Green Hair Algae Help!

[jgrosskopf]

I have a major hair algae problem in my 75 gal tank. I have been dealing with it for almost a year now and everything I try fails. Amonia, Nitrate, and Nitrites are all 0.
This is what I tried so far:
Switch to R/O Water
Reduced feeding
Replaced all Power Compact lights
Reduced light time to 8 hours
Removed and scrubbed all rock to remove hair algae
Introduced Emerald crabs
Introduced more snails and hermit crabs
Introduced a lawn mower blenny
Introduced a sea hare
Treated with Marine SAT
The hair agae just keeps coming back. I am out of ideas and ready to give up on the hobby.
Is there anyone out there with any more ideas? Is there a chemical I can add to the tank to kill the stuff? I'm desperate.

 

[nycbob]

have u tested for phosphate in ur ro water? u can always add a sailfin tang if u hv the room.

 

[rotarymagic]

Do you have a refugium? How often do you do water changes? how much water do you change? Have you tried the turfscrubber from the other thread?

 

[dennis210]

Had the same problem and sea hairs and even tangs didn't help. However reduced feeding and "urchins" took care of the problem.

 

[simbill]

sea-hare + phosphate sponge + STOP hair algae product did trick within a week to rid a 20g (to be honest, best investment to my tank: $25.00 sea-hare)

 

[aztec reef]

Well, hair algea just as any other algea. Feeds on two thing; excess nutrients(unmetabolized food) in water column. Or photosentizes.
So your problem is in the accumulating of impurities or/and if you have low bioload (in the form of corals). Thus your hairy algea is out-competing the other organisms for light energy or nutrient comsumption..

 

[jgrosskopf]

Just tested the Phosphates and it was high. My pet store guy suggested adding Phosphate Control by Blue Vet. Six drops today followed by another 6 tomorrow and then retest. He also suggested scrubbing all of the live rock again to get as much of the hair algae off as possible.
I do not have a refugium and I change 25 percent of the water every month.
I only have 4 fish in the aquarium.

 

[dragonboy]

Do you have a sand bed one thing I notice that works for me was totally clean everything. Remove rocks clean them and clean your sand bed and also do about 40 to 30 percent water change.

 

[kinerson]

I experienced the same things a few years back. If you test for nitrate and phosophate and it reads 0 its because the algea is very fast at using available nutrients. Therefore water changes aren't going to help as much one might think. After trying sea hare, marine SAT, fish, urchins, snails blah blah blah, my solution was to set up a refugium. I pulled the a bunch of my green hair algea out of the display and put it into the refugium. I left the leghts running 24x7 while reducing the photoperiod in the display to about 6-8 hours. Continue to remove algea growth from main tank and adventually the refugium will out compete display tank due to the longer photo period.

 

[michaelwb]

what type of filter do you have? is it a hang on, if so you can make fuges out of ac 110 or ac300 which is 70