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Hair algae takeover


edress714

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My brother in law has a 90g corner he set up 2 months ago. Nitrates were 80. He used well water of course so that is the issue.he only has two damsels and everything else is rock and sand. Every single rock is covered in hair algae. Should he just start over with rodi water or treat the tank?

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Is he in a hurry?  If he can get the nutrients down a bit and add a few urchins and turbos (not too many), the problem will subside in a few months or maybe less.

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I have that in one of my nanos.  I had NO fish in the tank and wasn't even feeding it except for very occasionally sprinkling a couple of mysis for my serpent star.  It is like a solid grassy forest.  I will likely go the dolabella sea hare route to finish up.  I have had two urchins in there since well before this started, as well as turbos.  Urchins don't eat hair algae.  I did throw 5 emerald crabs in and it was like they were dropped into Thanksgiving dinner.  They were fast workers and made quick work.  But as I said, I put 5 emeralds in a nano.  They will kill each other if I let it go on too long.  They have made a small dent though.  I will definitely always keep one or two in my big tank after seeing how they love hair algae as insurance.

 

It would definitely be good to go rodi - just a big water change with it may help.  He ought to have his water tested before running his well water through rodi.  If I remember correctly, it can contain substances that aren't filtered out with an rodi.  

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His Rock is saturated with phosphates. No matter what critter you add it will continue to grow back and critters increase bio load causing more problems. Yea critters will mow the lawn. But the grass is still there growing because it has unlimited nutrients. GFO, aggressive skimming and spot feed fish instead of broadcast feeding to ensure all food gets eaten.

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He's in no rush but I told him he should start again. Just my 2 cents. Wanted to know what everyone else thought. If he were to start over would he boil the rock and sand?

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I just do what Brian said above. Heavy skimming and GFO. He also needs to do some testing along the way and use RODI from now on.

 

Once the parameters are under control, or headed the right direction, then mow the grass.

Edited by Reefer_Madness
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He's in no rush but I told him he should start again. Just my 2 cents. Wanted to know what everyone else thought. If he were to start over would he boil the rock and sand?

Research "cooking rock". You don't literally cook - that can actually be dangerous.

Edited by lutz123
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His Rock is saturated with phosphates. No matter what critter you add it will continue to grow back and critters increase bio load causing more problems. Yea critters will mow the lawn. But the grass is still there growing because it has unlimited nutrients. GFO, aggressive skimming and spot feed fish instead of broadcast feeding to ensure all food gets eaten.

I have tamed a few serious blooms, and spend a lot of my time trying to grow hair algae to feed my slugs, so I would disagree somewhat.  I agree that the "cleanup crews" sold by online suppliers are way too big, but a combined approach of grazing and nutrient control will solve the problem if you give the system time to  get back into balance.  The mistake I see a lot of people making is getting impatient and jumping from one solution to the next without giving anything a chance to work.   Cooking the rock, throwing everything away, adding a chaetomorpha reactor will all work, it's just a matter of how you want to approach the problem.

 

Urchins don't eat hair algae. 

I am shocked to see this.  Both variegated and rock boring urchins have chowed it down to bare rocks in my tanks.  What species was it?

Edited by mogurnda
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Don't restart it unless there are pest you want to get rid of.

 

Get ready for a water change. Take two 5 gallon buckets fill them half way with old tank water. Split a bottle of peroxide between the two. Pull your rocks out one at a time and with a tooth brush knock off as much hair algae as you can in one bucket then put the rock back in your tank. Repeat until you hit all the rocks. After one bucket gets dirty enough use the other bucket. The peroxide will kill the hair algae but you will not have to re-cycle the rock like you would if you cooked them.

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I've never had sps so I can't speak for it. I've used a lot with snails, crabs, shrimp, lps, and softies and never lost anything. I've seen people say they lost their cleaner shrimp but mine was ok..

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Most Zoas seem pissed when first added to the tank but open back up in a couple hours.

It's been along time since I added it to my tank but I've targeted small areas of HA with 5ml of 3% peroxide in a syringe. The only side effects were the hair algae died in a few days...

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I've never had sps so I can't speak for it. I've used a lot with snails, crabs, shrimp, lps, and softies and never lost anything. I've seen people say they lost their cleaner shrimp but mine was ok..

Some people I really respect have suggested peroxide, I just haven't had the guts to try it. In fact, every time I have talked about hair algae growing on my frag plugs, someone has suggested just dipping them in peroxide. I've just never done it. Obviously it works.

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Some people I really respect have suggested peroxide, I just haven't had the guts to try it. In fact, every time I have talked about hair algae growing on my frag plugs, someone has suggested just dipping them in peroxide. I've just never done it. Obviously it works.

Now dipping you don't want to go over 50/50 using 3% peroxide. I've melted Zoas in a 100% dip in less than a minute.

In a tank I've injected it at 100% but it dilutes pretty quick

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I am shocked to see this.  Both variegated and rock boring urchins have chowed it down to bare rocks in my tanks.  What species was it?

I sure wish mine would. I have a rock boring and pencil urchin in there. Up until a few weeks ago there was a sea egg there too. If they are doing anything I can't tell. They seem to prefer the coralline. The pencil urchin has a beautiful flowing mane of hair algae all over its spines...

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He needs to do lots of water changes during all this dipping. There will be a lot of die off and ammonia spike is possible. The peroxide may even mess with denitrifying good bacteria. I was never able to peroxide because of the SPS and massive amount of rock. My concern with it is if he doesn't make some nutrient changes he might be going right back where he started 1-2 months from now. Maybe even quicker since the peroxide will only kill the algae not the phosphate problem in the tank and phosphates packed in the rocks.

Edited by gmerek2
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