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Battling GHA

Coral Reef To Classroom

Coral Reef To Classroom

I've been battling GHA awhile by physical removal and GFO. The amount of GHA growing back has reduced significantly and most of what is left is a light green to brownish color. I feel like I am close to winning this fight. Phosphates and nitrates are near zero. I am afraid to stress out my corals by bottoming out nutrients. Is it safe for me to continue attacking with GFO? How do I avoid bottoming out nutrients?
 
N

NJTaxMan

DO NOT bottom out your nutrients. Dinos are much worse than GHA. If you got ahead of the GHA and are winning, up your clean up crew. Add a bunch of hermit crabs...they will mow through it in a few days if you already got a lot of it gone. If you are near zero..i would pull the GFO.
 
R

Rueric

NJRC Member
im in a similar boat, GHA is starting to creep up.. does the GHA whittle down if we keep nutrients at a 10:1 nirate:phosphate ratio?
 
Jph

Jph

Someone on here said it best: “you don’t have an algae problem, you have a herbivore problem.” I too recently patches of hair algae in my tank. When I read that I went out bought a fresh batch of tuxedo urchins, pulled out as much as I could by hand, and let them handle the rest.
 
Foxchase

Foxchase

I got no GHA in tank but my sump is full which I don't mind bc it helps with nutrients. Key is to manually remove as much as possible and then get a large clean up crew consisting of snails, crabs, fish that will eat it, and/or even an urchin.
 
E

eholceker

NJRC Member
If you have good biodiversity in your tank bottoming out nutrients to get starve algea will not cause dino's. It can starve your corals though so be careful.
 
Coral Reef To Classroom

Coral Reef To Classroom

Thanks for the advice on the GFO. I will keep up manual removal and add more CUC. I've noticed my tomini tang has been regularly picking at it where not to long ago it had no interest. So I am pretty excited about that. I am glad I asked. I see it disappearing and I want to knock it out but I also knew removing all the nutrients would cause worse problems. Certainly not an easy or quick fix so I need to be patient.
 
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