Hair Algae advice

Had a massive hair algae outbreak on the new 90g and I ordered a large clean up crew yesterday. My question is should I scrape all the hair algae I can get off or let the crew do its job?

 

The cuc wont touch long hair algae. You need to get to the root of the problem which is poor water quality, lack of flow, etc.

 

I've address the issue with the water quality and rock. The person that had the tank before me let it go and I scraped the rock but should have just bit the bullet and replaced the live rock with new. I've also hooked up a phosphate reactor and it now reads 0 for the tank.

I think I will scrape as much of the stuff out as I can and let the crew do the rest.

 

In this situation will Algae Fix work or someother additive?

 

only thing i use is GFO and never had hair algae once. Plus there are times that i forgot to change the tank water, but my params are still in check =]

 

The GFO should work but take time. The one thing I have learned is that there is never a quick fix.

 

I would still try scrapping as much off as you can.. Even with good water quality & GFO it can still take some time. Make sure you stay on top of changing your RO/DI filters and replace the GFO frequently so it doesn't start creeping up on you again.

As far as clean-up crew, what all did you get? IME those giant mexican turbo snails are best for Hair Algae.

 

I again agree with Lee :0) Get as much of the HA off that you can pull off. It's best to try to syphon out any floating algae that gets in the water column. AlgaeFix will work BUT it destroys/kills the bacteria so I wouldn't use it. The Mexican Turbos will attack it and it will probably be a good idea to keep some in the tank even after the HA is gone...because it will tend to grow back when the PO and NO get high. The rock is probably loaded with PO and just outright gunk /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/sad.gif Good luck!! :0)

 

Thanks for the responses. I plan on taking the rock that has hair algae out tomorrow night and scrub it off and then do a water change and siphon the algae off the sand and other rock. Also did some research and found that older lights can cause an issue. I bought the lighting system used and found out the T5 lights are 4 months old so they are fine but the Metal Halides were 18 months old so I ordered 2 replacement bulbs tonight. Going to keep those off until the bulbs get replaced Friday.


Also ran some test and Ph was low so I added buffer to bring it up. Not sure if that's related or not but still needed to come up.


Here's the list of what I have arriving on Friday for a clean up crew:


1 Lettuce Nudibranch

5 Bumble Bee Snails

30 Cerith Snails

10 XLG Cerith Snails

20 Turbo Snails

40 Blue Leg Hermit Crabs

10 Red Leg Crabs


Hopefully this does the trick.

 

Well that was a lot of work. Scraped out all the hair algae I could. I'm leaving the light off until I get the replacement halide bulbs tomorrow. Then I will limit it to a few hours a day for a couple of weeks. Can't wait for the clean up crew to arrive on Friday. Hopefully it won't be long until the new tank looks as good as my current biocube!

 

Sounds like a plan :0) Good luck!!

 

So I think I got ahead of the game on the Algae issue. No new growth that I can tell just the stuff left over that I couldn't scrub off. Phosphates are still reading 0 and the clean up crew is going to town on the rest!!