GHA growing back

Recently I took out all my rocks and cleaned them and they looked great for a couple of months. But now I see sprouts coming up in the sand. How can i stop it before it becomes an epidemic?

 

you can buy a yellow tang,or a ton of blue leg hermits, they will take care of that..but it wont solve the poroblem..do some water changes.

 

yeah water changes, whatever you do now just step it up a bit. I do mine every two weeks...

 

Not agreeing with above posts. Water changes are a band-aid. As is taking your rock out to clean it. You need to identify the source of the problem and correct that. Then the GHA will magically go away and clog your filtration

Common causes

• Dirty water source. Using RO/DI? Is the TDS 0?
• Over feeding. I have damsel derivatives only and I feed 2x week, no more.
• Over stocking.
• Insufficient clean up crew. I have around 200 snails in my 55 gallon.
• Old bulbs. T5's, IME, only last 8 months before needing replaced
• Insufficient skimming
• Insufficient Live Rock to support bacteria colonies
• Any combination of above

Doing water changes is like mopping up a leaking tank before fixing/stopping the leak. It's a lost cause until the leak is fixed. Same thing here.

Good luck. Take it slow.

 

Yeah what he said

 

Crown, Electric Blue and Halloween Hermits, Black Diadema Sea Urchins, elevated magnesium levels will help.
Understanding why this is happening is essentially your best bet as mentioned above. Yes, water changes help to reduce nutrient levels, however, if not corrected, these levels will become detrimental and well suited for nuisance hair algae growth in due time, once again.