Cyano....hair....more?

[KJoFan]

I know there’s a million and one threads on this and it would appear I’ve got cyano and possibly hair algae going on. Maybe more since it pearls in the light?

But, can anyone confirm as such?

Tank is 8 months and I know still stabilizing but I’m worried if I do nothing it will get way out of hand.

NO3 and PO4 have always and continue to test at or near zero. I will plan to test again as it’s been a week+ since I tested those and this hair stuff has come on fast.

I have increased fish load but nutrients were still undetectable and I did increase feeding so maybe that’s just providing more nutrients even if I’m not detecting them.

Nutrient export besides skimmer is chaeto which is out of control (read: huge amount). I had been running fuge light only a few hours per night due to low nutrients but recently increased due to the increased fish load and heavier feeding.

But now, I don’t know whether to increase or decrease fuge light in response. Especially if nutrients are still testing at zero.

The hairy stuff is mostly contained to the one end of the tank. On the back wall and overflow but not on the other side of the overflow, though I don’t know that the hair is exclusive to that end.

That end may be getting natural light so I’ve closed some blinds in the room to see if that helps at all.

I’m not sure what else to add. Lights are 4x Mitras LX7 over a 5’ 150g tank. I haven’t messed with spectrum or schedule at all in the 5-6 months I’ve had them. Total schedule is basically 12 hours including sunrise and sunset.

Photos I just took while blues are heavy. I tried to correct as best I could but the hair stuff is brown/rust colored but could be cyano or something with it causing the color change.

 

[sureal00]

Red Sea's NO3: PO4-X or something like dr tims aquatics refresh helps with algae management.Try skimming more wet and adding more flow to help. Sometimes you just need to get your hands in the tank and start removing all that junk manually

 

[KJoFan]

Red Sea's NO3: PO4-X or something like dr tims aquatics refresh helps with algae management.Try skimming more wet and adding more flow to help. Sometimes you just need to get your hands in the tank and start removing all that junk manually

I would hesitate to use one of those, though I have used them before, simply because my nutrients are already registering zero on my test kits. Obviously they aren't actually zero but besides the hair algae I am wondering if my issues are due to low nutrients rather than too high, or a nutrient imbalance, which is where the dinos (maybe) and cyano are coming from.

I do plan to manually remove the hair algae, but wanted to document it first.

I am hoping it's just a phase of the new tank, but if there's something I could be doing to help...

Mostly I'm wondering if I should be increasing or decreasing fuge light time or if it even makes a difference?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Leave the fuge on a reverse shed. 10-12 hr.
It’s not the fuge.

I’d wager it’s a coral food.

 

[KJoFan]

Leave the fuge on a reverse shed. 10-12 hr.
It’s not the fuge.

I’d wager it’s a coral food.

Since starting the fuge I’d had it on only a few hours a night. Maybe a max of 6 because of my non existent nutrient test results. But now with this outbreak my first thought was increase the fuge lighting time. So maybe I will give that a try along with manual removal.

I did suddenly increase feeding by quite a bit a little while back for one specific fish that wasn’t putting on weight.