JHSteepat
Active Member
I’ve been fighting green hair algae/turf algae/cyano in my 150g (total) aquarium for a year or so. The tank is otherwise stable. Many corals are growing, but not the more sensitive acros. Nitrates <10, phosphate <0.1, alk 9.5, Ca 400, Mg 1350. Skimmer + turf scrubber (not growing algae well).
This is anecdotal but I went from a mess to a few light spots in about three weeks. As people have said on other threads, the herbivores probably made the difference. I was afraid to add snails again, because my last ones died off quickly.
Here are four changes that I believe turned things around. No feeding changes.
Clean up crew. Herbivores+. Added 6 Mexican Turbos, 5 trochus, a bunch of astrea, nassarius, and cerith snails, and a couple conchs. I think this was the thing that made the largest difference as my original cleanup crew didn’t last. I have three tuxedo urchins but they were not effective. Thanks to John at Reefcleaners. My original clean up crew didn’t last due to a number of things including new tank, tulip snails, hermits of unknown origin, and drip acclimation.
I don’t think it mattered, but I ran a little gfo + rox 0.8 carbon for a week. I think what matters is I have been running rox 0.8 carbon since, around 1/3 of a BRS regular reactor.
I am growing tigger pods and am dosing them once a week. I am Just dumping half a culture into the sump and adding water back to the culture. I have them in Ikea snap containers with a slow bubble and feed RG Complete, about 1ml per day.
I am dumping on alternating days 5-10 ml live nanno and tetra phytoplankton (Florida Reef Labs).
I can’t say all algae has gone, but the rocks are 99% cleaner and the corals look happier. I siphoned off some of the remaining longer algae last week and it basically fell off the rocks.
This is anecdotal but I went from a mess to a few light spots in about three weeks. As people have said on other threads, the herbivores probably made the difference. I was afraid to add snails again, because my last ones died off quickly.
Here are four changes that I believe turned things around. No feeding changes.
Clean up crew. Herbivores+. Added 6 Mexican Turbos, 5 trochus, a bunch of astrea, nassarius, and cerith snails, and a couple conchs. I think this was the thing that made the largest difference as my original cleanup crew didn’t last. I have three tuxedo urchins but they were not effective. Thanks to John at Reefcleaners. My original clean up crew didn’t last due to a number of things including new tank, tulip snails, hermits of unknown origin, and drip acclimation.
I don’t think it mattered, but I ran a little gfo + rox 0.8 carbon for a week. I think what matters is I have been running rox 0.8 carbon since, around 1/3 of a BRS regular reactor.
I am growing tigger pods and am dosing them once a week. I am Just dumping half a culture into the sump and adding water back to the culture. I have them in Ikea snap containers with a slow bubble and feed RG Complete, about 1ml per day.
I am dumping on alternating days 5-10 ml live nanno and tetra phytoplankton (Florida Reef Labs).
I can’t say all algae has gone, but the rocks are 99% cleaner and the corals look happier. I siphoned off some of the remaining longer algae last week and it basically fell off the rocks.
