Quote Originally Posted by Manoj's Reef View Post
Hi Hillary,

I will try to break down your problem and hopefully it will provide help.

"So after buying come corals form a source who will not be named i became over run with green hair algae and bubble algae"

This would have happened anyway as not all rocks are free of hair/bubble algae. Sometimes the algae are inside the rocks and you would not even see it. I would not be overly concerned about where it came from. The longer you are in the hobby the chances are you will get it. The bubble algae have to be removed manually.


This is where your problem lies. As you are trying to remove it and still not able to keep up. Your aquarium has nutrients in the water column that you need to reduce to low amounts.

Plz test the following and you will see where the problem lies.
1. Phosphate?
2. Nitrate?
3. TDS of your RO water ?
4. What do you feed and how often?
5. How many fishes do you have?
Once you can provide the above five informations then it will be easier to suggest the fix.

Adding more cleaning crew in like putting a bandaid , its not the fix.
Manoj hit this one right on the head. Hair algae is NOT from frags - it grows when you have nutrients in the water, as does almost all algae (with the exception of red turf which thrives in clean water). The key and ONLY long term way to rid your tank is very frequent (like 2-3 times a week of at least 10% each time, the more the better) water changes using only r/o water (if you use tap you'll make it worse). Do this for a few weeks, then you can go back to once a week of 10% changes. It will take awhile, but eventually it will go away as it starves. If you have a sump with chaeto that will help to as it uses the nutrients the hair algae uses. Sea hares and snails are temporary fixes - they can help eat it but won't rid it entirely for the long term, in fact getting large quantities makes your problem worse as it ADDS nutrients to the water and you'll have more of a problem down the road.

One final note, if your test kits read zero it does not indicate that they aren't there. The algae ffeds off of nitrates and phosphates, so if they read zero its because the algae is using them all up giving you a false sense that water parameters are ok.