Will This Kill My Live Rock?

[koolzero]

I've been having a huge problem with green hair algae and I've decided to try what was posted on a website: http/fish.rabk.net/green_attack_mess.html to get rid of it.

According to this person they did the following:

Take as much live rocks out of the tank and into in a fresh batch of RO water in a trash canister. Put a max
jet pump into the trash canister and cover the can for two weeks. Most of the soft corals will just go
dormant, but the algae will die. Bwwaahhahaaha. I also scrubbed most of the algae away before putting it
into the canister and added several mithrax crab to the canister as well to finish off any last remnants.

What I did was put my live rock in a container with a heater at 80 degrees and a power head. My only question is do I need salt water or can I use non salt RO water or will this kill my live rock?

Thanks for any help.

 

[steelhealr]

I would never do that with my live rock. Hair algae is a problem of water conditions and lack of competition. Before anyone could make a comment, we would need to know:

tank size
parameters
phophate level
inhabitants
feeding methods
skimmer?
refugium?
etc, etc

SH

 

[koolzero]

tank size 55 Gallon

310watt VHO light system

parameters According to my local fish store my water is "perfect" I don't know what the numbers are

phophate level I don't know what this is

inhabitants 2 tomato clowns, 1 yellow tang, and 1 wrasse

feeding methods frozen brine shrimp quarter of a frozen square every other day

skimmer? yes i don't know what type it is

refugium? not sure what this is.

Sorry I'm a novice

This is how my tank looks when there isn't any algae (the condi didn't make it):

 

[Navarre]

How much cleanup crew do you have? For a tank of this size you need a minimum of 55 snails/hermits to keep this tank clean. Algae needs 2 things to thrive.. lighting and nutrients. Remove either of these and the algae will find it hard to thrive.

Im not convinced you have the correct lighting over your system as i know very little about VHO lighting.. I do know that if the wrong ballasts are used then it will kick out a high output in the wrong spectrum which is perfect for algae growth.

If the lighting is good then you haveto look at nutrients. Now there are 2 types that will cause your tank all sorts of problems. Nitrates (which you seem to know about already) and phosphates which will cause untold algae growth if the merest trace eliment of phosphate is in your system.

I would buy a phosphate test kit and test the water, you might be suprised at what you find.

The algae is finding something to live off so if your nutrients are not coming from the water being placed into the tank .. (I assume you are using good quality Ro water) then the nutrients are entering the system in another way.. This is either from the waste given off by the fish (which indicates you dont have enough cleanup crew) or your feeding is wrong... You mention you use frozen foods, are you placing the frozen block directly into the tank or are you allowing it to dissolve first then rinsing the food out? The water that is frozen with the food is often a high source of nutrients and can cause problems.

Lastly...
If the tank is fairly young then this is natural and whilst the water is still stabalising (can take up to a year) then you might find sudden growths such as this..

You will need something that will compete withthe hair algae and thus cut off its food chain. This can be done with good coraline algae growth or even introdicing a macro algae to outcompete nusance algae.


Edit:

Oh and yes.. if you try the above method on your liverock you will kill it. Fresh Ro water will wipe it out.. only use salt water.. even then i strongly recomend its not to be done as you will only find the algae will return if the conditions are not right in the main system when the rock is re-introduced.