lot of fish.
 
if you want to go up to the broward county area, exotic aquatic usually carries them. just call ahead to make sure we have some in stock. 954-565-0947
Josh
 
have snails and hermits and they laugh at the hair algae... have had a phosban reactor since I set up the tank, so that's no issue... it's plainly excess nutrients. It is going to be a pita to try and pull out any significant amounts of hair without knocking off corals, rearranging, etc.

If I could find one or two in the Kendall area it would be ideal.
Thanks for the number though, josh.
 
sea hares are awesome for algae i will definately second that, a lfs used to carry them but i have not seen them for about 6 months.
 
sea hares arent too hard to come by... check reefgardener on ebay... they are a local FMAS member and they almost always have one or two for sale, usually around 24.99 - but you save on shipping because you can just go pick it up, or they can ship it regular USPS priority cuz its just across town...
 
I have several bali sea hares and plenty of snails. The bali monsters are totally reef safe, if they ink it is harmless. Happened in my tank a few times now and no problems.

Feel free to contact me: reefgardener@gmail.com

Morgan
 
morgan,, i sent you guys a PM on ebay about borrowing one about 2 weeks ago... ive pretty much removed most of it, but would it clean up the left overs that i didnt/cant get out of the nooks and crannies? my tank is mad small and i would probably only need 1 for max of a week... any chance i could borrow one at some point? pretty please?! lol the lawnmower blenny isnt doing much...
 
I went by reeflife and pay hooked me up with some mexican turbos with the white stripe. They cleaned my tank to the bone.

blue legs are ok and I had a sea hair too but neither in my experience ate hair algae like those mexican snails with the black snouts

:@)
 
Here is something I wrote about hair algae a while back.

If you have a hair algae problem then read my cure all. I just recently took a tank off someone's hands, a very experienced reefer too, who had a hair algae problem that they could not fix. But the fix is so easy when you understand it. This is the instructions for a established tank. If your tank is under 3 months old read below* first.

Hair algae wont grow if you don't feed it.

1. Use Ro/DI water ONLY. If your not doing this then you are making a fatal mistake.

2. Pick off the big clumps of hair. Pull the rocks out you can and pull pull pull. Dip them back in the water to get the algae to hang down. Turn off the flow for the rocks you cant remove while you pick it off. By picking off the big clumps you remove the nitrates and phosphates from the water.

3. Know why it grows. It consumes nitrates, phosphates and light. Export the nitrates and phosphates with water changes and some cheto. Rember if you test says that you have 0 Nitrates and 0 Phosphates that does not mean you don't have them. It just means that they are consumed. If you have algae growing then you have nitrates and phosphates. Yea there in there.

4. Cut back on feeding. Where do you thing those nitrates and phosphates come from. If you have any really piggy fish then you may want to move them to QT.

5. Turn down the photo period by shutting the lights off and only turn them on for 6 hours a day. Most corals can handle this for a month. Just think of it as the rainy season.

6. Get a emerald and some mexican snails. Yea the big ones. They will both eat the short stuff.

7. Time. Give it 3-4 weeks then start to turn the lights to 7, 8...more hours till your back to a normal amount of time.


Done. Now I have my nano cube filled with sand, rocks, zoos and fish because I was able to follow this plan and he was not. Which is weird since he has an awesome sps tank.

*If your tank is new that is less than 3 months old then the question is not how to get rid of them but understanding that this is only part of the natural cycle of a new tank. If this happened just as your ammonia and nitrites test at 0 then its going to grow. Its the same reason because there is alot of nitrate and phosphate in the water. This would be the time to do your first water change and then add your clean up crew. They will take care of the algae along with water changes.

Remember don.t feed your nuisance algae and it wont grow.
Good Luck.
 
Yeah, it helped when it was ME monitoring the tank... but since my nephew doesn't know much about the nutrient cycle, it looks like he went to town feeding the tank, even though I told him to feed sparingly... In his mind feeding them seemed like a better option to possibly starving the fish/corals, so I think he got nervous and just fed them. I'm just amazed at how proficiently the hair took over the tank... there's tufts and clumps everywhere! even the sand turned a bit green! I doubt that anything but a sea hare or some other algae-dependent creature would mow it down quickly enough to outpace its growth.
 
That's happened to me before. A friend was feeding a filter feeder food and accidentally dropped the entire bottle into the tank. I came back to hair, bryopsis, turf, algaes. Everywhere and it was thick and strong. I had guests coming in a week and needed the tank sparkling clean.

So I did two 50% Water changes. One on monday, one on wednesday. Ran phosban for 4 days with carbon, purigen, 3 hours of lights, 3 sea hares, a load of blue legs and scarlets, and 3 of the largest mexican turbo snails I have ever seen.

By Sunday night my tank was clearer thatit had ever b een with no trace of any algae at all!
 
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