Greyish green hair algae

[Justinv201]

Help. I have been battling this algae for a week. Its kinda like green hair algae but grey. I squirt it off the corals and less than hours latter its covering the corals and rocks. I have done water changes every other day, about 20 to 30 percent. And change to filter pad daily. All the fish are fine, but worried about the corals and it just looks ugly. Heres my numbers.

Temperature 79.9 degrees
Salinity 1.024
Nitrite 0 ppm
Ammonia 0 ppm
Ph between 7.4 and 7.8 ppm
Nitrate .5ppm
Phosphate .17ppm

 

[Reef By Steele]

What do you mean by squirt it off the rocks? How long has the tank been set up? I see you have an urchin, what other CUC (Clean Up Crew) do you have?

 

[Uncle99]

Nitrate too low at .5ppm.
Bump that into 5-19ppm range.
Phosphate number good.
Maintain stability.

 

[Justinv201]

What do you mean by squirt it off the rocks? How long has the tank been set up? I see you have an urchin, what other CUC (Clean Up Crew) do you have?

Like a take a baster and blow ot off the rocks and corals. The tank has been set up for about 4 years. Besides the urchin i have some nassarius snails, blue leg hermits, and 2 astra snails, and a pepperment shrimp.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

If debris is landing on the corals and rocks, to me its an indication of not enough flow. Do you have any powerheads in the tank? Maybe need to upgrade or add another.

 

[Reef By Steele]

Like a take a baster and blow ot off the rocks and corals. The tank has been set up for about 4 years. Besides the urchin i have some nassarius snails, blue leg hermits, and 2 astra snails, and a pepperment shrimp.

Guess I’m not sure what it is if it can just be blown off the rocks. I would think that the previous reply about more flow might help if it is loose maybe it would get filtered out.

 

[Oldreefer44]

Algae, like any plant, grows when there are available nutrients to support it. Suggest verifying that your Nitrate and PO4 test results are accurate.

 

[Justinv201]

Algae, like any plant, grows when there are available nutrients to support it. Suggest verifying that your Nitrate and PO4 test results are accurate.

Yes they are accurate. I tested it twice using hanna checkers

 

[Reef By Steele]

Yes they are accurate. I tested it twice using hanna checkers

I was just reading a thread about nitrate and phosphate from @Randy Holmes-Farley and they asserted that those are not always the factor and many other things come into play as well. One suggestion is if you are blasting it off, suction it instead so as to remove it. Whenever I am battling an algae I try to remove it from the tank as much as possible to try to keep it from spreading.