Hair algae problem

[armyman16]

Tank has been up an running for about 9 months and just this past month I've been starting to see some hair algae growth, what could I do to get rid of this nasty stuff?
I've heard of using emerald crabs(I think that's the right crab) but I've heard that they sometimes harass fish as I have a small yellow watchman that would be an easy and available target for him. Any other ideas?

 

[Petrichor]

I'm not sure about emerald crabs eating it, but I heard sea hares and lettuce nudibranches can eat hair algae. That's one of the only things they eat though, so unless you can buy a sea hare/nudi, let it get rid of the algae, then trade it back to wherever you bought it you'll need to supplement it's diet.

Be warned that both can release toxins when stressed, so running charcoal in your tank might be a good idea if you get one.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[armyman16]

I've never seen a sea hate or a nudi for sale at any of my 3 lfs! Haha should I just flip the rock over so no light gets to it?

 

[Sniperhank]

An emerald crab or any other critter would be covering up your problem. You using RO/DI? What is your feeding schedule like? I had a massive hair algae outbreak when I was feeding my corals. I battled it off, over about a month, by stopping my feeding of corals, reducing my fish's feedings to once a week, continuing weekly PWC with RO/DI, adding a TDS meter to my ro/di, and added an algae blenny to my tank who munched away what I couldn't manually remove.

 

[Beengirl]

Scarlet reef hermits will eat hair algae, they have really bright red legs and yellow eyes. Black sailfin blenny will also eat it.

Agree that you do need to find the source of it too, though.


Good luck!!!!

 

[armyman16]

An emerald crab or any other critter would be covering up your problem. You using RO/DI? What is your feeding schedule like? I had a massive hair algae outbreak when I was feeding my corals. I battled it off, over about a month, by stopping my feeding of corals, reducing my fish's feedings to once a week, continuing weekly PWC with RO/DI, adding a TDS meter to my ro/di, and added an algae blenny to my tank who munched away what I couldn't manually remove.

No I do not use RO/DI water for top-offs. It is just RO. You know like those things you attach to the faucets to purify it for drinking water?
I feed everynight. I don't target feed any of my corals, I have a wall hammer colony, a few mushrooms and a tube anenome. My fish are 2 Ocellaris clowns and a yellow watchman goby. With no more than 10 snails and no more than 10 hermits. This is a 20 gallon tank. I do a 20% PWC weekly

 

[armyman16]

Oh but water changes are RO/DI

 

[Sniperhank]

Oh, this is simple then. You are feeding too much. Cut back to every other day and manually remove as much algae as you can prior to your PWC. You'll start to see results after a week. It'll take awhile before you win the war against it, just be patient. Be careful though, when it starts to starve it will turn yellow and fall apart. You need to remove as much of it as you can if it does this. I didn't get to it in time in my tank and the mass die off fueled another algae bloom.

 

[armyman16]

Okay so thats it? Every other night? Should I do the same with my 75 gallon?

 

[armyman16]

Just bought a lawn mower blenny to clean up the problem and I'm going to switch to feeding every other night!

 

[Sniperhank]

Once it is all gone, just make sure you can keep feeding him! They have a large apatite.

 

[bavass]

I would test the ro water for TDS and see what you get, i think you will find that could be the source. RO doesn't pull everything out and thats were the DI comes in it will polish anything left after the RO

 

[Sniperhank]

Agreed on the di part. My di resin takes a beating with my well water. I'm replacing my resin every 2 months sure to how bad out is.