Science vs Green Hair Algae

[Ruu]

I have a temporary system that has been up for 12 months that I need to take down, but I'm going to leave it up as my GHA experiment for a while, and I am looking for suggestions from the community on what to do to try to eradicate it. Suggestions can be systemic (carbon dosing, medication, peeing in the tank, whatever - there's no livestock there any more) or more localized and tactical (kalk paste, hot water, 9mm hollowpoints etc) to see what controls GHA.

The system has a huge refugium with more chaeto than I know what to do with and two separate and independently lit 50g areas with rocks that are literally covered in GHA, plus a 50g sump with the biggest skimmer I have ever seen that I randomly bought off some dude on Craigslist for $100.

I've already tried massively out competing the GHA with chaeto with absolutely no success. I have a Kessil H380 over the refugium with 50 gallons of chaeto in a 50 gallon tub, and the GHA is still growing just fine under an $8 home depot shop light in the other areas - that experiment has gone on for 6 weeks now and the GHA is clearly winning.

Ideally suggestions will be safe enough to move to my main tank, which still has a moderate (and ever growing) problem of its own that I would like to deal with (hence using the old system as a test-bed).

I'll try suggestions in serial for a while to see what has the most impact, and I will continue feeding the tank so that nutrient starvation doesn't take care of the issue on its own.

Suggestions?

Dave

[nereefpat]

Have you looked into fluconazole?

[ramseynb]

Originally Posted by nereefpat

Have you looked into fluconazole?

This is the new hotness. I've heard increasing mag to very high numbers works too. I know it works with bryopsis.

[laverda]

Killing the GHA is easy with Hydrogen Peroxide. Pull the rocks out and poor some hydrogen peroxide over them. If the GHA is reall bad pull what you can off easily first. Keep in mind a HP bath is going to kill your pods, brittle stars and possibly other small critters on your rock. You can also dose HP directly to your tank in moderation. I used this method to rid a tank of bubble algae. First I would siphon all the bubbles I could out of the tank. Popping the bubbles releases the algae spores. So I would dose HP immediately after. By dosing a small amount of HP you kill the spores in the water column and keep the algae from spreading.
The real issue is fixing the problem so it does not grow back. Clearly you have a nitrate/phosphate problem. What are your perimeters? Do you have any mechanical filtration? If so if should be cleaned or changed ever few days? I have found most tank that run canister filters are GHA factories due to lack of maintainence. GHA will out compete cheato if you let it. I have had good luck reducing N&P and algae in my display using an ATS. Then you are growing GHA where you can easily harvest it removing N&P at the same time. To assist I also dose vinegar and iron.

[ramseynb]

Originally Posted by laverda

Killing the GHA is easy with Hydrogen Peroxide. Pull the rocks out and poor some hydrogen peroxide over them. If the GHA is reall bad pull what you can off easily first. Keep in mind a HP bath is going to kill your pods, brittle stars and possibly other small critters on your rock. You can also dose HP directly to your tank in moderation. I used this method to rid a tank of bubble algae. First I would siphon all the bubbles I could out of the tank. Popping the bubbles releases the algae spores. So I would dose HP immediately after. By dosing a small amount of HP you kill the spores in the water column and keep the algae from spreading.
The real issue is fixing the problem so it does not grow back. Clearly you have a nitrate/phosphate problem. What are your perimeters? Do you have any mechanical filtration? If so if should be cleaned or changed ever few days? I have found most tank that run canister filters are GHA factories due to lack of maintainence. GHA will out compete cheato if you let it. I have had good luck reducing N&P and algae in my display using an ATS. Then you are growing GHA where you can easily harvest it removing N&P at the same time. To assist I also dose vinegar and iron.

That sounds like a lot of work.

[laverda]

Originally Posted by ramseynb

That sounds like a lot of work.

You are not going to get rid of it long term unless you fix the problem. It did not get that way over night.

[BrettDS]

It’s an interesting experiment, but by pulling out your livestock and leaving the tank fallow you’ve made a big change and this tank no longer reflects what’s happening in your main tank or other people’s tanks. Anything that happens to the hair algae may be related to the fact that there is no livestock in the tank and not because of anything else you have done.

Honestly, at this point the best thing to do would be to carry on running the tank without making any additional changes. Keep ghost feeding it so there are some nutrients going into the tank and make sure that the hair algae keep growing for the next few weeks or months. After you are satisfied that removing the livestock isn’t affecting the hair algae growth, then you can move forward with your attempts to remove it.

But again, you’ll really need to only try one thing at a time for a period of several weeks or months with a another long period of doing nothing before you switch to a different method. Trying several things at once or in quick succession is going to leave doubt as to what actually worked and you’ll be no better off than when you started.

If you really want to do this methodically and scientifically it is going to be a very long process covering many months or years.

[Potsy]

Originally Posted by nereefpat

Have you looked into fluconazole?

