green hair algae

[wdbill]

I have a bit of a green hair algae problem. I have a 50 gallon tank with 4 fish. how do you keep nitrates down. I was doing a 25% water change twice a week and that kept them lower but not at away. I have a small frog spawn and some colony polyps. Im trying to cut back on some of the lighting. I have 130 watts and now I went to 65 watts th see how that will work. me and my fish are tired of scrubbing the rocks do you think if I add a 20 gallon fuge th my tank that will do something me ???

thanks WD Bill

[no_sugar]

What kind of water are you using? I will assume that it is 25% changes with an RODI source. If not there is your problem.

[csloo]

I have a bit of a green hair algae problem. I have a 50 gallon tank with 4 fish. how do you keep nitrates down. I was doing a 25% water change twice a week and that kept them lower but not at away. I have a small frog spawn and some colony polyps. Im trying to cut back on some of the lighting. I have 130 watts and now I went to 65 watts th see how that will work. me and my fish are tired of scrubbing the rocks do you think if I add a 20 gallon fuge th my tank that will do something me ???

thanks WD Bill

hair algae = phosphate. Other than phosphate, high silicate and nitrate will promote algae growth.

Solution :
1. Change water with RO/DI source.
2. Apply high quality(iron based) phosphate remover eg. Purephos, Rowa and etc.
3. To completely kill those hair algae, either cook ur LR or shutdown light completely for 1 week. Algae will died off due lack of foods.
4. Get algae eater such as Blue leg hermit crab, foxface, tang(to nip small tiny algae),sea urchin and other algae eater.
5. Increase water flow to prevent dead spot inside your tank so that algae will not attack those LR.
6. For future guarantee, you may apply Algone into your sump to absorb NO3 (efficient when ur current NO3 level <20ppm) and prevent other bad algae grow.

Hope it's help.

[gomrjoe]

3. To completely kill those hair algae, either cook ur LR or shutdown light completely for 1 week. Algae will died off due lack of foods.


Question on this, to anyone:

Shutting down the lights in your tank for 1 week, does this really work? and, more importantly, what about the fish and the corals that are in the tank? Such as xenia, star polyps, and yellow colony polyps, won't the light not being on for an entire week hurt them?

Help please... my hair algae problem is not going away in my tank, and my phosphates are undetectable and my nitrates are < 20. I think the algae in my tank continues to grow because I have not been able to get it all.

Please help, and thanks.

[rbell219]

.........I was doing a 25% water change twice a week and that kept them lower but not at away. .........................................me and my fish are tired of scrubbing the rocks do you think if I add a 20 gallon fuge th my tank that will do something me ???

thanks WD Bill

Add a skimmer if you don't have one. It's almost impossible to keep nitrates at zero if you are feeding fish. You want to shoot for 5 or under. Nitrates are a result of dead decaying things---so scrubbing your algae off the rocks is probably only adding to the problem. (some of it floats somewhere, dies, and decays---->nitrates) Add an algae eater if you can. My Tang goes to town on green hair algae---I'm not too familiar with the algae eating fish in marine tanks.

Do you run a sump? Bio-balls can be a nitrate factory if not cleaned every so often. I should say rinsed off with tank water in a bucket when changing the water---you want to knock the junk off, not kill the bacteria.

Is the tank near a window or face one? Keep the blinds closed--put foil on the window if you can--haha.

[da1jewfish]

Decrease food amounts for a few days to a week... the fish will be fine on a small diet for a week or so, unless you feed little to begin with.
This will reduce excess nutrients.

[milwaukeeplecos]

add in a few BN plecos they'll scrub it

[rbell219]

add in a few BN plecos they'll scrub it

Bristlenose plecos? In saltwater?

[mikelush78]

I have had a hair algae problem for 5 months and just fixed it. First I had phosphates and got rid of them in the tank. Then I had bio balls in the filter and they brake down ammonia so fast spiking nitrite so fast that the tank cannot keep up and blooms bad algae’s. Once I got my water under control I added a sea hair and a lawnmower blenny to the tank and they destroyed all the hair algae in 7 days. Let me tell you this also the hair algae covered all the rocks to. The sea hair did the best job of the both of them. Hope this helps.
Get water under control and then get a clean up crew for the algae.

[Max]

Hey do you have a crushed coral bottom? Also what sort of herbivours do you have in there ? I wouldn't think that it was so much a lighting issue as an eating algae issue,"unless you have old bulbs". If you could give just a little more information we could really give you a lot better answer.
hth
chris

[dorkfish]

What exactly is your nitrate reading? Having absolutely no nitrate is pretty much unrealistic, unless you have a good amount of denitrification going on in your tank via live rock, a 3" or deeper sand bed etc.

Also, what species of fish do you have? That could be part of the problem eg. if you have 4 violotan lions in there(this is theoretical - I don't know if this would work nor do I think it would work), I have no doubt in my mind that you will get and have some serious algae problems.

AND, if you go with csloo's tang solution, be careful and do your research before hand - some tangs will rarely if ever eat algae, while others are excellent algae eaters; some get relatively huge and too big for your aquarium, others stay around the 8 inch range.

[csloo]

Question on this, to anyone:

Shutting down the lights in your tank for 1 week, does this really work? and, more importantly, what about the fish and the corals that are in the tank? Such as xenia, star polyps, and yellow colony polyps, won't the light not being on for an entire week hurt them?

Help please... my hair algae problem is not going away in my tank, and my phosphates are undetectable and my nitrates are < 20. I think the algae in my tank continues to grow because I have not been able to get it all.

Please help, and thanks.

From my experiment on it, i have encounter no problems. But to make sure it's safe, i only recommended for fish only tank of this method. For reef tank, you need to cook ur LR for a clean solutions.

Bro, undetectable phosphates and nitrates doesn't mean that your silicates also undetectable. To fight against hair algae, we really to get a real patient. IF you dont mind, you can get yourself an UV lighting.

[csloo]

What exactly is your nitrate reading? Having absolutely no nitrate is pretty much unrealistic, unless you have a good amount of denitrification going on in your tank via live rock, a 3" or deeper sand bed etc.

Also, what species of fish do you have? That could be part of the problem eg. if you have 4 violotan lions in there(this is theoretical - I don't know if this would work nor do I think it would work), I have no doubt in my mind that you will get and have some serious algae problems.

AND, if you go with csloo's tang solution, be careful and do your research before hand - some tangs will rarely if ever eat algae, while others are excellent algae eaters; some get relatively huge and too big for your aquarium, others stay around the 8 inch range.

opps, at my country, ppl at here are prefer blue tang, yellow tang and purple tang in their tank. :) But for me, i more stick with mimic ebli tang.... :Angel:

[gomrjoe]

I have a UV sterlizer, it was just out of commission for about two months, that is how this mess started. I have since gotten my UV back online.

I have a silicate/phosphate sponge medium in my sump that works pretty well.

I split my rock into two groups, one I scrubbed with a toothbrush and rinsed, and placed back in the tank. The other half I have sitting in an old garbage can with a powerhead in the garage, with no light.

I did this because I heard that the boiling thing kills all of the bacteria, and I also read where the scrubbing thing also kills a lot of the beneficial bacteria. So to be safe I split and used two different methods.

There were 3 rocks that I could not scrub or take out, those were rocks that had my corals attached. I am letting my cleanup crew attack those. Hopefully with those 3 rocks being the only thing with juicy food on them, it will eventually attract them! There are a bunch of crabs on one of them now, so hopefully that theory will hold.