Don’t bash me too bad…

[Stephen8169301]

So I have been battling hair algae but it’s very hard to get places and I don’t want to remove rocks I have a long brush to scrub but their is only so much I can get. which brings me to my subject of matter.

A baby scopas tang in 33 long (4ft tank with plenty of scape and hiding spots)

Current stock:

-Purple belly wrasse
-clownfish
-springers damsel
-clown goby
-yellow watchman goby
-banggai cardnial

(Pretty maxed I know)


Now I know this will have to be out of my tank within a year as i would be using this fish as a tool rather then pleasure

I would try and get a the smallest one possible

But if you have better ideas because I tried most and I have a bunch of hermits and snails.

Not sure if I want a emerald crab again but if that’s the best option I’ll do it…
The algae is long and I’m now getting ones that are thick and tuff.

Another side note I can’t get my nitrates up I’ve been testing at 0.

Okay okay I’m ready let’s hear it, thoughts?

 

[NJTaxMan]

Turbo snails and a collector urchin. I had a major outbreak and this stuff just tore through it.

 

[MadReefer]

You can dose peroxide 3% solution. 1ml to every 10g of water. Directly in the tank and once it's gone can stop dosing.

 

[Stephen8169301]

Turbo snails and a collector urchin. I had a major outbreak and this stuff just tore through it.

I have a turbo only grazes I had a pincushion but didn’t eat the long hairs

 

[Stephen8169301]

You can dose peroxide 3% solution. 1ml to every 10g of water. Directly in the tank and once it's gone can stop dosing.

Never tried kinda nervous about doing that any possible effects? But I am definitely open to try it

 

[ericrodriguez]

You can add multiple fish that will eat it! Could even try Mollys if you know how to acclimate them to saltwater…

 

[ericrodriguez]

Also manually remove because everything that decays in the system will bring up the nutrients

 

[Stephen8169301]

You can add multiple fish that will eat it! Could even try Mollys if you know how to acclimate them to saltwater…

My lfs actually sells mollies from time to time that are already acclimated I’ll have to keep my eye out for them will the eat long hair algae?

 

[Stephen8169301]

Also manually remove because everything that decays in the system will bring up the nutrients

I’m bottomed out at 0 nitrates and .02 on po4

 

[ericrodriguez]

They do eat algae but don’t know how long it has to be

 

[Rueric]

My friend.. I have been down this road, and I wish you much better luck than I had.

I had battled GHA for about 8 months in my previous tank.
I threw everything at it, including the kitchen sink, nothing seemed to have worked.
I eventually gave in and just bought a bigger tank and "restarted".. I am coming up to a year now and the issues with GHA that I had with my previous tank hasnt hit my current tank (crossing my fingers here).

First off, I think the AB+ that you dose is contributing to the phosphate in your system.. you should try stopping any form of coral food that is contributing to phosphate.
Frozen food I heard has the least phosphate.

Don't dose Phosphate-e from Brightwell. This product is basically Lanthanum chloride, which gets leeched into your rocks and is apparently bad/poisonous for your tank. (I follow reef moonshiner methods and conduct ICP testing frequently, I believe this is the reason why even in my new system with some re-used rocks, I have some pollutants in my water column).

Couple of things you can try to..
GFO (reduces Nitrate, side note, does strip out some trace elements)
More inverts. (Side story: in my previous tank, I made many purchases for inverts through reefcleaners trying to battle GHA.. I couldn't keep them alive for some reason, they all would die after about a week. I even bought a Sea Hare and that died too.. Maybe you don't have this issue)
Hydrogen Peroxide dosing - I tried this and didn't work well for me, upon reading more about this, this impacts all of the bacteria in your tank, good and bad.. so I stopped dosing it as I didn't see much impact at all
Alternative: you can take out entire rocks and soak them in tank + h202, this will help clean it up, but in my experience, the GHA just grew back over time..
Reef flux/Flux RX (Fluconazole) - I tried this too, even at increased strengths, I've heard some people had good luck with this, wasn't the case for me unfortunately.
Tangs won't help, they like the short stubble algae.. mine didn't touch it once it got long.
I tried doing heavy cleaning with toothbrush, and multiple large water changes every two days, for about 2 weeks. didn't solve the issue nor slow it down.. so i stopped. I was going in with a tooth brush and scrubbing all the rock work of GHA (as much as I could, probably about 85% of the tank and afterwards, do 80-90% water changes.

