Huge Hair Algae Issue, Struggling to keep it away?

[Dburr1014]

100% do the rip-clean.

You should have been doing manual removal every other day. But that neither here or there now.

Do a big manual removal, h2o2 spray.
I would be cautious about flux.

Sand bed syphone as much as possible. Use that water to swish rocks around after h2o2.

 

[David100]

100% do the rip-clean.

You should have been doing manual removal every other day. But that neither here or there now.

Do a big manual removal, h2o2 spray.
I would be cautious about flux.

Sand bed syphone as much as possible. Use that water to swish rocks around after h2o2.

Would it be a problem to get H202 in the tank as I'm pretty sure I have seen Humble fish mention dosing H202 for some kind of parasite removal? so Cleaning the rock with them and putting them back in may not cause too much as an issue? But yeah swishing in the bucket sounds good!

How To - Peroxide (H2O2) dosing for parasites in reef tank

***Current dosing recommendation for active outbreaks, using 3% hydrogen peroxide*** (a TLDR for people who just need to know how to get started) Week 1: 1mL/8g, 3x per day Week 2: 1mL/5g, 3x per day Week 3: 1mL/5g, 3x per day, plus overnight dosing. Continue the week 3 dosing regimen for a...

humble.fish

 

[David100]

Manually pull / remove as much GHA possible, the shorter hair algae's easier for the CUC

Add:
Sea hare
2 Halloween hermit
4 small emerald crabs
40 blue legs
10 Red legs
20 snails of you choice
2 mexican turbos
small Convict tang
Small mimic tang

Anything less than the above, you're just playing games

All the above can go back to the LFS as needed for credit, this is just the army to help remove the algae and keep it under control.

I would only suggest a fraction of the above for long term.

I'm also a firm believer in UV for long term algae / bacteria control

Good luck

I agree I need more CUC but this is like £200-300 + of CUC

£33.81 Sea hare
£11 for 2 - 2 Halloween hermit
£40 for 4 - 4 small emerald crabs
£112 40 blue legs
£49.99 10 Red legs
£23 20 snails of you choice
£3 2 mexican turbos
£30 small Convict tang
£55 Small mimic tang

£357.8

(Prices from cellarmarinestore.co.uk)

Assuming I can get store credit for these that's an awful lot to expense out when a rip clean seems to remove all algae for probably 4 hours of work and a £2 bottle of H202?

I do definitely agree I need more CUC but if I add all of this the die-off could be worse than the usefulness. The 60+ crabs will likely kill 20 off snails and cause a nutrient spike. aswell as all the infighting. Im not sure this is a good idea. I think a manual removal of as much as possible and possibly another 10 snails or so and a Conch with a lawnmower blenny might do something but I do admit I'm getting to my wits end so an army of CUC does sound appealing against this stuff.

 

[brandon429]

*if you decide not to do the surgical cleaning / not a prob really it's a bigger job for you than most. still doesn't change the outcome though it'll be a solid reef rehab for sure if you're ready.

further musings to consider:

having a blanketing mass in place prevents live rock expression. The sum total animals found in live rock, like what you have, express waste pellets by the hour and your actual live rock when under flow/shear is flecking off little pieces of matter, these are bacterial rafts. all that is pent up now

once you unstick that rock, the flow begins and it's backed up. I'm not being snarky above when pressing back against the masses training to always keep waste in place as long as it wants to, I'm saying we need to get it turned around fast so expression can begin asap vs be withheld any longer, it's the right way to fix the tank if you're ready. If we set anyone's live rock in clean water in a white paint bucket and turn on some flow, in 24 hours in 100% of buckets a light dusting of material/ejecta is littering the bucket easily seen-this is the natural expression you want flowing out from rocks in order to unplug and reverse the eutrophication process.