+1

This knocked out the green hair algae in my new tank in less than a week. It usually takes quite a bit longer than that, but I must have had a very susceptible species of algae.

[rjjr1963]

+2 on fluconazole. It's important to physically remove as much of the algae as possible. IF not when it breaks down it will release sugars into the water which is like fertilizer for GHA. I would scrape it off the rocks, glass and power heads then use a large net in the tank to sweep up as much as I could.

[Ruu]

Originally Posted by BrettDS

It’s an interesting experiment, but by pulling out your livestock and leaving the tank fallow you’ve made a big change and this tank no longer reflects what’s happening in your main tank or other people’s tanks. Anything that happens to the hair algae may be related to the fact that there is no livestock in the tank and not because of anything else you have done.

Honestly, at this point the best thing to do would be to carry on running the tank without making any additional changes. Keep ghost feeding it so there are some nutrients going into the tank and make sure that the hair algae keep growing for the next few weeks or months. After you are satisfied that removing the livestock isn’t affecting the hair algae growth, then you can move forward with your attempts to remove it.

But again, you’ll really need to only try one thing at a time for a period of several weeks or months with a another long period of doing nothing before you switch to a different method. Trying several things at once or in quick succession is going to leave doubt as to what actually worked and you’ll be no better off than when you started.

If you really want to do this methodically and scientifically it is going to be a very long process covering many months or years.

Look, I get the scientific method (I studied genetics in two different countries for quite a while), but if my imperfect little experiment can provide another semi decent datapoint to the world at large with relatively little effort then why not?

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, as a friend of mine used to say.

I'm going to give fluconazole a try for a few weeks and document the results.

Dave

[BrettDS]

Originally Posted by Ruu

Look, I get the scientific method (I studied genetics in two different countries for quite a while), but if my imperfect little experiment can provide another semi decent datapoint to the world at large with relatively little effort then why not?



Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, as a friend of mine used to say.



I'm going to give fluconazole a try for a few weeks and document the results.



Dave

I get what you’re trying to do and I certainly applaud the effort, but without spending a little more time and effort I question how “semi decent” your datapoint will be. If you go right into the fluconazole treatment now there will always be a question of whether removing the livestock and changing the feeding schedule affected the algae as much as or more than the fluconazole.

There are other people who have tried fluconazole in a stocked tank, and frankly I would look at their data points as more useful to the hobby than what you would get out of this right now.

You’re certainly welcome to do what you want, and you do have a unique situation with the tank as it is now. You could definitely provide some useful data to the hobby, but if you really want to add value to this experiment then I think you’ll need to spend more time and do it right.

[Michael Hoaster]

Thanks Ruu. I'm curious what you will find out. I'm in the process of breaking down and restarting my seagrass and macro algae tank. So I'm very likely to run into another algae phase.

One of the things I learned from another wise RC-er is that the amount of nuicance algae we have is a direct indicator of how much nutrients are 'in the bucket'. Even if we add no new nutrients, they are still there, bound up in the algae. If they start to starve, they just break down and release nutrients back into the system, and you get more algae growth again. So you need to export it to reduce its 'carrying capacity'.

Having a giant chaeto ball is really just like a big gas tank, ready to fuel more algae growth. So, for my sugestion, I'd say reduce your chaeto to a softball size and export as much of the hair as possible. Then add a variety of good algae consumers, who will then move those nutrients into their own body mass. I like reproducing snails like Ceriths. Their populations will adjust to match the food supply. I've heard the Scopas Tang is handy for this. And there's always the 'nuclear option'-urchins.

I look forward to hearing what you try and what works!

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by laverda

Killing the GHA is easy with Hydrogen Peroxide. Pull the rocks out and poor some hydrogen peroxide over them. If the GHA is reall bad pull what you can off easily first. Keep in mind a HP bath is going to kill your pods, brittle stars and possibly other small critters on your rock. You can also dose HP directly to your tank in moderation. I used this method to rid a tank of bubble algae. First I would siphon all the bubbles I could out of the tank. Popping the bubbles releases the algae spores. So I would dose HP immediately after. By dosing a small amount of HP you kill the spores in the water column and keep the algae from spreading.
The real issue is fixing the problem so it does not grow back. Clearly you have a nitrate/phosphate problem. What are your perimeters? Do you have any mechanical filtration? If so if should be cleaned or changed ever few days? I have found most tank that run canister filters are GHA factories due to lack of maintainence. GHA will out compete cheato if you let it. I have had good luck reducing N&P and algae in my display using an ATS. Then you are growing GHA where you can easily harvest it removing N&P at the same time. To assist I also dose vinegar and iron.

I am 100% in agreement with the exception of dosing vinegar. Algae, including coral zooanthelia, get their carbon from carbon dioxide gas which combines in seawater to form carbonate and bicarbonate that when coupled with photosynthesis produce glucose an organic carbon source to feed the ocean.