Lastly: Dose nitrate - This may be anectdotal and possibly counter-intuitive.. but I believe increasing your nitrate, will proportionaly effect your phosphate levels too. As the GHA consumes phosphates and nitrates to grow, you can try increasing that GHA growth to cause a spike in the GHA to really draw out all of that locked up phosphate in the rocks - I didn't actually try this since I just thought of this after more experience with dosing nitrates.

 

[Stephen8169301]

My friend.. I have been down this road, and I wish you much better luck than I had.

Thanks I feel like I’m gonna be on a long ride

I had battled GHA for about 8 months in my previous tank.
I threw everything at it, including the kitchen sink, nothing seemed to have worked.
I eventually gave in and just bought a bigger tank and "restarted".. I am coming up to a year now and the issues with GHA that I had with my previous tank hasnt hit my current tank (crossing my fingers here).

First off, I think the AB+ that you dose is contributing to the phosphate in your system.. you should try stopping any form of coral food that is contributing to phosphate.

So I stopped but it continued to grow but I just started dosing again my po4 is at 0.02 which I actually feel is good

Frozen food I heard has the least phosphate.

Yeah I feed frozen mysis and brine to help for digestion and occasionally when they look hungry some flakes/pellets

Don't dose Phosphate-e from Brightwell. This product is basically Lanthanum chloride, which gets leeched into your rocks and is apparently bad/poisonous for your tank.

I’m trying to rid of it in the most natural way possible

(I follow reef moonshiner methods and conduct ICP testing frequently, I believe this is the reason why even in my new system with some re-used rocks, I have some pollutants in my water column).

So actually my only rocks that have algae on are cured rocks the other two live rocks don’t have any algae growing on them (as far as I know)

Couple of things you can try to..
GFO (reduces Nitrate, side note, does strip out some trace elements)

I have 0 nitrates

More inverts. (Side story: in my previous tank, I made many purchases for inverts through reefcleaners trying to battle GHA.. I couldn't keep them alive for some reason, they all would die after about a week. I even bought a Sea Hare and that died too.. Maybe you don't have this issue)

My hair algae is just long and inverts seem to avoid it

Hydrogen Peroxide dosing - I tried this and didn't work well for me, upon reading more about this, this impacts all of the bacteria in your tank, good and bad.. so I stopped dosing it as I didn't see much impact at all

Okay good to know that you

Alternative: you can take out entire rocks and soak them in tank + h202, this will help clean it up, but in my experience, the GHA just grew back over time..

Really not looking to pull out all my rocks lol to much coral on rocks

Reef flux/Flux RX (Fluconazole) - I tried this too, even at increased strengths, I've heard some people had good luck with this, wasn't the case for me unfortunately.
Tangs won't help, they like the short stubble algae.. mine didn't touch it once it got long.

Well that answers this post lol

I tried doing heavy cleaning with toothbrush, and multiple large water changes every two days, for about 2 weeks. didn't solve the issue nor slow it down.. so i stopped. I was going in with a tooth brush and scrubbing all the rock work of GHA (as much as I could, probably about 85% of the tank and afterwards, do 80-90% water changes.

Kinda what I’m doing currently but it just seems like a losing battle

Lastly: Dose nitrate - This may be anectdotal and possibly counter-intuitive.. but I believe increasing your nitrate, will proportionaly effect your phosphate levels too. As the GHA consumes phosphates and nitrates to grow, you can try increasing that GHA growth to cause a spike in the GHA to really draw out all of that locked up phosphate in the rocks - I didn't actually try this since I just thought of this after more experience with dosing nitrates.

