i have a lawn in my tank!

[allill]

i have a whole lot of grass algae all over the place. how do i get rid of it? i have snails, hermits, and emerald crabs and still have a lawn!!!

 

[Gatorfreak]

I had great luck with Astrea snails and a Yellow Tang. Between the two, all traces of anything green are gone.

 

[Hara]

Most of the clean up crews that we keep do not particularly care for the taste of hair algae (I am assuming that is what it is). First off, you need to figure out what is causing it. Is it the water that you use? or do you use ro/di water? Are your nitrates and phosphates high? Those things are pure food for nuisance algae. How often are you feeding, and how much?

After you have figured out what the source of the problem is, remove the source and do water changes, pluck it out manually and turn off the lights. Keep after it and you will get a handle on the problem.

hth

 

[Konrade]

Do you have any live rock? What are your readings?

 

[Guest]

It's important to keep in mind what feeds hair algae in order to control it - phosphates, nitrates, and lighting. Phosphates are in every living thing and one of the problems with testing is that we can only test for one type of phosphate. Also, if you have hair algae, you have high phosphates - no need to test. I'd research the root cause of the fuel and try your best to limit them. Some suggestions would be: be sure to use RO/DI or distilled water only, increase the amount and frequency you change water, turn up your skimmer so it produces a wet skimmate, ditch any flake or pellet food, reduce your feeding, rinse your frozen food really well with SW prior to feeding, reduce your lighting (even a few hours can make a big difference), and then as a last resort, put in a phosphate binder. Lastly, UVs are about useless for this application since the algae would have to be suspended in order to be killed by the light. They also usually aren't strong enough to kill parasites so in short they are really only good for killing harmful bacteria in the water column. Good luck!

KG

 

[pelochas]

i have two pieces of LR that have the hair algea. its the only LR that have it, unfortanely its my bigger and best shape and coraline rock also. i have only a dozen of snail and 1 hermit crab. they clean the green /brown algea but nothing on the hair algea.

all the water in my tank is RO/DI and my readings for nitrates is 0. i dont have a test for phosphates, i have a couple of months of setting this up.

i order about 200 snails for my tank and sump. to be delivered this incoming week. should i order some other cleaning crew, also?

if i dont feed the fish, since i dont have any, no nitrates, use RO/DI water, and have my 260w PC lights on for about 8 to 10 hours, then im sure its phosphates. where do phosphates come from?

 

[seaham358]

KG gives good advice, but IMO you need to test the water to be 100% sure what your dealing with. Most LFS will test for you. And ditching flake food totally is not going to be healthy for your fish long term.
The first thing is to find the source/fuel for the HA and go from there.
More info about your tank would be helpful....

How old is the tank in your pic? looks nice I like the rock work.... Is that LR or base rock...

 

[Guest]

I would start by removing those two pieces and scrubbing off the hair algae with a soft brush. This algae problem might not be a big deal if you plan on keeping FO or FO with hardy inverts, but if you decide to go with corals then the high phosphates (which you certainly have despite what any test will show - again we can only test for one type of phosphates (the building blocks of all living things) and the algae can be consuming them as fast as they enter the tank) will most likely kill the symbiotic zooanthanelle. Not sure what nutritional value flake food has especially considering the variety of frozen foods available on the market today not to mention they are loaded with the phosphates we are trying to limit. Also, try reducing your lighting - just a few hours can make a big difference. If nothing else seems to work, you can take anything out that needs light (if I'm tracking, you have none) and throw your tank in the dark (wrap in entirely with painters paper - pick it up at Home Depot pretty cheap) for about 10 days. This will kill all of the hair algae, but will release their phosphates back into the water so you would want to do some very large water changs afterwards. What a PIA, huh?

KG

 

[pelochas]

its a huge PIA. Those two LR pieces and like the block that hold every LR together. NO WAY im moving it, took me hours to set this up. I can take this off hopefully by hand or starving it. lucky, i have that big roll of painters paper. i will cut down on light since i have nothing but rock and snails, and then do a large water change. thanks

 

[reefmaster]

less light time

I think the reason you have so much hair algea is becasue you might leave the lights on for too long. I used to have my pc lights on for 8-10 hours and then reduced it to 5-7 hours. What worked wonders for my hair algea prob was to reduce my lighting to 5-7 hours, and turbo snails. all my hair algea was cleaned up in my 30 gal in 2-3 days

 

[Guest]

You're welcome. Since the rock is too large to move, I'd go with the starving route. Don't forget though to try those other things and perform a large water change (40-50%) afterwards or you'll be back to square one.

KG

 

[pelochas]

back to square one? as starting everything over again or a fresh clean start to move on?