sea hare & high magnesium levels

[astroboy]

I have a hair algae problem and in the past month I've bought three sea hares to deal with it, and all have died within 24 hours. I acclimated for 1 hour, 2 hours, and then five hours, made no difference. 

 

My water parameters are good.

 

However, a few years back to kill off bryopsis I upped my Mg to 1650 and since it worked great and the corals and fish didn't seem to mind a bit, I've kept it there since. 

 

Does anyone know if that level of Mg would be toxic to sea hares?

 

There's a vague remark on wetwebmedia that high Mg might be toxic to snails, and so it's possible sea hares might have trouble. Now that I think of it, of, say, a dozen snails I buy, two die within a few days and six die within a month or two, leaving just a few survivors that live for at least a year. 

[YHSublime]

IMO even an hour is a little long to acclimate a fish. 30 minutes has always worked for me, and that's tops.

 

I would visit your acclimation process before considering high magnesium. JMO.

[sachabballi reef]

actually in this case acclimation should be a minimum of 1 hour and up to 2 hours total for sea hares

Edited December 22, 2013 by sachabballi reef

[YHSublime]

Pardon me, read quickly! Shouldn't have answered without knowing what I was talking about.

[gmerek2]

I

Have never owned a sea bare but have overcome hair algae. Run GFO. Up skimmer size and sell fish to lesson bio load and feed less, add large refugium with CHEATo and powerful 3watt LEDs. I did all that and it was gone within a month you could probably get away with doing less than what I did. Adding more animals to eat the stuff adds more bio load: fuels the fire IMO

[astroboy]

I

Have never owned a sea bare but have overcome hair algae. Run GFO. Up skimmer size and sell fish to lesson bio load and feed less, add large refugium with CHEATo and powerful 3watt LEDs. I did all that and it was gone within a month you could probably get away with doing less than what I did. Adding more animals to eat the stuff adds more bio load: fuels the fire IMO

I do all that. I have an Avast skimmer rated for 300 gallons on a 90 gallon tank, switch out the GFO once a month lately, carbon every two weeks. Fuge has a remote DSB and cheato. Brighter lights might help with the chaeto. I don't have any fish in the tank so the food input is minimal...

 

The only thing I can think of is that the tank has been set up for only four months, using live rock and sand from a 29 gallon I had had set up for three years (never with any hair algae problems...). I also used "live" rock from a 75 gallon I had had, which crashed when I unsuccessfully tried to move it to a different house. I put that rock into a cooler for three years and reused it in the current set up four months ago. It seemed to be clean but I wonder if there wasn't still some residue on in that the hair algae is feasting on. 

 

That's the only thing I can think of, anyway, that is causing this problem. I didn't move corals into the tank until it had cycled for six weeks, if it even cycled at all. Ammonia and nitirites were always zero.