Green hair algae

Hey reefers,

Haven't been on for awhile change ISP's what a hassle never doing that again, anyway my question is, I have been cycling for about 4 weeks now yes i finally got water in there after about 6 mouths of building, now the green hair algae has arrived was just wondering how long does it hang around for given i have good water quailty.

Rusty

 

hey Rusty
it varies from tank to tank, bio load to bio load IME

now is the time to start adding your snails, crabs etc CUC
and IMO time start running the Phosphate removing resins
as both these steps will decrease the amount and duration of the GHA stage

Steve

 

My blue hippo tang eats mine. I hope it's good for him. He seems to love it

 

Are you sure you have hair algae? After only 4 weeks you should/could be in the diatom phase. If it truly is hair, what in the world do you have in there and how much are you feeding? I take it the lights are new?

 

i just got over a red slime outbreak I treated with red slime remover (works awesome). shortly thereafter it was followed by hair algae all over my sand. not sure why, but 95% of my clean up crew sticks to the rock work avoiding the sand and glass, so i'm left with using some 5/8" tubing to siphon out this junk up off my sand. there is a few additives out there that are supposed to kill all the hair algae, but I decided to go a with more natural kinda way.

~Will.

 

I think its always better to go a natural route to deal with an algae outbreak. if you use a chemica to remove it then the nutrients it was consuming will still be there. your algae could be consuming nitrates and when you kill it off they will only build up in your system. algae is really a symptom of a greater problem usually over feeding. I look at algae as a sign of something I need to fix and im glad its there because it eats up the nutrients that need to be fixed while ill figure out and fix the problem. when the algae dies off I know I was successful at finding and fixing the issue. I have been fighting a battle with cyano for a month now its ugly but its almost gone now and I know thas because of the things I modified in my system.

 

I would take cyano over hair algae any day. GHA seems to be a lot tougher to get rid of or a least I personally I haven't been able to rid my tank of it yet. Cyano was easy, I did it without chems, but the same methods don't appear to be working on gha. Good luck with your battle.

 

Make sure your water source is decent, don't overfeed, keep nitrates low.