The nitrification in your tank is reduced and algae fragmentation continues if there's manual work inside the tank, to partially work the algae spreads it


surgery is full blown removal. unblanketing the rock has the double benefit of exposing your filter bacteria to wastewater, increases the surface area your wastewater sees. right now it sees algal slicks, their plant exudates circulate in the system.

thats why we do 100% water changes in rip cleans. its hard work, but there's no other method that can touch it for tank repair.


inverts like clean up crews etc would go into the holding totes with fish. preferably some heated water and some circulation, and one of the very clean rocks set in the system as a mini carry so ammonia doesn't build up. we'd clean off one rock chunk very carefully ahead of time, to make it the carry system for your fish + inverts in holding a few hours in the disassembled reef.

you would be emptying the whole tank to clean it's walls totally clean, no smudges/like a new tank

take the sand out as the last step, after water is drained. don't scratch the sides, rinse out the tilted over tank so the walls are clean and no mud is stuck to them, this is a precision rebuild. study these 7 examples/last example set to see but I wanted the pattern of work to stand out here for choicing:

 

[brandon429]

the temptation will be to keep your tank plugged up in continuance from Dec

the masses don't recognize tank surgery as the ultimate fix

the sandbed will be required to be kept full of waste using the common method which directly gets you cyano by summertime if the algae is killed in the tank, or eaten in the tank and pelleted out as waste.

send me a private message if you decide to rip clean, we'll work the entire job by chat to completion then update with after pics. threads get too much interference and cause diversion from the very unique results on file. send a message if you want the custom surgical clean we can produce one good enough to go in the thread below



seven more strong tank fixes

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

 

[David100]

the temptation will be to keep your tank plugged up in continuance from Dec

the masses don't recognize tank surgery as the ultimate fix

the sandbed will be required to be kept full of waste using the common method which directly gets you cyano by summertime if the algae is killed in the tank, or eaten in the tank and pelleted out as waste.

send me a private message if you decide to rip clean, we'll work the entire job by chat to completion then update with after pics. threads get too much interference and cause diversion from the very unique results on file. send a message if you want the custom surgical clean I won't see your response in the thread



seven very specific tank fixes and recent jobs/all are rip cleans

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

I am up for doing a rip clean I just need to understand the steps I need to do, if you get a chance could you let me know what steps in my previous comment were incorrect and ill get to that probably next weekend or in the week next week. I need to Order a RODI Filter and salt to get this going and ensure my LFS TDS doesn't cause me more issues.

 

[Leadfooted]

I agree I need more CUC but this is like £200-300 + of CUC

£33.81 Sea hare
£11 for 2 - 2 Halloween hermit
£40 for 4 - 4 small emerald crabs
£112 40 blue legs
£49.99 10 Red legs
£23 20 snails of you choice
£3 2 mexican turbos
£30 small Convict tang
£55 Small mimic tang

£357.8

(Prices from cellarmarinestore.co.uk)

Assuming I can get store credit for these that's an awful lot to expense out when a rip clean seems to remove all algae for probably 4 hours of work and a £2 bottle of H202?

I do definitely agree I need more CUC but if I add all of this the die-off could be worse than the usefulness. The 60+ crabs will likely kill 20 off snails and cause a nutrient spike. aswell as all the infighting. Im not sure this is a good idea. I think a manual removal of as much as possible and possibly another 10 snails or so and a Conch with a lawnmower blenny might do something but I do admit I'm getting to my wits end so an army of CUC does sound appealing against this stuff.

Rip clean works/helps. I been down a few bumpy roads, learned how key the fish and CUC and of course nutrient control are for long terms. I would also up your PODs and rotifers. Good luck , natural method I mentioned above worked for me in the long term, well beyond Peroxide and Flux methods. Ya know what they say, let me see your tank pics.... well....

