How I Killed My Green Hair Algae!

[Raiderwig]

Hello all,

It's been a few mths since I've posted but I wanted to let you know how I killed my Green Hair Algae.
Before I go on I have to tell you that I'm a First time Proud Father of my 1 mth old Son.
Too happy to say in words..
But I can tell you that he has 2 aquarium things on his crib that lull him to sleep. ( they kinda work..lol)
Anyways I went Radical with my method. After reading and reading and trying this and that I had come to my wits end!!!
Nothing was working. The algae had become so bad it was clogging my filters on a daily basi.
I believe what caused the problem was my lights needing their bulbs changed. they are almost a year old. ( Same age as the tank). My water Perm's have never been a problem so I finally figure it has to be the lights.
This is what I did!!!
BLACKOUT.............
YUP that's what I did... I turned off my lights and covered my tank with a blanket and today is day 4 and most of my algae is dead What is left on the LR just blows off with a turkey baster now. I can't believe how well it worked. (I read about this but it was my last choice.)
I did not let any light in at all for 4 days. Today was the first day I took the blanket off to feed my fish and they are all doing well. ( a little hungry but that's it.)
All my coral is doing well too. I turned on 1 light for 30 minutes while I fed and they were all opening up. ( felt bad I had to shut it off again
I will "blackout" for 2 more days to finish it off and that is that.
Just wanted to share what worked for me.
Tanks
Aaron

[ugination87]

4 days of no light?? wouldnt that have negative effects on the corals?? anyways congrats on your son... lucky

[Fred_J]

I guess when you think about it there must be times when the weather over a reef is completely cloudy or stormy for days at a time. Sounds like a good idea especially if used at the start of an outbreak.
Fred

[Raiderwig]

I agree. I didn't like the idea at first. But I had to try somthing. And the results are great.
Fish can go days without food and coral are very hardy in most cases..if they weren't they wouldn't survive in the wild.
I'm not saying this is for everyone but it is working for me and my tank is still doing well so I'm happy.

[ugination87]

glad it worked for you~!

[SVXH6]

i usually go one day a month with no lights..we use the dusk dawn effect, also moon light effect why not a super cloudy no sun on the reef day effect?? when i do this the next day the corals look very good..

[sarwa]

i have same problem. i will try yuor way. ty.

[Alaskan Reefer]

I'd be cautious, the reason you have hair algae is excess phosphate in the system, and the blackout doesn't fix that. Don't be shocked if it comes back soon. Here's my stock answer to hair algae threads...

My 75 was overrun with HA about 2 years ago, and I mean overrun -- about 75% total tank coverage. Here's what I did to remove it all in three weeks...

1. Phosphate Sponge (just one brand, there are several) -- 2 media bags, changed every three days.
2. Added HOB refugium with chaetomorpha -- lights 24/7
3. Cleaning... Manually scrub rocks daily with toothbrushes, catch HA and remove with a net. Turkey baster and/or powerheads on LR to blow out detritus. After about half an hour (detritus settled), 20% water change, including siphoning detritus out of the sand. Daily. Yeah, it's a lot of water changes. Eventually you'll just be blowing out detritus daily (hair algae won't grow back fast enough), and that's a good thing.
4. Stop feeding phosphate rich foods -- like mysis.
5. Leave lights on LONGER. This helps the hair algae grow, and as long as you're removing it with your toothbrush and net, you are exporting phosphates.
6. Kalk drip -- kalk helps raise pH, which hair algae doesn't like. It also helps your skimmer specifically with phosphate -- which I believe is due to binding chemically and making the particles easier to remove. I'm not sure on the chemistry, but I know it works. The added bonus is that you have a nice calcium and alkalinity supplementation scheme along with topoff water already in place when you're done.
7. Of course, use RO for any water you put in the system.

Adding critters doesn't do anything you can't do with a toothbrush and a net, and as mentioned here the critters eat the algae, use a little of the energy, and then poop it out as more detritus -- the net effect is nowhere near as good as blowing out rocks and really getting at the problem (stored phosphate). You may want a handful of turbo snails (every tank needs a little help with even film algae) and red leg hermits (I don't like hermits at all since they mostly just eat leftover food, dead fish, and snails -- but most red legs do eat hair algae) to help keep the small stuff from gowing back. Emeralds do eat it as well, but they get big (I had one over 5" across) and once they get big say goodbye to your snails. Forget the test kit, your water will test clean for phosphate or nearly so -- the hair algae is using it to grow. Just the presence of hair algae talls you all you need to know -- you have phosphate in the system, and you have a lot of it.

