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I recently wrote about my battle with hair algae, and the battle still rages on.  While it has subsided some, it is still far to prevalent for me.   I had a bad outbreak of hair algae in my tank right after I first set it up as I was using de-chlorinated tap water.  I adjusted my water parameters to the correct levels and within a few weeks the hair algae was gone.

The beginnings of the hair algae

About 2 months ago, my snails suddenly started dieing and the hair algae returned, and with a vengeance.  I’m pretty confident that the death of my snails was caused by stray voltage in the tank.  I voltage issue was fixed by installing a ground probe.  I removed the snails as quickly as I could, but the hair algae continued to grow all over my live rock and overtaking my corals.

I again checked my water parameters and all where within acceptable range.  I then ordered some PhosBan and placed two bags of it in my canister filter in order to remove phosphates. Excess phosphates are the main cause of nuisance algae in a saltwater tank.  While I do believe the PhosBan helped, the algae was still there and still growing.

My routine over the past four weeks has consisted of checking my water parameters weekly, along with plucking the hair algae out of the tank by hand.  It just doesn’t seem to want to go away!

The good news is that I have some macro algae growing as well, which I hope will overtake the hair algae some.  I also added a new lawn mower blenny today as well.  Our old one, “blenny” as my kids named him decided to check out the inside of my powerhead.  Needless to say, he never returned.  Monday I’ll also order some turbo snails.  Hoping they can make a dent in it.

All out of ideas

Beyond what I’ve done, I’m all out of ideas at this point and open to any suggestions or ideas you may have.  Please respond via a comments with any ideas of perspective you may have.  My tank was gorgeous for more than 2 months, and now even though I’m using RO/DO water, checking maintaining my water parmeters, and doing weekly water changes, it is now full of ugly hair alge.