Algae the bane of my existence

[Treefer32]

I started with a massive outbreak of Briopsys and some tufts of green hair algae. I used reeflux and eliminated all agae. I shut down my turf scrubber while doing this. It was all gone and pristine. I restarted my turf scrubber (which took 3-4 weeks to restart). Now a few months later, all briopsis is gone, but green hair algae came back. It seems to go through cycles of growing then dieing then growing. I hand blow a lot of it off the rocks with a turkey baster. I scrub some of the rocks with a stiff bristled brush. I get a lot of it off and try to pull out as much as I can by hand.

I have a .25 micron Nu-Clear cannister filter that catches a LOT of it. I have to replace the cartridge every 3 weeks. (Reusable cartridges)

I'm doing weekly 11% water changes with IO Salt now. Was doing every other week. I've doubled it to ever week for about 3 weeks with little to no change so far.

I have 15 fish in 340 gallons of water. I feed only what the fish eat. I have pulsing zenia that tell me my water is dirty (they're rapidly reproducing).

I've got 3-4 huge snails that just go around the outside glass and have a knock for eating the algae off my powerhead cords, but not off my rocks.... Go figure. (Then they fall of the cords and lay in the sand upside down until I right them up. )

My turf scrubber fills to softball side ball of hair algae every 6-7 days.
Other than dosing reeflux again. Killing my scrubber and restarting the process all over again, I'm not sure what else to do.

My Nitrates come in at between 12-16 (tested at this 2-3 weeks in a row) Phosphates just tested at .04. Alk at 8.4, Calcium 440, MG at around 1500-1600. (All tests are REd Sea Pro tests other than alk). Salinity is at 1.025. Temp runs 78 to to just over 79. PH runs 8.1 to 8.3.

I also run an oversized skimmer that keeps pulling yellow and brown crap out.

I thought the scrubber would remove enough nutrients. But, is there something else I should be doing to control algae in the display? Tank is going on 2 years old (operational two years with lights as of October.)

 

[Dan_P]

I started with a massive outbreak of Briopsys and some tufts of green hair algae. I used reeflux and eliminated all agae. I shut down my turf scrubber while doing this. It was all gone and pristine. I restarted my turf scrubber (which took 3-4 weeks to restart). Now a few months later, all briopsis is gone, but green hair algae came back. It seems to go through cycles of growing then dieing then growing. I hand blow a lot of it off the rocks with a turkey baster. I scrub some of the rocks with a stiff bristled brush. I get a lot of it off and try to pull out as much as I can by hand.

I have a .25 micron Nu-Clear cannister filter that catches a LOT of it. I have to replace the cartridge every 3 weeks. (Reusable cartridges)

I'm doing weekly 11% water changes with IO Salt now. Was doing every other week. I've doubled it to ever week for about 3 weeks with little to no change so far.

I have 15 fish in 340 gallons of water. I feed only what the fish eat. I have pulsing zenia that tell me my water is dirty (they're rapidly reproducing).

I've got 3-4 huge snails that just go around the outside glass and have a knock for eating the algae off my powerhead cords, but not off my rocks.... Go figure. (Then they fall of the cords and lay in the sand upside down until I right them up. )

My turf scrubber fills to softball side ball of hair algae every 6-7 days.
Other than dosing reeflux again. Killing my scrubber and restarting the process all over again, I'm not sure what else to do.

My Nitrates come in at between 12-16 (tested at this 2-3 weeks in a row) Phosphates just tested at .04. Alk at 8.4, Calcium 440, MG at around 1500-1600. (All tests are REd Sea Pro tests other than alk). Salinity is at 1.025. Temp runs 78 to to just over 79. PH runs 8.1 to 8.3.

I also run an oversized skimmer that keeps pulling yellow and brown crap out.

I thought the scrubber would remove enough nutrients. But, is there something else I should be doing to control algae in the display? Tank is going on 2 years old (operational two years with lights as of October.)

I put 15 Mexican turbos in a 75 gallon hair algae infested fish only system. All the algae was gone in 1-2 weeks, including every other macro algae. Of course, I have to feed them now because the tank is algae free.

 

[Albertan22]

3-4 snails isn’t a bib enough CUC for 340 gallons. Get yourself a mix of trochus snails, some turbos, maybe some astreas. Maybe some hermit crabs as well. Do you have any utilitarian fish in there? The tank sounds like a great size for a tang gang. My Brown tang and foxface lo nip any budding algae off the rocks before it can grow. Many of these critters won’t graze on a thick mat of hair algae, but if you manually remove it, they will graze on the new growth that comes back on the rocks.

 

[Treefer32]

3-4 snails isn’t a bib enough CUC for 340 gallons. Get yourself a mix of trochus snails, some turbos, maybe some astreas. Maybe some hermit crabs as well. Do you have any utilitarian fish in there? The tank sounds like a great size for a tang gang. My Brown tang and foxface lo nip any budding algae off the rocks before it can grow. Many of these critters won’t graze on a thick mat of hair algae, but if you manually remove it, they will graze on the new growth that comes back on the rocks.

I have 3 large tangs. 1 chocolate tang, a caribbean blue tang, and a black tang. They're all three doing great. They pick at rocks constantly, but won't touch anything that grows thick. I catch the yellow tang eating sand.... Not sure what that's about, but, they'll swim into powerheads to eat the fresh green algae growing on the tip of a powerhead... But, they won't touch the new growth on my rocks. I've got a Dragon Wrasse. He just likes to relocate snails. He hasn't eaten any yet that I've seen. But, I keep seeing them flipped over here and there. They lay there until I flip them back over, then they're off to the snail races. . . I feel like getting a 100 snails would be like the Dragon wrasse has woke up to a brand new christmas time.

 

[Albertan22]

If you get trochus snails they can flip themselves back over on their own. For some reason Astrea snails can’t do that. I’m not sure how the species has survived without that ability.

 

[Treefer32]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like algae is inevitable, it just has to be controlled. With predators like a dragon wrasse, that makes it difficult. I'll see about getting a crap ton of Trochus and maybe some more turbo snails to start with. I've gone 2 years without much of a cleanup crew.. But, I've pretty much always had algae cycles. ...