The battle is getting the phosphate out of the system, the hair algae is just a symptom, not the problem. You can conquer it, just be more than persistent. You'll know you're done when your rock "blows" clean with a powerhead -- then and only then you break out the phosphate test if you want to see how you did.

HTH, it worked for me.

[lawmary]

I stopped feeding my fish for 1 1/2 weeks and they ate it. Mine was more like a bryopsis. Worked for me, LOL.

[a4twenty]

first off congrats on the birth of your son.

now for the bad news, i have to agree with alaskan. by killing the hair algae in that manner, you have probabley just fueled the next algae bloom. you have been treating the effect rather than the cause. all of the dead algae unless fully removed (impossible to get it all) will break down creating new fuel for algae growth.

the easiest way to get rid of it IMO is.

remove phospates
remove nitatrates
remove the algae ( pick at it everyday)
keep alk and calcium levels up ( promotes coraline growth )
use ro / ro-di for all water changes

[beatpoet_77]

I had a huge breakout in my tank and was so frustrated when I couldn't find an answer. I bought a kole yellow eye tang, and a foxface lo, and within 3 days they had eaten it and cleaned off all of the live rock. I don't know if this is a standard solution, but it worked for me. Those two fish are constantly eating algae growth in my tank.

[BeachBoy]

congrats for the kid!

me for the alguae I did MASSIVE water changes to get phosphates down, and during that time I left the lights closed mostly... no blanket though.

I don't have corals nor fish yet so for me it doesn't matter, my aiptasia went almost dead from that light starvation which is a good thing (I now have joe's juice and trying to use it, not as easy as it seems).

Regards,
E.

[crazyfingersmike]

Well, I agree and disagree with the people that said you treated the symptom and not the cause. Because they're right, you haven't solved the problem. But you're close to getting there.

Next steps should be:

1. Immediate 25-30% water change.
2. Continue very little light usage. Give your corals some light for an hour or two per day. Go totally black for some days, little light on others.
3. Continued water changes. 10% every other day.
4. Continue low-light treatment
5. Use phosphate adsorber like PhosGuard or whatever floats your boat.
6. More water changes. Small water changes during the week, large water changes on the weekend
7. Once it's all cleared up, you should have a system with no algae and very low phosphates
8. SLOWLY bring your lighting levels back up to 12 hour per day levels. Over the course of 2 weeks maybe.
9. Feed less, find ways to introduce less phosphates.
10. setup a fuge

That should do it :-)

[reverendmaynard]

I think as long as the dead algae is moved into the water column, and either skimmed out or trapped in some kind of mechanical filtration (which should be cleaned daily), then this is treating the cause to some extent. You would have better results physically removing the live HA from the tank, but this method requires much less work/disruption of the aquascape.

If you just leave the dead HA in the tank to rot or be eaten, then yes, all your doing is loading up for the next bloom.

No matter the method of removing the existing algae, the fact that you had such a bad bloom in the first place suggests that there is a nitrate/phosphate exportation problem in the tank that needs to be addressed. As mentioned, good skimming, a fuge w/macro, reduced feedings, and phosphate/nitrate removal media (properly monitored and changed when necessary), even water changes (though you'll never get to 0 unless you do 100% changes, even 1% per day changes can be quite effective in keeping these levels low) are all good ways to stay ahead of the problem.

[ktkreegs]

phosphate/nitrate removal media
^
|
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What would you suggest using?

[BeachBoy]

I use ROWAphos

phosban is also good according to what i read

After one day my phosphates went way low with ROWAphos... I did a lot of water changes too (still doing a lot to be sure).

E.

[Alaskan Reefer]

The best media for phosphate removal is chaetomorpha. The best for nitrate removal is caulerpa.