Adding vinegar, an inorganic carbon source, will fuel bacteria growth.

[Sk8r]

It sounds like one of my tanks, which had a lot of problematic rock, and the only thing I didn't see listed is what actually works, GFO reactor, changed monthly until the problem gives up. Phosphate continually leaches from the rock, in some instances, and no matter how you attack it, algae death or consumption just bleeds the phosphate back into the tank to fuel a new round. The best answer is binding the phosphate, and GFO is one of the more effective means of doing that. Can take quite a while, as rock takes a LONG time to soak through and release all it's got, but it can solve the problem.

[balancedtank]

is fluconazole clam and invert safe?

[ramseynb]

Originally Posted by laverda

You are not going to get rid of it long term unless you fix the problem. It did not get that way over night.

No doubt, but pouring hydrogen peroxide on your rocks doesn't cure the problem. I've done it before and it works to get rid of what you have, but it's not a "cure".

My point was that there are better quick-fix solutions to get rid of what you have nowadays. You certainly have to address the underlying reason it got there in the first place as well.

[taricha]

If we're going to invoke science, can we maybe try to say what this GHA is? At least down to a genus? Or at least be clear about what it is not?
*crowd protests* But there are hundreds of species of GHA, and they all look the same - it's pointless!
Maybe. But maybe not.
Whenever I've seen description or pics of GHA that nothing wants to eat, it looks like this... (see pics)
I've gotten samples from other people's tanks, and this is what theirs looks like too.
Important features:
Filamentous, branched, no visible cell divisions or segmentation within filament (siphonous), no segmentation at branch points, chloroplasts visible and arranged around the walls, branching not symmetric, branching not fern-like, growth tip is clear half-dome free of chloroplasts, no spore structures visible.




Other filamentous algaes that it's definitely not (and why):
Lyngbya, Calothrix, Spirulina, or any other cyanobacteria (they have cell segments)
Spirogyra (different internal structure)
Cladophora, Cladophoropsis "turf" algae (cell segments)
Enteromorpha another "turf" algae (cell structure/arrangement within filament is very different)
These 3 are very close, but wrong in some way
Derbesia (these form spores)
Vaucheria (weird curvy spore structure)
Bryopsis (large scale growth structure is fern-like with segmentation at the branches)

[laverda]

Originally Posted by ramseynb

No doubt, but pouring hydrogen peroxide on your rocks doesn't cure the problem. I've done it before and it works to get rid of what you have, but it's not a "cure".

My point was that there are better quick-fix solutions to get rid of what you have nowadays. You certainly have to address the underlying reason it got there in the first place as well.

I said exactly. All the above methods are only temporary bandaids. Which are pointless in the long run if you don’t treat the cause of the problem.

[BeachBumm]

Originally Posted by rjjr1963

+2 on fluconazole. It's important to physically remove as much of the algae as possible. IF not when it breaks down it will release sugars into the water which is like fertilizer for GHA. I would scrape it off the rocks, glass and power heads then use a large net in the tank to sweep up as much as I could.

+3 on Fluconazole , It got rid of all mine but I did remove as much as I could manually and increased my cleanup crew population. It took about three weeks but it cleared it ALL ! I am happy !!

[BeachBumm]

Going forward I now complete water changes on a regular basis to keep this from happening again ! I did lax on my water changes and allowed this to happen but now a fresh start with no fish or coral damage noted !!

[BeachBumm]

Originally Posted by balancedtank

is fluconazole clam and invert safe?

Yes !

[BeachBumm]

Use only as instructed on the bottle , I believe it was 200mg per 10gals. water . Do not overdose . No side effects so far but I dosed exactly as prescribed . No shrimp , clams or snails lost , only lost hair algae and some bryopsis !

[Ruu]

Originally Posted by taricha

If we're going to invoke science, can we maybe try to say what this GHA is? At least down to a genus? Or at least be clear about what it is not

Look buddy. This is America. In 2018. Near as I can tell, science has been redefined as "anything I agree with", and everything else is fake news.

Regardless (irregardless? Lol), I'll take some macro shots tomorrow. Mine definitely fits the bill of "nothing seems to eat it" and "nothing seems to shift it" despite 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates detected for the last 12 months.

Dave

[taricha]

Originally Posted by Ruu

Look buddy. This is America. In 2018. Near as I can tell, science has been redefined as "anything I agree with", and everything else is fake news.

Regardless (irregardless? Lol), I'll take some macro shots tomorrow. Mine definitely fits the bill of "nothing seems to eat it" and "nothing seems to shift it" despite 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates detected for the last 12 months.

Dave

haha. Thanks for science-ing so hard!
But for real, if it looks similar on a macro shot, and nothing eats it then we likely are talking the same stuff.

[royy13]

Try an experiment with lanthanum chloride. It reduces phosphate.