Rediculous Hair Algae

Q

quantim0

Go Packers!!
Feb 19, 2002
100
0
0
43
Westfield, NJ
my tank has currently been set up for about 5 months. it's a 37 hex with ~60 lbs on LR and a DSB. all my readings are where they should be; Ammonia, Nitrite 0 ppm, Nitrate <10ppm, Ph 8.1-8.3, Phosphates ~0ppm. Tank opperates at around 80 F. Lighting is a 96W powerquad lamp on for approx 11 hours a day. Prism Protein skimmer and 2 AC powerheads. 20% water change every 2 weeks.

occupants: 1 purple Firefish, 1 Centropyge argi, 1 Cirrhitichthys falco, 1 Neon Goby, a bunch of snails and hermit crabs, large colony of Xenia, medium colony of Yellow Zooanthids.

Now i have hair algae covering every square inch of available rock space. the glass needs to be cleaned every other day and i am at a loss for what's causing the algae growth. the nitrates and phosphates which are the main limiting factors in the ocean are all in proper numbers. i don't know what to do.i can try adding more snails but i don't know how good a job they would do. thanks for the help.
 
Hello,
Because your nitrate and phos readings are at zero does not mean you dont have any in your system it just means that all the stuff has been absorbed by the algae. how often do you feed your tank? how old is the bulb?
someone told me of something that cleaned up his bad hair algae problem in a month or two. he would take a turkey baster and blast all of the algae with it trying to dislodge anything that was in the base of the algae (ie. poop, sand, ect anything that would give it nutrition). he said after that and manually removing it, in 2 months it was gone. But with how bad yours sounds it would seem that somethings is definetally off.
t
 
the tank gets fed every morning and the fish are left to forage the rest of the day. i feed Ocean Nutrition cubes and the fish get one cube a day.

i know that my nitrates are low because they have always been this way since the tank was set up. there are phosphates in my tap water and i fixed that problem by using RO water.

as for the bulb it was just replaced 2 or 3 weeks ago. it a 50/50 10,000k and actinic.

even if i find another way to fix it, i'm going to do a water change tomorrow so i'll just siphon everything off the rocks and start a manual harvest.
 
hmmm sounds like all is straight there...
Some tanks just take longer to get over the hair algae apparently, i still have some in my tank that has been up for a year. Try the turkey baster see if that helps.
t
 
Manually removal of hair algae will eventually get rid of the algae growth, but it usually takes a while to discourage them. Add scarlet hermit crabs, they'll finish up any of the hair algae you didn't pick off. I think only scarlet hermit crabs eat hair algae, other hermits won't touch it, I think...
 
Are you saying that if you have old bulbs, that will contribute to hair algae growth?

I don't have any coralline algae. I didn't used to have a problem with hair algae, but the last couple of weeks I've had red slimy algae and hair algae. Will anything eat that stuff? The red stuff?

Will new bulbs help with this problem?
 
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