But, if you don't want to do it natrually, Phosphate Sponge, RowaPhos, Phosguard, Phosban and so on will work on the phosphate. There really isn't a magic cure for nitrates, the Nitrate Sponge you can buy works VERY slowly (I've used it) because the principle is the same as live rock -- dense little areas where anaerobic bacteria can thrive and break down nitrates. That takes weeks to achieve. The best remedy for nitrate removal is still water changes, IMO.

Hair algae is a very good reason to upgrade your skimmer, to alleviate the phosphate and nitrate buildup before the fact.

Beatpoet brings up the other good idea -- almost all rabbitfish will eat hair algae, so if you're resigned to growing it, that's a good fish for you to have. Keep in mind, though, that stony corals (and coraline algae) don't grow well if at all in a phosphate rich environment, so again you'd still be treating the symptoms not the problem -- which would have an effect on your coral selections if you want them to grow.

[Alaskan Reefer]

Just to emphasize again, reducing your photoperiod will speed up the die off of hair algae -- and by definition that will slow down the hair algae's ability to "eat" the phosphats that caused it to grow in the first place. Just depends what you're after -- personally I like to be more aggresive in treating the problem, not the symptoms. You can kill hair algae for a while by leaving the lights out, you can kill it permanently by stripping your system of phosphate -- and next to chaetomorpha hair algae is the best consumer of phosphate you can find.

[reverendmaynard]

I've never used any nitrate removal media myself, but I know there are some. Check an online store like Drs Foster & Smith.

I use a phosphate remover called Phospure. It's a Drs Foster & Smith brand product. You put it in a media bag and put it in your sump or power filter. Works well, reducing phosphates to undetectable in a day, for me. It my current rate, my $20 supply should last 4-6months.

[Raiderwig]

Thanks all for your Replies,

I think Hair Algae is a topic that we will be discussing for a very long time.
I read through all the posts and see alot of good info. Some I have tried already and some I haven't.
I know that somewhere along the line I have some sort of problem that is feeding the algae growth.
One question I have is how long are the Phosphate removal media's good for? some people say mths and some say only days and then they are exausted? some say you can rinse them off and reuse them??? And if you leave them in too long, they just release phosphates back into your tank.
I was using RO water from my local grocery store for mths. But the hair algae still came. I stop using it after I tested it with my kit and it recording a low amount of phosphates. So to me that was just a rip off. (who knows how often they maintain their system???/) My tap water tested almost no phosphates. (big city)
I would like my own RO system but that is not in the cards yet. (Diapers are though
I'm going to research the HOB fuge. I not familar with it's set-up and how it works and what benifits you get from it?
Room around the tank is a issue.
Any more advice is more than welcome.
thanks
Aaron

[reverendmaynard]

Phosphate removers can only adsorb a finite amount of PO4. How long it takes to become saturated in your tank can't really be said. Basically you put in the recommended amount and wait. Keep testing daily until you cannot detect any with your test kit, or it levels off and starts to go back up. If it levels off you replace the media. Once you reach 0, you watch it until it starts to become detectable again, then replace the media. After a few cycles of that, you'll be able to test less frequently, because you'll have a general idea how long a given amount of media lasts.

I don't believe there's any danger of the media releasing phosphates back into the water, particularly using the above method. This is similar to the "aragonite buffers your water" argument. Sure, it can, but not really much at all in conditions normally found in the aquarium.

I'm not aware of any techniques to recharge the media. If anybody knows one, I'd love to hear it.

[Serioussnaps]

ONCE AGAIN LISTEN TO ALASKAN REEFER-HE HAS DONE IT AGAIN----JUST BRILLIANT

[Serioussnaps]

WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING TURNING OFF YOUR LIGHTS FOR 4 DAYS WITH CORAL IN THERE AND THE ALGAE DIE OFF IS ONLY GONNA CAUSE EVEN MORE NUTRIENTS SO MORE HAIR ALGAE CAN GROW BACK
DO SOME RESEARCH
FOLLOW ALASKAN REERERS ADVICE
NON SENSE
YOU MAY RID THE HAIR ALGAE BUT YOU ONLY ADD MORE PHOSPHATES FROM THE DIE OFF IN ADDITION TO THE PHOSPHATE PROBLEM YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY