I also had a hair algae problem a while back. I found my magnesium was low and was told by a friend that hair algae growth was related to mag levels. I cant remember what the exact reasoning behind it was but after performing 2 tasks I havent had any in my tank since. I first cleaned out as much as possible with tweezers and toothbrush (this part was tedious). Once there was very little left, I began raising my mag 25ppm a day until it reached 1500ppm (started at 1180). Almost a year later the hair algae cant be found. I dont like using chemicals until its a last resort because there isnt a whole lot of concise consensus on affects with other parameters.

Can you tell us what product that you used to raise your magnesium?

Simon, I had the tang for about 4 months. All was good. Swinming circles around the tank, eating, flakes, seawood and shrimp. Don't know what he went. Woke up the other morning after the 7th dose, to see my snails and crabs eating him up. Sucks.

I'm sorry to hear about the tang.

It might have had an internal parasite or disease of some sort, or maybe was damaged by chemicals when captured. There are a lot of possible causes of death.

yes I understand. I was just putting it out there in regards to the dosing is all

Thanks for you input regarding your use of AF.

Sorry to hear about your loss. :(

I am dosing vinegar but it is creating lots of deep maroon/brown algae on my sand and rocks, the sand is looking really dirty and it is not possible to clean it everytime. So i will stop dosing vinegar. Never before dosing vinegar the sand looked dirtier than this. Should i reduce the dose from 10ml to 5ml or should i stop it? When i was dosing vodka the sand was not effected. Plz help.

Merry Christmas:)

If vodka was providing better results, than I would switch back to it. ;)

Randy often swtiched back & forth between vodka and vinegar without problems. :)

Thanks.

I've noticed a very strange side-effect from dosing this. It does worked as described, and the only thing it has seemed to harm is pulsing Xenia, but not pom-pom.

But another strange thing that has me puzzled is that as soon as I dose the AF in my aquarium, all of my Urchin's immediately fall from wherever they are. I noticed it last time I dosed but just thought that it was a coincidence, but this time I payed attention, and everyone of my 10 or so Urchins fell to the sand bed, and then went right back to climbing up whatever they are near and go back to feed.

I have 9 or so pin-cushion urchins and one black urchin that I can't seem to locate a name for but see them everywhere and both types do it.

Anyone else noticed this?

Ok well Ive been dosing this stuff for a long time now, and see no effect on the GHA in my tank. I will continue to use it on a once a week basis because its definitely keeping my tank looking cleaner (rarely have to clean glass now), but I wouldnt count on this helping against GHA.

9 doese, no red ha, no gha.
lotsa slime/cyano

I tryed AF awhile back (about three months ) and had no luck with my hair algae, did more reading and found that high Mag may help. So I raised my Mag from 1350 to 1800 with epsom salt and nothing after three weeks. Last week I tryed AF again with my Mag around 1800 and after my Third dosage the hair algae is melting away. Looks like I may beat this after all.

I am having maroon/deep brown hair algae in my tank, i wash my rocks every fortnight but what about sand as the algae has growing on them also badly. I was dosing vinegar now i am dosing vodka but with no difference. How do i wash my sand as they are looking very dirty with deep brown hair algae? Is thr any way out.

Also i am going out with my family by closing our home for 10 days. What steps can be taken to avoid any untoward incident? We cant give our home keys to anybody.

The maroon color sounds like this may be cyanobacteria. Pictures would help.

If you can't let anyone in to oversee your tank for 10 days, the biggest concern is if the electric went off and stopped your system. Not feeding for 10 days, should not be a big concern for most healthy fish. Your alk level can drop quite a bit in 10 days if it is not automated. It is not unusual for tanks to use 1 dKH per day and a drop of 10 dKH would be bad.

If you don't have any reef friends who can look after your tank while you are gone, may be you should consider asking your LFS for help. If you know them well you can ask one of the staff to come in your home to check and feed your tank every 2-3 days while you are gone.

Thanks for the quick reply.


Yes it must be cyanobacteria. Okay i will post photo tmrw. But what is the solution for this problem.

