Hair algae

Im havin a bit of an outbreak of gha. I do weekly water changes, feed 2-3 times per week, run a fuge with chaeto, numerous snails, hermits, lawmnower blenny. I use rodi water. This is the first time i have had any of this stuf at all. It started after my tank was electricuted by one of my powerheads. I dont know if that is related or not. So i have been manually picking it out. I alos just ordered a reactor to run gfo in. What else should i do, i dont want to use any chemicles. And will the gfo harm my corals and inverts.

 

The GFO, when used properly will not harm any corals or inverts, it will only HELP them as it will go to improve water quality!!!

 

It sounds like you're doing everything right. And as M-Ocean Man said, GFO will not harm inverts or corals. Just give it some time and keep an eye on your nitrate/phosphate levels.

Ivan

 

one good tip when manually removing GHA (which you do need to do in addition to running GFO)

Have a bowl of water next to you
reach in, pull a clump out, rinse it off your fingers in the water
this stops you re introducing small fragments of GHA back into your tank whilst you are removing it

also allow it to grow over 1inch long as then you can get a decent clump each time

if girls all had crew cuts - they would never be able to pull hair - is the theory I have behind that technique - the longer it is, the easier it is to grip and remove

Steve

 

Also how old are your bulbs? If theyr old that will contribute to it

 

I would reevaluate your flow, perhaps you don't have enough or you have dead spots. Alsobulb life is a major concern.

 

Hair Algae: will grow when nutrients are in your system. These nutrients can build up. Have you tested for nitrates and phosphates? The fact that you HAVE h.a. means you have nutrients available for the growth. And to make matters worse, the more you have, the more you will have. So treatment must exist on a couple of levels. The GFO will certainly help. But testing will give you an idea of your progress. I have a 90 dt with 20 refugium. My nitrates would climb between wc's. I was getting into the 40-50 ppm level and this is bad for ha. I began dosing vodka to get my nutrients down. Starting with 6 drops per day, I gradually increased my dosage until after a month I got to 70 drops per day, (now measuring 20 ml) until I saw my nitrates coming down. (now 10ppm) The vodka helps the natural bacteria to process the nutrients so they will be skimmed out. I have a healthy chaeto, and caulerpa stand in my fuge and with the knowledge my nutrients are low I control my ha. I have noticed some live rock is especially susceptible, and seems to regrow over and over. A fellow club member removed his stubborn rock and baked in the oven 300 for an hour and this needless to say killed everything. Then re-cured and reused this rock. Caution: wives hate this :-/
Julian Sprung has an interesting article I will try to return and paste here. Good luck and patience.

 

"If you think of your aquarium as being like a stereo system (pay attention now, I am not kidding), nutrients can be equated with the power (on/off) button, lighting with the volume dial. and algae growth with loudness of sound. When the power is "on" if you increase the volume dial, the sound will become louder. Likewise, in the presence of nutrients, the more light (intensity) you provide, the more algae will grow. Conversely, if the power button is "off", the volume dial may be turned "all the way" and no sound will be emitted by the speakers. It follows then that with no nutrients present, lighting can be increased without proportional increase in algae growth. The algae will not grow at all if the limit, "no nutrients" is reached. It is nice to analyze things like this in the theoretical sense because sometimes their nature is more apparent when carried to extremes. Of course, in a closed system it is impossible to achieve "no nutrients", and a lighting increase will bring about a proportional in crease in algae growth. However, limiting available nutrients does reduce the magnitude of the proportional increase. Therefore, reducing all potential nutrient sources, (i.e. make-up water, detritus, etc) will have noticeable affects on algal growth."

"Interestingly, another factor affects the potential algal growth in an aquarium, ant hat is the presence of algae! Carried to extremes again, of course in a sterile aquarium even with nutrients, will not grow algae. While this may seem obvious, there is more to the presence of algae effect and it affect on algal growth. Not only do you need algae to grow more algae, but also the more algae you have, the more algae will grow. This "snowball" effect is what makes hair algae problems so devastating. There are 3 principle causes for this effect. First is that more algal mass will release more spores and gametes which, given enough nutrients, will continue to grow. Second is that algal mass itself is nutrient rich or put another way, algal mass is a potential source of nutrients. Third is the sneaky ability of algae, by virtue of their design, to trap detritus, which is another potential nutrients source. Algae accomplish this by slowing the velocity of water flowing over them, a trick which makes detritus fall out on them. Dense algae and ones with a surrounding growth of fuzzy filaments trap detritus like mechanical filters."

"In an aquarium full of algae, for instance, a test for ammonia will read "zero", and a test for orthophosphate will probably also read zero. Bacterial decomposition of the plant tissue liberates usable nitrogen and phosphorus for additional plant growth, and nutrients added by the aquarist are rapidly incorporated into the plants. Thus an aquarium full of algae, and an aquarium with no algae can have very similar nutrient levels in the water. If we could "boil these tanks down," however, we could see the difference. The nutrients are not so much stored in the water as they are stored as a potential nutrient source, in the rock, detritus, and the living plants. The quality of the nutrients stored in the algae tissue, varies with the availability of these nutrients. This is at least a part of the reason why the suggested "R.O. treatment" takes a long time to have an effect for some aquaria, when for others it is immediate."

"So now we see how that nutrient levels in an aquarium are not merely a water quality, but actually a whole system quality. With this idea in mind it should be clearer, why I recommend being conservative with system inputs (food, make-up water) and liberal with system outputs (water changes, detritus removal, prefilter cleaning, and algal turf filtration)."

 

I have figured out that this is Byropsis algae, lucky me. I think it was introduced on some rock i added recently. From what i have read the only way to stop this is to raise my mg slowly up to just under 2000. Many have had luck with kent m tech. I will rey it and see what happens. As for flow and bulb age i have lots of flow and my bulbs are about 8 months old. So i think i am ok there.

 

I have always read (and did) Mag at 1500 ppm. for the upper limit, I would start there. 8 month old bulbs are getting there. If T5, depending on the quality of the bulb, they may need replacing, one set at a time separated by a couple of weeks.