Have you beat hair algae?????

I am still in an ongoing battle with the good ole hair algae. I would like to hear from someone who ACTUALLY beat the stuff and the steps they took to cure it. Also how long did it last. I am keeping it down by firing boiling water at it through a syringe. I dont want repeat suggestions about phosphate, overfeeding, lights etc... I have read until I am blue in the face , and have done all of the common things. It still is coming with a vengance. I will make this a poll, just to see whats going on out there----TIA

 

I was gonna spout off some common fixes but I wont bother you with that. I think the thing that turned my algae fight was adding two mandrake trees. They barely take up any space and are cheap from reefcleaners.org as soon as they started to root there was no nutrients left for any algae to live.

 

been there mate, i had it 1 to 2 inchs long covering all of my rock, i was pulling it off and filling a 5 litre bucket with it once a week
in the end after months of fiddling with this and that i just bit the bullet and done 2 MASSIVE water changes within a few days of each other (im talkng 60%), it upset the tank a little but the algae died off over the next week or 2 and the tank came back
i no what ur going through, i went through it for a good couple of months with the ****

 

I appreciate the feedback...I do 20% every 2 weeks, and change out the filter sump bags twice a week. I have 330lbs of rock. Taking it all out is not an option. What does it look like when it starts to die???

 

i was doing that too, i didnt really get it though until i changed lots of water
it died off over a few weeks, it was just thining out and going brown, it goes brown and u can tell (not just the ends of it that u can pull away and reveal more green stuff) and when it start to die u can actually start to pull it off your rock clean, not just the last inch of it
the amounts of it i had i was worried about it turning my water during it dying so everyday id just suck some water out of the tank with a hose and run the hose over all the algea to suck off the dead or dying bits

 

If you have the room, a Rabbitfish or Foxface. I have it my overflows, but nowhere my Foxface can reach. Also heard some people have goodluck using Amquel plus when doing water changes.

 

working on it
still have it sort of controlled
(2 small areas)

 

I'm fighting like hell and losing the battle. I've tried all the usual things people suggest. I've recently added some halimeda to my display tank and it appear not to doing well. I think the hair algae is out competing the halimeda.

 

I found a good sized sea hare that I watched eat HA at the LFS. I took him home and it looked like a lawn mower going through the HA in my 75g. Every surface of rock was covered with the stuff. I did scrape a lot off and suctioned out what I could from the water. I know the sea hare made a huge difference

 

well, my heater broke and raised the temp of my tank considerably. once i realized it and cooled the tank, the hair algae broke up. I dont know if it was the high heat, or maybe the cold after i took the heater out and only had one too small to replace it with for a day or so. accidental fix but i haven't seen it since.