Green hair algae help?

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Starscream

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Feb 21, 2011
Messages
13
Location
Maple bay, Vancouver island,Canada
I have a new 29g biocube and just transferred my water from a 90gal already established tank of three years but for the last 6 months I ve had extremely bad green hair algae problems. My tap water had no phosphates at all!! And my tests are all perfect. Any adivice or livestock I could get that are proven to help with it. The local fish store I ve bought everything from them and nuthing eats it. Thanx for yur help in advance!!!
 

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you say your using tap water?RO/DI needs to be used.also pull it out when you do pwc.whats your test results?
 
That's a lot of hair algae! My advice is...

1. Manually remove as much as you can.

2. Add more hermit crabs and snails. (Current list of CUC possibly?)

3. 20% water change weekly.

4. Re-arrange the rocks so the algae covered side is in the dark. It should die off rapidly.

5. If the tank was used when you got it. Make sure the lights have been changed recently. When bulbs get older algae really takes off. But if they're only 6 months old they should have another 4-6 more good months.

6. Take some water to your LFS and have them test it. You may be doing it wrong if you have had this algae for that long. You could have a chemical imbalance that could be cured by dosing.

Hopefully that helps!
 
Thanx alot everybody for yur help I am gonna start doing everything yu guys have said one by one. I will get back to yu.

The biocube is brand new since I ve moved to that it seem alot better but just won't go away.
 
If the problem persists after everything I would change the bulb. It could be that it went bad early as do some light bulbs in houses.
 
The hair algae started in my old tank I brought the problem to my new tank. I am gonna do some tests tonight I will post later. I brought my water change tap water to my lfs and they said it tested very good no phosphates at all!!
 
700am to 7pm automatic timer been like that for very long time. I must admit I haven't been doing water changes weekly only monthly cuz my tests were always good and every water change I suck out tons of algae but just grows back.
 
Ya i only have 10000k bulbs on for 8 hours, acintic bulbs 1/2 hour longer on each side sunrise/sunset with basically no algae growth u should try cutting your lights by 4 hours.
 
If your having a problem with algae like that you should be changing the water weekly until its settled. There has to be a chemical imbalance to allow such explosive growth. I agree with Karlos on the lights being on too long. 8 hours is plenty a day.

Here's how my lights run:

9 A.M. - Acintics turn on
10 A.M - Day time lights turn on. Acintics turn off.
8 P.M. - Day time lights turn off. Acintics turn on
9 P.M. - Lights are off.

Hopefully this helps to control the algae, but I would turn the rocks upside down after you manually remove as much algae as possible if you have no corals to bother and create a new aquascape. Any algae facing the bottom will die. This has worked for me in the past but I've only done it once and there wasn't near as much algae.
 
If you have no corals then leave the lights off totally for a couple of weeks,during that time find the cause of the problem,even if the lfs says your tapwater is good I would still use RO/DI water,Once the problem is sorted start your light cycle for 8 hours a day
 
I totally forget that most of you live in cities and have treated water. I guess I'm lucky living in a rural area where we use drilled wells to pump out water from hundreds of feet below us.

You could turn the lights off for a couple weeks like David S suggested just make sure you have no natural light entering the room where the aquarium is or that will not change the situation by much. It would definitely stunt the growth but algae is a lot hardier then you would think and could survive off the tiniest amount of light. Maybe cover it up the sides with a dark towel.
 
you can't test for everything in tap water. i think your tap water is the problem. 99% of algae problems are caused by excessive nutrients. do you have corals in the tank? if not i wouldn't be running the lights unless i wanted to view the tank. ambient light is plenty for the fish. they only need to see to eat.
 
Spend the $ on a phosban reactor, manually pull out as much algae as possible, and keep the lights off (depending on corals). If you have corals then shorter each days worth of light and keep the lights off for one day each week.
 
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