Yeah I actually started turning my skimmer off during the day and running skimmer and refugium at night I was hoping that my refugium would slow down the growth of gha but it’s too soon to tell


thanks for you help! Kinda feel like I’m gonna fight this for awhile

 

[Yates273]

I’m going against the grain here. I had the same issue with GHA and it was very frustrating. For over 8 months I tried everything from the manual removal method, 2 sea hares, snails, fish, Fluconazole. I always told myself I would never used anything that would potentially hurt my tank. I was at my wits end so I decided to use one more method. My last resort method worked like a charm it took about 4 weeks but it’s all gone. I know Vibrant has a bad rep because they lied about their product, but dear god it works! Didn’t harm not one thing but the GHA in my tank. Oh yeah it did have an effect on my Caulerpa but after I finished my 4 weeks of dosing the Caulerpa bounced back. This may not be for you, but if you tried everything else and it doesn’t work and before you throw in the towel give it a shot. It works! I did the recommended dose once a week for a month. It did take time but I am now GHA free in my 120

 

[Stephen8169301]

I’m going against the grain here. I had the same issue with GHA and it was very frustrating. For over 8 months I tried everything from the manual removal method, 2 sea hares, snails, fish, Fluconazole. I always told myself I would never used anything that would potentially hurt my tank. I was at my wits end so I decided to use one more method. My last resort method worked like a charm it took about 4 weeks but it’s all gone. I know Vibrant has a bad rep because they lied about their product, but dear god it works! Didn’t harm not one thing but the GHA in my tank. Oh yeah it did have an effect on my Caulerpa but after I finished my 4 weeks of dosing the Caulerpa bounced back. This may not be for you, but if you tried everything else and it doesn’t work and before you throw in the towel give it a shot. It works! I did the recommended dose once a week for a month. It did take time but I am now GHA free in my 120

Interesting I heard people talk of such product but If all else fails I will have to look into this method because I definitely have that same feeling as you stated about wanting to not dose any chemicals but if it’s my only option I guess I’ll give it a shot

 

[mrehfeld]

How about a lawnmower blenny? It did an awesome job for me.

 

[Stephen8169301]

How about a lawnmower blenny? It did an awesome job for me.

I read it’s a hit or miss with them and they don’t really go after long hair what type did you have?

 

[hcker99]

a scopas tang will do fine in that size tank. Problem is it will not really help your issue. You need to start dosing nitrates into that tank. Once you get the nitrates up then you can work on removing the excess phosphates. The .02 on your phosphates is actually a false reading. That's the number after the algae has absorbed their needed phosphates. Right now if you ty to remove the phosphates it will not work because they are out of balance with the nitrates

 

[Stephen8169301]

a scopas tang will do fine in that size tank. Problem is it will not really help your issue. You need to start dosing nitrates into that tank. Once you get the nitrates up then you can work on removing the excess phosphates. The .02 on your phosphates is actually a false reading. That's the number after the algae has absorbed their needed phosphates. Right now if you ty to remove the phosphates it will not work because they are out of balance with the nitrates

That makes sense about the po4 Okay it really seems the right way to go is try to get my nitrates up and stable and see where that takes me

 

[Rueric]

That makes sense about the po4 Okay it really seems the right way to go is try to get my nitrates up and stable and see where that takes me

I agree with this approach, maybe something I should have tried!
@Stephen8169301 if you don't have one already, I really like using the Hanna High Range Nitrate checker.. it's simple and easy to you, with easy to read readings!

 

[Stephen8169301]

I agree with this approach, maybe something I should have tried!
@Stephen8169301 if you don't have one already, I really like using the Hanna High Range Nitrate checker.. it's simple and easy to you, with easy to read readings!

Yeah I’ll look into trying I just don’t know a good product to use so I have some research to do

Unless you know of a brand to try