PasoFish89
Community Member
Just thought I would share what finally worked for me...
It all starts Thanksgiving 2021. Left town for a week or maybe less with a spotless 10 gallon mixed reef with two clowns. I came home to quite a bit of hair algae, I suspected maybe the auto feeder was set to give too many pellets, however I honestly don't know. It really came out of nowhere. The tank was started in March 2020 and was going very smooth until thanksgiving 2021. Anyway, I have been battling either GHA or Lyngbya ever since. I was doing twice weekly water changes and manually removing loads of it, cut feeding way back, removed uneaten food, tried various cleanup crews, dosed H2O2 daily for a while, tried Flucanazole various times as well.
I would make decent progress and then all the sudden it was worse than before. I couldn't wrap my head around why nothing was working. I couldn't decide if it was hair algae or lyngbya bacteria because it had sort of a brownish tint to it and barely if at all, responded to fluconazole. Finally nearly a year into this absurdity, I decided to abandon conventional methods of warfare and had read about reefers pulling rocks out and spraying them with H2O2. Before doing this, I switched from the chemipure blue nano packets to media bags with reefspec carbon and BRS brand GFO. I figured I would do my best to starve out the algae before spraying it. I pulled out 2 of the 3 rocks and sprayed them down with the H2O2 carefully avoiding the SPS attached to them. Once sprayed, let them sit for a couple minutes then brushed with a tooth brush and rinsed with saltwater then back into the tank. Within a day or two those rocks looked spotless. The third rock, I decided to keep going with the carbon and GFO while also dosing H202 daily and over the course of about a month now it has nearly disappeared completely.
It has now been about a year since the outbreak and I feel like it's about 95% won with no set backs since these big victories. I'm not sure why I kept after it with the manual removal, fluconazole and H2O2 dosing for so long before finally removing the rocks, I was pretty nervous to pull the rocks for some reason but it worked out perfectly.
Don't give up! There is a way, just don't be like me and hesitate to abandon methods not working.
It all starts Thanksgiving 2021. Left town for a week or maybe less with a spotless 10 gallon mixed reef with two clowns. I came home to quite a bit of hair algae, I suspected maybe the auto feeder was set to give too many pellets, however I honestly don't know. It really came out of nowhere. The tank was started in March 2020 and was going very smooth until thanksgiving 2021. Anyway, I have been battling either GHA or Lyngbya ever since. I was doing twice weekly water changes and manually removing loads of it, cut feeding way back, removed uneaten food, tried various cleanup crews, dosed H2O2 daily for a while, tried Flucanazole various times as well.
I would make decent progress and then all the sudden it was worse than before. I couldn't wrap my head around why nothing was working. I couldn't decide if it was hair algae or lyngbya bacteria because it had sort of a brownish tint to it and barely if at all, responded to fluconazole. Finally nearly a year into this absurdity, I decided to abandon conventional methods of warfare and had read about reefers pulling rocks out and spraying them with H2O2. Before doing this, I switched from the chemipure blue nano packets to media bags with reefspec carbon and BRS brand GFO. I figured I would do my best to starve out the algae before spraying it. I pulled out 2 of the 3 rocks and sprayed them down with the H2O2 carefully avoiding the SPS attached to them. Once sprayed, let them sit for a couple minutes then brushed with a tooth brush and rinsed with saltwater then back into the tank. Within a day or two those rocks looked spotless. The third rock, I decided to keep going with the carbon and GFO while also dosing H202 daily and over the course of about a month now it has nearly disappeared completely.
It has now been about a year since the outbreak and I feel like it's about 95% won with no set backs since these big victories. I'm not sure why I kept after it with the manual removal, fluconazole and H2O2 dosing for so long before finally removing the rocks, I was pretty nervous to pull the rocks for some reason but it worked out perfectly.
Don't give up! There is a way, just don't be like me and hesitate to abandon methods not working.
