looking for help with hair algae.

[armagedon48]

well i know what i need to do, however its not giving me the results i want!

well 10 gal display, 20 gal volume. coralife 65 super skimmer. tiny fuge of chaeto (regrown from two strands). lots of live rock and live sand mixed with crushed coral (one mistake i made in my early days. tank upgrade will be only sand)

i pull the algae about once a week and syphon it through a micron filter bag. i must admit that my efforts have reduced the hair algae growth ALOT but still it keeps coming.

i do a 5 gallon water change once a month as well.

i have also noticed that this pink/purple fuzzy algae is taking off now that the green hair algae has slowed down..

im looking for advise or anything that would reinforce what im doing.

in 2-5 weeks im moving everything into my 65 gallon tank which will have a massive refuge hooked into it.

[churchboy]

how much are you feeding your fish & coral? Cut back making sure nothing falls into the sand or live rocks.
Your phosphates may be a little high. You can run some phos media to take care of it on top of your macro algae, water changes, & skimmer. Make sure you are using RO/DI for water changes to reduce unwanted nutrients into your system.
Your lights might be turned off for some time. One to two days. This however could be detrimental to your corals especially if you have sps or clams. So I'd advise against it if you have alot of those. If you have 10k you might want to switch to 14k or 20k for kelvin rating since algae grows best & so do your corals under 10k.
Purchase an electric blue hermit crab & lawn mower blenny they love hair algae and will do alot in keeping it in check.
Use pump or turkey baster to blow any detritus off of your rocks & algae. The more that accumulates the more food for your algae.
Well that's all I can think for now, hope it helps.

[David Grigor]

There really are no secrets.

Keep nitrates and phosphates down along with good water quality so coraline can outcompete. Do as many of the below as you can:

1. Using ro/di water, keeping filters maintenance up and tds reading 0.
2. Be aware of what your feeding your tank and how often.
3. Rinsing frozen food with RO before feeding,
4. Avoiding flake food,
5. Use of a quality skimmer. Best to skim wet for phosphate removal.
6. Siphon detritus often from bottom and rocks,
7. Kalkwasser in make up water,
8. Making sure ALK and CA levels are nice and high and consitant along with ph to promote coraline to outcompete nuisance
9. Adding or increasing refugium size
10. Water changes with 0 TDS RO/DI water
11. Maintenance routines should be regimented on a regular schedule.
12. Critters can help in the near term but really are a mere bandaid.

[armagedon48]

1. Using ro/di water, keeping filters maintenance up and tds reading 0.
i wish i had a ro/di unit, however im stuck with a distiller for now, but i may have access to ro water and ill look into it.
2. Be aware of what your feeding your tank and how often.
i have my fish in a Q-tank and only feed the tank 1x per week and a small peice of fish flake for the cleaner shrimp each day.
3. Rinsing frozen food with RO before feeding,
i use cyclopeez most of the time and do use ro water ro rinse
4. Avoiding flake food,
i know, but im trying to ween myself and my fish off of this stuff!
5. Use of a quality skimmer. Best to skim wet for phosphate removal.
my super skimmer was my "upgrade" from the famous seaclone, it does a fair job but i see people get in a day, i get in a week...
6. Siphon detritus often from bottom and rocks,
i do this with water changes
7. Kalkwasser in make up water,
i dont do this yet, ill look into it.
8. Making sure ALK and CA levels are nice and high and consitant along with ph to promote coraline to outcompete nuisance
i keep these constant and have coraline algae growth, just doesnt grow fast.
9. Adding or increasing refugium size
i live by the refugium, however right now my fuge is almost non-existant. my 65 gallon upgrade will have a 60"x100"x4" fuge full of chaeto.
10. Water changes with 0 TDS RO/DI water
i dont know what the TDS is of my water, but i know its reasonably low if not acceptably low.
11. Maintenance routines should be regimented on a regular schedule.
daily blasting of the rocks with my turkey blaster and i stirr my sump to keep things from settling.
12. Critters can help in the near term but really are a mere bandaid.
i do not believe in useing critters to solve any problem. hermits only add to the bioload as do snails. my population of pods and mini brittle starfish do all the cleanup work i need.

i dont use a phosphate reactor, my fuge is all i should need. i do have a lawnmower blenny, but its because i like them. he did eat the hair algae but not a good enough job at it.

