Hair Algae Galore
- Thread starter haninja
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Stop pm ing me Ralph I'm not going to whisper sweet nothing in your pm ear.:lol2:
I do a little alot with my personal tank and have never had an issue. The tank at work has me along with 2 others chasing numbers constantly and as you stated nothing has a chance to catch up and work before another method of mowing or killing is introduced. That tank fills and kills hair algae every month.
I personally believe that a 2 month seperation of livestock from the tank and just let the tank and rock go lights out with heavy water changes and attention
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Well said sir!!:thumbs:
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I think lots of what you said are possibilities or probabilities . I think the key to algae control is never letting it establish by monitoring and controlling the nutrient levels before the algae. Not sure about Hanin. But I think most do not see the problem rising until the nutrient levels are high enough to cause a problem and by that time it is binding on the rock and substrate. So now you have this reserve and you are introducing more with food and such.
I can’t take the coral out as they cover most of my rocks. I might be able to take a few but not the majority. I need to find a solution that would work as is or just take it down and start again… there is one more observation to make, I lost some flash on a few corrals and the HA took over immediately which make it even a bigger problem.
David, I actually heard the theory about the HA consuming the phosphate thus making the test look false negative. So, huge amounts of GFO would not compete with the HA and absorb the phosphates?
David, I actually heard the theory about the HA consuming the phosphate thus making the test look false negative. So, huge amounts of GFO would not compete with the HA and absorb the phosphates?
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I think lots of what you said are possibilities or probabilities . I think the key to algae control is never letting it establish by monitoring and controlling the nutrient levels before the algae. Not sure about Hanin. But I think most do not see the problem rising until the nutrient levels are high enough to cause a problem and by that time it is binding on the rock and substrate. So now you have this reserve and you are introducing more with food and such. At that point you have to remove more than you are introducing and as Ralph has said once or two gazillion times keep a media such as Gfo to catch the slow released phosphates.
Edit:
It will compete but what would give it the winning edge is my point. The algae is there in the water column and has first dibs at the nutrients so it has the advantage. It is the "GFO"of the display tank but cannot be removed like the actual gfo.
Correct on the algae consuming the negatives and giving you a false reading. How can you go big and go simple with your system to get it in control? Additives with a blackout day or two and then 80% water changes? Heavy skimming and heavy carbon replacing it every 2 weeks with the water changes? I have a 100 rubbermaid. If anyone is coming through this weekend tell them to get it for ya. I'll meet them on 75
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The algae may not need very much to survive. I'm not sure if anyone knows the level needed. I would remove all fish so as not to introduce more phosphates and start large water changes along with large amounts of GFO. I would manually remove all of the algae that I could so it does not get the nutrients first. The bryopsis is David Grimes Bag . He is the man on that one I've never had major issues with that stuff
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I had some rock from the old Cap bay store and I put a small halide and some calurpea algae in the rubbermaid it was stored in and just harvested it once a week until it would not grow any more. I never had issues with algae from it.
I know Hanin knows what he is doing, and after all he has tried regarding eliminating hair algae, I can't help but think it is in his rock like has been suggested. The answer for bryopsis is Tech M dosing, IME. I have never had more than small patches of HA since I've been into reefing, nothing that can't be controlled with Mexican Turbo snails.
I hate to suggest pulling your corals and fish out and starting from scratch with new rock, but if you feel you have done about all you can (sounds like you have), that may be the best thing to do.
I hate to suggest pulling your corals and fish out and starting from scratch with new rock, but if you feel you have done about all you can (sounds like you have), that may be the best thing to do.
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I'm not sure the corals need to come out but maybe the fish that he has to feed. From a nutrient reduction standpoint
I could have missed someone asking this but do you have a inline TDS meter on your RODI? I go thru filter cartridges and DI because the city water is so bad!
+1 with everything mentioned but keep in mind, if even a small piece of Bryopsis is alive and makes it way back into a newly rebuilt system, it'll eventually start the cycle all over again. HA is not as extreme IMO as it can be controlled at a different level with different methods.
I'm all for the Tech M method as it has been proven. It may and probably will bleach out some corals but they will color back eventually.
Just my 2 pennies worth which ain't much these days.