 

[brandon429]

ok gotcha.

steps to ensure (editing in at work it'll take a sec but starting now)

tap water must be the initial rinse and it could take hours, average is 2-3 hours rinsing in small bucket sections out in the hose. verify some of the rinsed portions for clarity in the clear glass cup test to ensure tap water flushing has absolutely cleared out the sand. final rinse in RO or saltwater is fine, that's the sand you lay back your cleaned off rocks and all new water on to cause the skip cycle. we never rinsed your rocks in anything other than saltwater to preserve their bacteria

 

[brandon429]

@Leadfooted that's one of the nicest displays I've seen, my gosh

 

[brandon429]

David100 just edited in post #45 that shows a few jobs to get the pattern

We match only temp and salinity then fish get moved right into the new reef 100% new water

This doesn't burn animals there are no spikes no testing, humus example #1 was fish placed right back in the tank

In the earlier response I added in using a clear glass of water test to ensure portions of your rinsed sand are truly clear that way there's no guess

The sand is removed as the water is drained, then you'd tilt over the tank and wash it all out this clear then reassemble it

You want it that clean so that residue from sand as mud isn't stuck to glass, resulting in a clouded refill

Any easy to access rocks without a lot of corals you could do the day before the big job, to have a little time lead on it

Having one rock in the holding bin with the fish and inverts, along with water motion and a cover is solid holding for the animals during the clean

Matching only temp and salinity is needed between new assembly tank and the holding tank, then it all moves over.

This works without a spike if you rinse and verify perfectly

The live rock bacteria aren't killed by scraping and by direct application on the spots you scraped, don't pour peroxide all over the rocks or soak them just use it as cleanup burn after detailed rasping

The tip of the knife is precision and won't be scraping off all the rock, use the tip like a dentist is exacting when removing plaque

The method works because all irritants and clouding waste are gone all at once, leaving open-pored rocks actually combating free ammonia quickly and strongly: surface area restoration in a cloudless manner does it. We won by removing bacteria, a flush, and its no more harmful than when a dentist flushes and rasps a eutrophic mouth

The greater tendency is to add bacteria, it's ironic that doing the reverse is so aligning for tanks

 

[Troylee]

David100 just edited in post #45 that shows a few jobs to get the pattern

We match only temp and salinity then fish get moved right into the new reef 100% new water

This doesn't burn animals there are no spikes no testing, humus example #1 was fish placed right back in the tank

In the earlier response I added in using a clear glass of water test to ensure portions of your rinsed sand are truly clear that way there's no guess

The sand is removed as the water is drained, then you'd tilt over the tank and wash it all out this clear then reassemble it

Any easy to access rocks without a lot of corals you could do the day before the big job, to have a little time lead on it

Having one rock in the holding bin with the fish and inverts, along with water motion and a cover is solid holding for the animals during the clean

Matching only temp and salinity is needed between new assembly tank and the holding tank, then it all moves over.

This works without a spike if you rinse and verify perfectly

The live rock bacteria aren't killed by scraping and by direct application on the spots you scraped, don't pour peroxide all over the rocks or soak them just use it as cleanup burn after detailed rasping

The tip of the knife is precision and won't be scraping off all the rock, use the tip like a dentist is exacting when removing plaque

I see you always posting this rip clean.. back in the day we just put the sand in a pillow case and hung it under the spout of a bath tub and let it rinse for x amount of time.. don’t you think that would work better than just over flowing a bucket of sand water?

 

[p1u5h13r4m24]

As many have said, you can “rip clean” it all you want. If you don’t fix the problem like your tds and limited clean up crew then it will just grow back. Really all u need to do is manually remove it as much as u can and buy some turbo snails. 1 per each 10g

 

[Leadfooted]

@Leadfooted that's one of the nicest displays I've seen, my gosh

Thank you and your information is great to absorb as well. The education never ends

 

[tbrown3589]

Hi All,
I'm fairly new to the hobby, my tank is just over 1 year old now, for the last 3 months or so I have been battling a Horrendus hair algae outbreak, I think I have found one or many of the causes however id like to ask some questions and get a game plan for going forward? Ive read allot of forum posts about Tank Cleans H202 Treatments, using Vibrant and picking it out.

So far I have hand-picked it out and dosed some vibrant to try and get ontop of the outbreak as its been getting rather messy.

So the 2 reasons I suspect for my issue is 1 overfeeding, I have x2 clowns in a 130L tank and I feed them half a cube of frozen food each day, I use to feed a pinch of pellets but they seem happier with frozen food and tend to eat it all however it seems like way to much for them, but its a hassle to cut the cubes down to smaller portions so I stick with half a cube. i think the water in these cubes is full of nutrients and its going straight into the water and giving me a spike? Im not sure how to fix this issue as the food like brine is so tiny you cant really strain it? so is it worth going back to pellets full-time for them? to try and resolve this?