We live in an apartment and the management/security starts generator whenever their is power cut, so electricity is no problem. I have bought auto fish feeder so i will set it to feed everyday once in the afternoon and as the tank is near window lights would be natural. I will dose alkalinity on the last day i leave.

Here are the pics :

Looks like cyanobacteria to me.

You mentioned that your tank is subject to natural sun light. If so, you may want to shade the tank with curtains or something.

Keep removing the cyano and clean the sand bed as well. Run GAC & GFO. Scrubbing the rock regularly will help. ;)

If your sand bed is less than 2.5" in depth, I woudl siphon the complete bed regularly to remove trapped organics in it and as much cyano as possible.

Looks like diatoms and cyano
 

From your pictures is looks like a combination of cyanobacteria and diatoms. This is usually brought on by a few factors or combination of factors:
- high phosphate (>.5) and silicate
- high nitrates (>25ppm)
- insufficient current/water movement
- high organics
- low alkalinity (<3.0 meq/liter or <150ppm)
- low pH (<8.2)
- not enough grazers/inverts/sand stirrers (hermits, turbo snails, nassarius snails, seacucumbers)
- not sufficient coverage of rock with corals (corals and algae do compete, so tip the scales in your favor by stocking to cover 60% of your rock with corals).

Three products that treat the symptom (not the cause - see above) are as follows:
1) Chemiclean, which will eradicate the cyanobacteria (reef safe - we've used it in our service business for years)
2) Granular Ferric Oxide (removes phosphate and silicates) - we prefer Rowaphos, but there are other brands that work as well too. This is great for removing phosphate, although a bit expensive. Remember to focus on lessening the source of input of phosphate into your system (i.e. tapwater and foods). For tapwater we filter with RODI (target is zero TDS). As for the foods, we strongly recomment rinsing your frozen foods prior to feeding. You'd be amazed at the amount of gook (scientific term) that would otherwise go into your tank/system.
3) Doxicyclene hyclate - it has been years since I've used this for treating RTN (rapid tissue necrosis) in corals, but we also noticed that it was great for temporarily eradicating cyanobacteria. I say temporary, because this is just treating the symptom and not the cause. As long as the original cause (see above) is still there, the cyano will likely return.

Hope this helps. I know this may not feel good to hear, but consider yourself fortunate that it is just cyano and dyatoms, which are relatively easy to get rid of, and not something more difficult like bryopsis or hair algae.

Let me know how it turns out.

One more thing re: FOWLR
 

One more thing to add about your tank and they cyano/diatoms issue. I just saw from your profile that your tank is a FOWLR tank (fish-only with live rock). Do I have this right?

If so, you are always going to have significantly higher phosphates, nitrates, silicates and organics to deal with, even if you had the same number of fish in a reef tank. This is because in FOWLR tanks, there are no (or very few) corals, sponges, coraline algae, clams, filter feeders, etc. to help remove nutrients from the water.

So with a FOWLR tank, you will need to be more aggressive with use of carbon, GFO (granular ferric oxide - removes phosphate) and with the removal of detritus. I strongly recommend "storming the tank" at least twice a month (during normal/ideal conditions), but I would recommend doing it once a month in your current situation.

What I mean by "Storming the tank", is putting a powerhead on a stick/pipe and blast the rock to liberate detritus that has collected in the live rock. And then having some type of mechanical filtration in use to remove the detritus now that it is suspended in the water column.

To do this you can use a canister filter, D.E. filter (diatomacious earth), or even a small powerfilter (hang-on-the-side).

Or if you don't have any of these items, you can storm the tank with the powerhead and then siphon it off the surfact of the rock/sand as you do a large water change. With this method I recommend blasting with the powerhead twice during the water change.

Started my first dose of AF marine today. my 180 has had some issues with HA and it has gotten to my breaking point. three large tanks that dont want to eat it. was using tap water due to my inability to get the RODI installed. it was installed on christmas 6 months after the tank was established. we had been running GFO but have stopped due to the fact that I test only 11 parts per BILLION on a hanna meter. we will run it every other day once the AF begins to work to eliminate any phosphate released into the water as the AF works. Ill get some photos up soon on my progress.

Would it make sense to do a three day lights out period after dosing Algaefix Marine so as to avoid the possibility of another algae taking over?