Hospital tank for Live Rock?

[DOGMAI]

As a lot of you have read (because I keep posting about it) I have a hair algae problem. I am getting ready to set up a new tank and don’t want to move my hair algae problem over to the new tank. I know I will proly have this happen in this new tank at some point but I want to be cautious anyway. I have had this tank for almost two years and never had any algae problems. Now I can’t get rid of that crap. Does anybody know if I set up a small tank and kept that water perfect if I could put the rocks with hair algae on them in there and rid each rock one at a time of hair algae? Kinda like a hospital tank for the LR. Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Thanks,
Shane

 

[tangir1]

Reminds me of a joke about a church-goer seeking a perfect congregation.... once he decide to join it, the congregation is not longer perfect.

The problem with your approach is that the existing hair algae on the rock will increase the net nutrient on the hospital tank, making it a heaven for hair algae. You may want to remove as much algae as you can to alleviate the problem, but again, this is not going to be the perfect way to solve the problem.

Keys to algae problem usually involve removal of problematic algae (not rearranging it like what snails/crabs do), limited nutrient import (with good water for both water change and topoffs), and reasonable water change.

 

[shellshocked]

Dogmai,
I have done something like this. I have a 42 gallon tank (with some live rock and a DSB) that I use for a sump and I have put heavily infested rock in this tank (which is dimly lit) and over the course of a couple of months the hair algae will die off from lack of light. The coraline algae goes wild and the rocks come out a beautiful purple, mushrooms and feather dusters seem to do okay also if they are on the rock.