Secondly, I found out my LFS TDS reading on the last batch of water I got is 8 TDS is this good bad or normal? I know we aim for 0TDS but is there a desired range to be in? I think I remember them telling me it can be up to 14TDS but never anymore. Should I be worried about this? Or is this a acceptable range?


I just want to get rid of this issue really, my tank looks awful and each time I spend an hour picking some of the tufts it's back within a week, I now believe this is my own fault for my feeding habits and perhaps partly my LFS stores fault for higher than expected TDS?



There's no direct sunlight, and I have taken my lights from 100% (Blue, Purple, Cyan) Down to around 80%.




Im not really sure if my params are useful as there is so much algae that the phos and nitrate will likely be actively consumed by the algae to grow, but my recent tests shown:

Phos 0.10
Nitrate 20
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Salinity: 1.025
KH 6.0
PH 7.8

Im considering getting a RO unit and doing a 50% water change for the next 2-3 weeks with a better quality ref salt to get the tanks water params in a better position with a higher PH and ALK, and hopefully kill off this alga with some Vibrant dosing. I know its controversial but the corals don't seem to unhappy with it and if it can kill off a good amount and some 50% water changes can export the nutrients I think I might get through this.

I also added a Tuxedo Urchin last week, and have 4 Nass Snails, 4 Trocus Snails & 3 Redf hermits in QT ready to go in at the end of Feb.

Is there anything else I can do?

View attachment 2998769

It may have already been mentioned but check for any magnets that are showing signs of rust. I had a magnetic glass scraper that was leaching and I couldn't do anything to get rid of the algae. I removed the magnet when I saw the rust and within a week all the algae disappeared.

Most people think nutrients are the only cause of algae but there can definitely be other causes.

 

[Thales]

I will but it’s not pretty! I have been pulling out algae with each water change with the pinch on the tube method and it grows back so fast, I have stopped dosing vibrant now and have kept a regular 20% weekly WC, I am a few days behind right now so I may be doing double this later tonight. The tank looks horrendous on white light. I have added the CUC I had in QT now, including nassarius snails 4 , 4 Trocus snails, 3 red hermit crabs and I had my 1 tuxedo urchin which unfortunately passed away due to unknown reasons.
my parameters as of yesterday's testing are

Salinity :1.024
Nitrite :0
Ammonia :0
Ph 7.8
Phos: my kit is returning cloudy results suddenly so I’m not sure on phos right now I would estimate around 0.1 or higher

please don’t judge this tank I am really doing my best to resolve this it just feels like nothing is working!
going forward I am going to get more cuc in QT asap, I am going to increase my water change schedule. Other than that I am not sure, I am considering adding a lawnmower blenny to try and have something that will help pick the bits off the rocks.
Is there any filtration I can use?
I currently have a bag of phosguard In, a bag of purigen, a bag of carbon and then some filter floss and filter sponges. throughout which I clean on each water change. I also have a lot of bio balls in the back sump area.
Any advice at this point

I most certainly have a nutrient issue, I was feeding half a cube of frozen food a day but I have stopped this now as I think that could have added a lot of nutrients to the water. I now feed a small pinch of pellet food which is all eaten by the clowns and they seem happy enough with this.
My Skimmer is on and produces a wet skim that I empty around once every 2 weeks or so.

View attachment 3036884 View attachment 3036885 View attachment 3036886 View attachment 3036887 View attachment 3036888 View attachment 3036889 View attachment 3036890 View attachment 3036891 View attachment 3036892 View attachment 3036893

Brandon asked me once before what I would do, and I fell I can answer with this tank

I would get one of these Marineland Polishing filter and run it in the tank with the pleated filter for the duration.
I would pull algae out by hand, then, without removing anything scrub the rock in place with a stiff brush, and let the filter filter the algae out.
I would turn off the lights for 5 days, and storm the tank and brush rocks that need it daily.
Then I would assess and then decide on several possibilities including another black out and adding herbiroves (tuxedo urchins and snails, and maybe a small rabbitfish if you can plan to rehome it later), and even something more drastic, but that is not likely needed.
My 2022 Macna talk is available on youtube if you want my reasoning.

