I battled hair algae for almost a year! Terrible hair algae, I've never
seen a tank as bad as mine was! It is now algae free except for some
valonia I can't get cleaned up.

RO/DI water helped. Manual removal - every single day by the QUART- helped.
Lessening light didn't seem to have any affect. Snails, hermits (red, blue,
scarlet), conchs, emeral crabs and urchins would not touch the stuff. More
water circulation made the algae wave beautifully in the high current but
didn't seem to have any other effect. (high water flow directly on my zoo
colonies is what finally got the hair algae out of the zoos - so it does
help for some things) Creating a DSB helped noticable for about a month,
then everything came back.

What finally fixed the problem was removal of the pre-filters in my overflow
box. I would clean them about every other day of the huge amount of algae
they would collect. Once I got rid of the prefilters the algae began to go
away almost immediately. I beleive the foam was acting like a wet dry and
manufacturing nitrates out the wazoo. I clean my overflow bulkhead fittings
about once a month now. I also had to clean my glass daily with a razor
just to see my fish. I now can use a magnet scrubber about once a week and
that is just to clean up a light "dust" on the glass.

I had zeros for NO2, NO3, NH3, and PO4 the entire time I was battleing hair
algae. I also had a UV and a skimmer running this entire time. 125G tank,
150# live rock, scopas tank, lawnmower blemmy.

So, what I am saying is get rid of the wet dry filter material! Your
nitrates and phosphates are reading zero because green hair algae is so good
at absorbing it, not because you aren't providing lots of it. Your wet dry
is making fertilizer. Nothing in your filter system should be wet and
aerobic. I don't know of any chemical you can put into your sal****er tank
that won't kill everything else in your tank.

Jim...
(like everything else - with sal****er - your mileage may vary)

P.S. Once you get the hair algae on the run, set up a reefugium. The
reefugium will help suck any excess nutrients out of your system in the
future. Oh yeah, for hermits get red leg (not scarlet) hermits, they won't
eat the snails and they won't crawl all over your coral flesh.


"TomW" wrote in message
...
I've been battling green hair algae for several months. My tank is 5
months
old & I started growing algae in month 3.

The problem is diminishing. So far, I've:

-Limited light from 10 hours to 6.
-Removed phosphate (using Phosguard).
-added snails and hermit crabs.
-added more water circulation (recently).

I have live rock (about 45lbs in a 75 gal tank). Nitrates are not a
problem.
I'm using a wet/dry filter, and the mechanical filter part continues to
fill
with algae; enough that I have to clean it every other day. The hermit
crabs
seem more interested in eating the snails than the algae. I also added a
Mexican Fighting Conch, but so far, he just buries himself in the crushed
coral. I'm not using sand, but now wish I had. The tank has 4 small fish
(percula, purple dottyback, 7 line wrasse, yellow gobie) and a peppermint
shrimp. I also run a Diatom filter and do 10 gallon water changes 1-2
times
per month. Temp is a pretty constant 80.

I'm resisting pouring a chemical into the water to make it go away, but
the
tank looked so good when I first set it up; I'd really like to rid the
tank
of the algae. I keep reading this group and everyone says "patience." I'll
try to keep listening....

-Tom