GHA starting

Tank is about 2 months new now and all of the diatoms have faded away from the tank and I am getting some awesome coralline growth but now I can see that GHA is starting to grow on all my rocks. Any tips for that? Just wait it out like the diatoms? I have 3 large turbo snails in the tank.

 

I'd mosey over to reefcleaners.org and get set up with a custom CuC. I had about 3 small GHA spots starting to bloom a few weeks back. Went ahead and put a strong crew in to nip it before it got started and it worked perfectly.

 

Try to manually keep it as short as possible.The turbos should eat it but only if it is short. You may want to consider those biopellets. Also it is my belief that most dry rock will leach out Phosphates especially in the beginning. The first few months are critical to not let a bad problem get worse.8)

 

You could also DIY an Algea Scrubber (ATS) the GHA you grow on it will out-compete the GHA in your tank. In fact you, could use a small amout of it to seed the ATS.

 

Just don't let it get out of control! I bought a tank from CL that had a hair algae problem and have been fighting it since.

You can get it under control manually by scrubbing the rocks out of the tank or by pulling by hand and dipping your hand in RO/DI water before reaching back in for more. Just don't let go of the fibers you pull of the rock or they will reattach somewhere else and it will spread the problem.

 

Right now the GHA is very short. In fact it looks like the snails got a lot of it last night. I had a rock that was covered in really long GHA and they cleaned that off completely although it took them about a month. What is an ATS and how to you make one?

 

All I do with my GHA is take a toothbrush during my weekly water changes, cut off all powerheads, then scrub away. It comes off really nicely. Also I would invest in one or two emerald crabs, they munch this stuff down -- along with astrea snails. Cerith snails did a great job at taking out my Diatoms and green calcareous algae that grows on the glass. A Fighting Conch does wonders to my sandbed and keeps it nice and clean

 

Can you keep a fighting conch in a 40b?

 

You can keep one in your tank although you might have to eventually supplement its diet as they are voratious eaters.

 

I have a 29g and my fighting conch seems to thrive. I do have a pretty steady abundence of either diatoms or whatever that light brown, dark green, thin layer of grassy hair algae growing, (im assuming diatoms?) on the sand bed and he cleans it up very well