How I got my hair algae under control

[120gallons]

I know a lot of people struggle with it. Here's how I got it under control.

1. Hand scrub rocks to manually remove hair algae
2. Weekly water changes
3. Add hermits (red legged, blue get too big and agressive)
4. Add snails
5. Add a phosban reactor if you don't have one
6. Add a refugium if you don't have one.

There's no magic powder or fish or hermit that will eat it all. It just takes patients and time and removing the nutrients that causes it to grow.

Now for the past 8 months the only algae outside of my sump is coralline and the bit of hair algae in the overflows and on 2 snails how see to enjoy getting haircuts. 8 months ago there was hair algae everywhere though it was a relatively new tank.

[charlie]

The best thing that has ever happened to me in this hobby was when I kicked the hair algae habit in my 80 gallon 5 years ago. The patience that is required can tax a persons levels. When it finally disppears, and stays away, it is one of the best feelings.

Good advice!

[sihaya]

OMG, there was a time when my hair algae was so long it wiped around the tank like the mane of a mustang. I don't know what specifically I did to get rid of it, but I do have a refugium with macro algae now and lots of snails. Coralline also helps a lot (IMO). Hair algae won't grow over coralline (in my experience).

[Samper]

Glad you beat it! I had to battle that monster before.

[aiko670]

congrats, hair algae is no fun!

[tray262]

It's been a long time since I've been in the forums, but I'm going on one year of hair algea, and I can't take it. I've tried just about everything. So I've come to the end of the rope.

I made some mistakes when I was first getting started, and I think that's a big part of the problems I'm having now.

So here's the plan of attack, I'm breaking down the tank, Recuring the rock. The hair is so deep in the rock scrubing gets about half off. I'm getting rid of the deep sand bed, going to the 1" or so instead of the 4"-6" I've been running. Also getting rid of the DSB in the refug.I'm going to up my waterchanges. I've got a great skimmer. Good lighting.

[120gallons]

Sometimes it comes to that. Let me guess, you started without a RO/DI unit?

[tray262]

Sometimes it comes to that. Let me guess, you started without a RO/DI unit?

How did you know ? lol. Also, I cured my rock in my tank. What an idiot, and I went like 3 months without a water change. I'll stop there.

[sihaya]

How did you know ? lol. Also, I cured my rock in my tank. What an idiot, and I went like 3 months without a water change. I'll stop there.

Actually, I don't think it's such a bad idea to cure live rock in the tank if the tank is brand new and you don't have anything else in the tank yet. I cured my live-rock in the tank.

[charlie]

Actually, I don't think it's such a bad idea to cure live rock in the tank if the tank is brand new and you don't have anything else in the tank yet. I cured my live-rock in the tank.

So did I, no problem.

[KarenH]

What do I do if I can't take out my life rock and scrub it? Alot of my rock either came with or started growing Polyp corals. My green hair is being kept short by snails and hermit crabs but I can't quite beat it. I read to keep my alkalinity above 8 to help with it but as hard as I try it keeps dropping back to 7.

[Reefland]

The best thing to do in that case is to have some buckets of saltwater sitting around, remove the rock from the tank and submerge it in the bucket and then scrub away. I would suggest a 10-20 gallon water change first, and the water you remove from the system for the change is what you would use to scrub the rocks in.

[Mango Man]

my yellow and naso tang make sure there is no hair algea in my tank, haha. they clean it up good.