green hair

B

bandito974

is there a way to completely eradicate Green hair Algae?
I have a 17 gallon I am trying to get going, I have some nice frags I have put in. and have plenty of rock, I have a decent cleaner crew, but the green hair is still present. I hate having to stick my hand in there daily to remove what I see, anyone have any ideas?

JM
 
i had it pop up once about a year ago and i did the 3 days, no lights trick and it worked great. give it a try. i had quite a few corals in the tank and saw 0 negative affects of doing this, except all green hair died off and never came back

you also need to make sure your water parameters are in check, good skimming and plenty of flow can help prevcent algae break outs of all sorts...
 
What's in your cleanup crew? Mexican Turbo Snails are great at eating GHA. If your snails are on different rocks then the ones with GHA, pick them off and place them right on top of it. You can also get a sea hare, which only eat GHA basically, so you'll have to get rid of it after it's all gone. That being said, you also want to make sure your parameters are in check like WeMa said.
 
Photo would help.... you need to first make sure its GHA and not Bryopsis. GHA can be eradicated.. but it takes time and effort. Bryopsis can be too but its more challenging.
 
Looks like GHA to me... what I would do is reduce your lighting period by half for a few days and see if that helps. Cut back on feeding too and do some water changes, say 10-15% each every 3 or 4 days. Its not out of control at the moment...

Do you use RO/DI water already?? If not, youll want to do that too.
 
since I have had this 3 weeks, I have done weekly water changes and I do top off with RO. When I 1st got it it was a lot worst.
JM
 
@bandito974 wrote:
since I have had this 3 weeks said:
ahh well that puts a different light on things...3 weeks things like this is normal. If you see strands or spots of it, just scoop them out for now or pull them off rocks etc. You'll get brown diatoms, HA etc for a few more weeks or months depending.....

If it gets out of control, meaning mats and globs all over, then consider doing what I mentioned above. For now just let things run their course and it will probably clear up on its own.
Click to expand...
 
the guy I got it off of got it from som eone here on this site, he had it set up for 2 months, had the rock in it and water, never did add fish. When I got it the salanity was real high and it was covered in green hair, I cleaned it up and it looked alot better, but now I notice it getting bad again.
JM
 
@bandito974 wrote:
the guy I got it off of got it from som eone here on this site said:
It will come back even if you scrub sometimes... you have wait until it runs out of what it feeds on, which is nutrients or deprive it of more.... you are doing that with the RO/DI water and can improve it by reducing feeding to absolute min. It will grow, you pull it out.. scrub the rocks or whatever you need to and eventually it will go away.

You can also go a few days without lights totally and see if that helps. Since you have no coral, it won't hurt anything.
Click to expand...
 
What I did on my 8 gal, as the rock I bought came from a tank that had not been cared for, the GHA was really thick. I got some feather calerpa, it started taking the nutrients that the GHA lives on, it will take over also if you don't watch out, but it is allot easier to pull off and out of the tank than GHA is. I then got an emerald crab and he took care of the rest. I even put him in another tank after the GHA was gone and have not had another outbreak in 3 months, so figure it is all gone. Now the rock in the other tank is almost completely irradicated of it too. Try the lights out, get a critter that will eat the stuff and pull off any you are able to. You might try the callerpa too, up to you...like the way you had the rocks set up in your first pic. Hope you all the best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top