Help my brother inlaw

[bct15]

My brother in law lives about 4 hours away from me, and has had his 45 gal tank running for a little over a year. He hasn't added to much to it because he has been battling a hair algae infestation for almost the entire time it's been set up. He originally set the tank up with some "dead" live rock he got from a friend that used to have a tank, and about 30 lb of live rock.

The hair algae first grew out of the dead rock, but over a couple months it spread everywhere. Now it is out of control. He has removed all but two pieces of that "dead" rock and replaced with live rock. He only has one damsel and feeds it a pinch of flakes every other day (and a few crabs and snails). He gets his ro water from his lfs, which the owner is a friend of my family. He has reduce his lighting to only two t5 bulbs for four hours, for about three months now. The problem still persists.

The lfs store tests the water and it appears fine, but I know that the hair algae can cause false negatives by soaking up all the nutrients before it can be detected. My assumption is phosphates are leaching of the last two pieces of "dead" rock. I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas or suggestions.

 

[Speg]

Got a cleanup crew in the tank?

Sounds like the right things are being done...I'd start with an evaluation of the clean up crew and a possible addition or two or three. I would also manually remove all hair algae possible. If there are no corals in the tank, leave the lights completely off for a few days at a time.

 

[MoneyPit]

I used Mexican Turbo Snails, but I know some people that have used a Lettuce Nudibranch.

 

[bct15]

He has a about thirty scarlet and blue leg hermits mixed, an emerald mythrax crab, and about thirty snails...we added two lettuce nudibranchs but his damsel killed them within two days. As soon as he gets the problem under control he is trading in the damsel.

He has about six zoa frags and mini colonies and one Gatorade birdsnest that are doing good in there, and I live to far away to toss them in my tank for a week or two.

He's also tried doing two large water changes of 50% and that didn't help either.

 

[Speg]

What size is the tank?

Rock can leech out phosphates....and you could attempt to use phosban and see if that begins to help the problem.

Also, to cover all bases, you may want to test the phosphates in your RO water and then test newly mixed saltwater (not yet added to the tank).

This way you'll know if phosphates may be in the RO or the salt mix.

 

[Rayzback]

If there is very little left in the tank, he may decide to cook the two remaining dead pieces. You can do a search on 'cooking live rock'.

 

[VegasRick]

I would start by stopping water changes until the problem is gone. By stopping water changes you are making sure you aren't adding fuel to the fire. I know he's getting it from a lfs but in my experience most fish stores don't change their DI resins as often as they should.
Start using kw as top off making sure it is fully saturated.
Make sure he runs gfo and change it every other week. GFO changed often should pull the remaining phosphates out of the rock
Have him check alk, low alk tends to compound the problem.

 

[MoneyPit]

He has a about thirty scarlet and blue leg hermits mixed, an emerald mythrax crab, and about thirty snails...we added two lettuce nudibranchs but his damsel killed them within two days. As soon as he gets the problem under control he is trading in the damsel.

He has about six zoa frags and mini colonies and one Gatorade birdsnest that are doing good in there, and I live to far away to toss them in my tank for a week or two.

He's also tried doing two large water changes of 50% and that didn't help either.

So the Lettuce Nudi's didn't even get a chance to help. hmm.... I would get rid ot the damsel and try them again. I watched them work at my LFS. Every week I went back there was less and less hair algae until it was gone. They did/do use phosban to help too.

 

[FishLipz]

I had a horrible hair algae problem when I first started in the hobby. I used top crown snails and they did an AWESOME job. They look like this

 

[Junkie]

If the rock was dry, then put directly into the tank without a good soaking, i'm pretty sure that is your main culprit. Think of it this way "dead rock" is literally COVERED in dead algea, that stays on the rock until it is put back into water. Then it disolves again back into the water, and being that there is nothing in the tank biologicly to export it your going to get algea problems. What really sucks is that it's going to take a long time for it to nuetralize. I would get all fish and corals out and go lights out for a while, but start a heavy regimine of water changes. Also you are 100% correct that when you have a tank full of hair algea you will get false readings. Good luck hair algea sucks but at least it's not bryopsis or cyno.

 

[bct15]

Thanks for the info, I'll give him a call tonight and relay the info(I'm also gonna suggest he joins r2r)...I'm wanting to bring him down a couple frags from my tank for Christmas, hopefully the hair algae will be subsiding by then.

Thanks,
Brandon

 

[eswebster]

Fix the nutrient problem until everything reads zeros, then dose some algae fix marine and it will clear it up. Not a huge proponet of chemicals but this stuff works great for this type of problem. Especially since you probably have nutrients leaching out of the rockwork.

 

[hlem]

baby foxface did it for me, the tank is small enough to get it out once the algae is gone

 

[beaslbob]

I would kill the lights and add a lit refugium with macro algaes.

 

[emerald525]

I agree the problem most likely is the rock. I had the same problem in my fowlr tank. I was doing frequent water changes, cut down the light cycle, put in a phosban reactor and still had problems with hair algae but only the rock that I had bought that had been stored for a while. I finally removed it and "cooked it". I also got a seahare that worked great and my plan was to pass him along to another tank once the hair algae was gone so he wouldn't starve but unfortunately he decided to clean the Koralia and got shredded.

 

[Junkie]

baby foxface did it for me, the tank is small enough to get it out once the algae is gone

+1 that's the route I took when I had a problem, juvinile foxface have a much higher metabalism and eat anything (including bryopsis) but monitor it with lps. Fix the source of the problem first though or it's pointless to toss in something to eat it. Another thought to consume it is a couple of urchins, those things pulverize algea!

 

[bct15]

After reading the posts this what I will suggest to him as the next plan of attack:

Instead of bringing some frags down for christmas I'll bring a spare tank to move his corals into temporarily. Leave the majority of his clean up crew in the main tank to help eliminate the nuisance algae.

Remove the dead rock from the tank and throw it away (say good riddance to it)

Do a 50% water change, saving the discarded water.

Manually clean each piece of live rock with the discarded tank water.

Run the tank with zero light for as long as it takes to remove the algae.

If the original water change seems to help, then do a 10 to 20% water change every other day. If the water change didn't help, do no more water changes and let the hair algae starve itself.

I'll suggest he removes the dead rock and cleans the live rock as soon as possible, before I get down there. I think several will agree that the main source of the problem appears to be the dead rock. Hopefully this will do the trick because I really want to see his tank flourish.

 

[phi delt reefer]

with that much algae i would cut my loses. sell the frags and snails and what not back to the store or ask a local reefer to hold on them. Tear down the tank and start with some solid base rock. Looks like the stuff he has is just packed with phosphates and they will continue to slowly leech into the tank for some time. its only a 45 gallon so its not a big job and he wont be spending money on trying to control a problem for months (if not year).

He's lucky because it sounds like he doesn't have a lot invested into the livestock as of yet so his financial loss will be next to nothing.

 

[extremehobbyist]

use a gfo reactor