 

[brandon429]

@Troylee

That leaves waste in the sand. Direct rinse is better, more thorough

This is how I drive the # of entrants/ find challenge tanks and post the last one we fixed. It'll cause change in procedure once we drive examples out this far, the goal is to find the best tank rehab method to write about it after lots of tanks are worked

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

The best way to prepare your sand for use in a transferred reef tank, an upgraded reef tank, a reef tank under invasion etc is to put the sand in sections in a bucket and TAP WATER rinse it outside over and over with the garden hose until all the silt / waste is ejected, expect hours of work per...

www.reef2reef.com

There's nothing in the sand we need, all pods and bugs reseed from the rocks, our external work still leaves pods in the rocks it's why we only rinsed in saltwater. Additionally, pods can be just added back now to save time. Getting the waste out fully is how we stopped tradeoff invasions in all those tanks above, we just stepped up the rinse method.

DannoOMG added pods to his tank right after the rip clean he did three days ago:

I need to buy some pods, my own tank is very low on them.

 

[tbrown3589]

I'm not trying to start or get into an argument or philosophical discussion but I really feel like every time someone has algae RIP CLEAN is thrown out there as the solution. Sometimes people just need to find out what is causing the issue. If we rip clean everytime we never fix the problems. If nutrients are the problem, we need to fix the nutrients. If bacteria is the problem we need to fix the problem. If lighting is the problem we need to fix the problem. If rip clean is the solution for everything how does the ocean survive and how do any of us have tanks running for more than a couple of weeks?

 

[brandon429]

link tanks repaired to support a given method - must be outbound jobs not our own tank to match current standard of examples

Only results for others matters

We keep the original cycle in place and have posted strong outcomes in others tanks, we can't really negatively evaluate what's posted so far based on outcomes logged

Other large work threads are stickied in the nuisance algae forum for outcome comparison, scroll through the after pics/ select the best method based on those + follow up post tracking by the entrants.

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

If rip clean is the solution for everything how does the ocean survive and how do any of us have tanks running for more than a couple of weeks?

You’d be amazed at the abrasive cleaning energy created on a reef when a big swell or storm hits. I’ve seen back reef lagoons in Indo that had a very healthy algae growth stripped clean after one good swell event. It’s quite impressive. In saying that, I don’t think rip cleans are the solution for everything though.

If David100 wants to put in the work though, some type of manual intervention will at least get him back to a fair fight position. He’ll obviously need to identify the underlying issues and address them going forward.

David, I didn’t see any mention of the light fixture you were using. If it’s a decent LED fixture even 80% is a heck of a lot of light energy for a few sarcos and a hammer.

 

[I never finish anythi]

I agree I need more CUC but this is like £200-300 + of CUC

£33.81 Sea hare
£11 for 2 - 2 Halloween hermit
£40 for 4 - 4 small emerald crabs
£112 40 blue legs
£49.99 10 Red legs
£23 20 snails of you choice
£3 2 mexican turbos
£30 small Convict tang
£55 Small mimic tang

£357.8

(Prices from cellarmarinestore.co.uk)

Assuming I can get store credit for these that's an awful lot to expense out when a rip clean seems to remove all algae for probably 4 hours of work and a £2 bottle of H202?

I do definitely agree I need more CUC but if I add all of this the die-off could be worse than the usefulness. The 60+ crabs will likely kill 20 off snails and cause a nutrient spike. aswell as all the infighting. Im not sure this is a good idea. I think a manual removal of as much as possible and possibly another 10 snails or so and a Conch with a lawnmower blenny might do something but I do admit I'm getting to my wits end so an army of CUC does sound appealing against this stuff.

Try the sea hare , it will gi to town on that hair algae.