Green hair algae

I have some comign in on my sand bed growing pretty long.

Would 1 pepp' Shrimp clean this right up?

 

Do you have any hermit crabs in your tank, they usually will help with that, not sure with peppermint shrimp though, I don't have any currently.

Cat4wisson

 

no but i have margaritas and 1 turbo. and seems that they arent eating this haha.

 

Your thought process is only getting you half way there, probably even less. You need to think more along the lines of the cause not the *temporary* solution.

Hair algae on sand is an easy one – reach in there and pull it out. But what caused it in the first place is where your mind needs to go next. The true cure is the same as the preventative measures….starve it ! You are looking at lights, nitrates and phosphates. Nitrates, as I am sure you are aware,….ammonia, nitrite, nitrate.

Test your tank for phosphates and nitrates I am betting your phosphates are above the .05 range. Keep in mind, you might test good if the hair is consuming the nutrients at the same pace they are being produced. Yank the hair and then test again in a couple of days and I suspect you will see an increase.

What are you using for water? RO/DI? Can you test it?

 

True. How old is the tank? How long are your lights on and how old are the bulbs. These also are factors.

No. I keep hermits for this stuff. I agree, if it is in the sand, use your hand to remove it. Add a couple hermits to keep it under control.

And then remove the source.

 

Month old system. T5 lighting.(new) Will pull from sandbed

 

Won't help with Hair Algae but would help if you had glass anemones.

 

Is it possible to truly starve GHA? I've been trying to get rid of a outbreak the has started out as being a little patch on one rock about a month and a half ago to growing on everything in the tank including the poor snails. What I've done to combat my problem is; upped my wc and canister cleaning from once a month to bi-weekly, added phosphate and nitrate removing media, cut down my lighting period from 9 hours to 6 hours, added two mexican turbos and 20 blue legged hermits. I've always used RO water and of course my nitrates and phosphates test undetected.

I'm not putting a dent in this stuff. I can't really yank out the rocks to scrub them because of the ones that are heavily covered has a coral epoxied to it. I do yank what I can though. From my observations I'm convinced that hermits don't actually eat this stuff. They seem to pick through doing what appears to looking for detritus, but I haven't seen or noticed them actually eating GHA. Anyways, I'm at a lost. I will trying upping wc to weekly to see what happens.

 

I've been trying to kick GHA for 6months easly, change light bulbs phosban, carbon, water changes weekly somestimes 2 smaller ones in a week. some of it is getting easier to remove. but seems like a never ending battle. i've pulled half the rock to scrub it. Robman has found a way but fish and coral need to be clear fromt he patch treating. he used boiling ro water and squirted on gha. hopefully going to try this weekend.

 

I actually just posted this in another thread - but something I did that took care of the problem very quickly was a Sea Hare. They are crazy hair algae eaters and had my rock clean within a week. Once the Algae is gone you have to return them or give them to a friend with GHA, but they do a great job of mowing it down. ;-)