Algae issues

[allof fish]

So last couple months I’ve really been struggling with lots of hair algae and the leafy algae. It’s all over rocks and back glass. I’ve added snails and hermit crabs to help but so far no success. Recently added some electric blue hermits as they are bigger and lfs recommended them. I have 2 tangs they do an okay job but there’s just so much to see a difference. Recently did an icp test and silicate was extremely high. Could that be an issue? I have a 4 stage rodi filter so not sure why they’re getting thru. Nutrients are fine as I try to keep nitrates 10-15 and phosphate.04-.09. Any ideas to combat issues. Thanks all

 

[Euphyllia97]

Too high nutrients. You have 10-15 ppm nitrates, but the algae is using up a lot of nitrates. So my guess would be too high nutrients. Get it down and do manual removal with each WC. Silicates could be due to a saturated DI stage of your rodi. Have you tested TDS of the filtered water? Silicates mostly go with diatoms, do you have those in the tank?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I would work on nutrient export. My belief system is to starve out hair algae. If your test is showing 15 nitrates with a bad hair algae problem, then the nutrients are likely much higher in your tank. Algae consumes nutrients much faster than algae, so trying to maintain a level of nitrate/phosphate for the corals really just feeds the algae. I always strip the water of nutrients and watch the hair algae die, and I know that as hair algae dies it releases nutrients so nutrient export should continue.