[David Grigor]

The answer lies in there somewhere. Hair algae needs nitrates and phosphates. So keep looking.

The water you use for water changes and top off could be fueling the fire. So that's the first thing I would check. While I have never used distilled and have definately heard it is inferior.

If you feeding the tank cyclopeeze as a suspention food for corals then stop until under control.

stop the use of flake for sure at least until tank back under control.

so when you say ALK/CA/PH is consistant. How do you supplement and what are your current values.

The sign that coraline doesn't grow with good CA/ALK levels is an key indicator of excessive PHOSPHATES. Phosphates inhibit calcification which is probably what you are seeing.

Tune you skimmer to run wet. The wetter pulls out phosphate better then dry skimmate. You want light green tea color skimmate and should be filling up the cup more than just once a week.

[Timmy77]

I think a UV sterilizer would help. I think a 9w would be plenty but a 20w would be nice in case you upgraded to a bigger tank. I use a 20w in my 125g and the green algae on my back glass is slowly shrinking. It's also a good ich killer at the right flow. If I could do it over I would have gotten a 40w but the 20w seems to be helping.

[armagedon48]

the distilled water is not the best. i never had a problem with water till i moved to MN because i got all my RO/DI water free from the place i worked. now i gota use what i have available. i think distilled water is inferior if it has a copper coil, the one im useing uses a glass coil. i will have to test my water for phosphates just in case now.

i still have a porcelin crab, cleaner shrimp and tons of mini brittle starfish in the tank so i do need to feed once a week. im more worried about the crab than any of the others, the cleaner shrimp gets fed whenever i have my hands in the tank lol. then the flakes, ill have to simply put them into another room to rid myself of temptation.

i dont have current values on my water, i only test when my hammer coral tells me to which hasnt been in a long time. i have two part additives, but most of the Ca and Alk are added through water changes. i dont have much calcium demand with 3 euphillia and two candy canes. when i do test the calcium, its always slightly over 400 or under 400 when a water change is due.

the coraline algae does grow actualy, just on my overflow. i dont see any growth anywheres in the tank exept for the overflow, which grows green coraline algae like mad. there is pink and even a spot of red coraline algae growing on my hang on tank filter, but still not on the rocks. the coraline algae i have on the rocks is simply what was there when i bought the rocks.

my skimmer is dialed in to skimm wet, it even overflowed today dumping this weeks cup of juice back into the tank! thankfully its pulling it back out very quickly.

if the UV sterilizer was cheap, i would love to get one. but right now i dont even have enough money to finish my tank upgrade , just enough for live rock and one fish.

[David Grigor]

You for sure need to test your ALK. Especially if only using water changes, you would likely need to do bi-weekly water changes to keep levels at or around 10dkh which is essential to promoting coraline. ALK is just as important to calcification as calcium is. If it is low then CA levels really don't matter much. Coraline alone will use both ALK and CA so yes, test regularly and supplement even with few corals as like I said coraline needs it and outcompeting the hair is essential. Also, 2 parts will help keep PH levels high which is also key to calcification. Can't speak for green coraline, mine is all purple. I have to clean off purple dots weekly from the glass and can cover a totally dead rock with coraline dots within 2 weeks, so definately can be improved and CA / ALK levels and low phosphates are the key.

UV sterilizer is going to help with suspended algae but isn't realy useful for already established algae on the rocks.

Your critter will do fine without direct food. Plenty of detritus from the rocks and sandbed to feed. When your issues are resolved you can then start back up.


Really should be looking into a quality RO/DI unit also.