Hair Algae Outcompeting Chaeto

[SaundersDVM]

I am looking for advice on my refugium. I started a new tank about a year and a half ago. It's a Red Sea Reefer 625 with 3 Radion XR15s on the display and a Kessil H160 on Grow setting for the refugium. I've added a ball of chaeto from Algae Barn 5 different times over the course of having the tank, and each time it slowly withers away as it gets outcompeted by hair algae.

Below is a list of things I have tried:
1. Increasing refugium light time/intensity
2. Decreasing refugium light time/intensity
3. Adding powerheads to get chaeto to roll
4. Dosing ChaetoGro
5. Increasing the amount I'm feeding
6. Decreasing the amount I'm feeding
7. Cleaning out the hair algae from the refugium every 2-3 days for a couple of weeks straight

Despite all of these attempts, the hair algae always wins. While trying to remove hair algae from the refugium, it eventually starts to grow on the chaeto and I am faced with the choice of removing a lot of chaeto in an attempt to get rid of the hair algae, or removing only some of the hair algae, which allows it to grow back faster. I never let the hair algae get out of control in the refugium and my Apex shows that, despite having the Kessil turn on at night and off during the day, the pH always dramatically drops at night and dramatically increases during the day. I would expect the macro/Kessil to at least keep the pH somewhat stable at night, but that's not happening. My nitrates and phosphates have been kept super low, even when feeding a lot, which is great. There is a decent amount of green algae (kept short by my snails and tang) on the rocks in the display though, so maybe that is what is helping the nutrients rather than the chaeto.

I have looked at a few threads here and elsewhere regarding this problem and every time people say hair algae works the same as chaeto, so just let it take over. The nice thing about chaeto though is it looks cleaner, and it's easier to harvest, so I would much prefer to have that! I've never had this issue in my previous tanks with refugiums, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong in this tank.

 

[LSU-reefer]

I wish I had an answer for you, but at least can tell you I feel your pain! I have the same issue, no matter what I do in the refugium, the hair algae always wins and it does nothing to reduce the algae in the tank itself.....

 

[fadijohn]

Bump.. curious if anyone has any more info on this

 

[floridareeflabs]

Our 2 cents (we love to add it).

Hair algae is a pain BUT is only occurring due to light and nutrients. Lower your phos and nitrate but keep above zero and ensure your ammonia is just above normal. Keep all other params, alk,calc,mag stable and dose some iron every 4-6 weeks. Ensure your chaeto light runs same as your tank lights and then scrubber/sump runs opposite tank lights. Dont cut back on feeding but also dont overfeed, we recommend every 3 days feed.

There are formulas based on tank size but in the end each tank is slightly different. We grow lbs of chaeto weekly so we have found the sweet spot on our system, but doesnt mean it will 100% work for all so cant give exact numbers.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Our 2 cents (we love to add it).

Hair algae is a pain BUT is only occurring due to light and nutrients. Lower your phos and nitrate but keep above zero and ensure your ammonia is just above normal. Keep all other params, alk,calc,mag stable and dose some iron every 4-6 weeks. Ensure your chaeto light runs same as your tank lights and then scrubber/sump runs opposite tank lights. Dont cut back on feeding but also dont overfeed, we recommend every 3 days feed.

There are formulas based on tank size but in the end each tank is slightly different. We grow lbs of chaeto weekly so we have found the sweet spot on our system, but doesnt mean it will 100% work for all so cant give exact numbers.

How can you suggested feeding tank every three days with out knowing what his stocking is?

 

[floridareeflabs]

How can you suggested feeding tank every three days with out knowing what his stocking

Hello,

Any tank can be fed every 3 days regardless of size and stock, but it does take knowing exactly that to feed it correctly.

We have for example 25g nano, 90g, 125g, 225g, 500g, 1000g, 2500g systems and we feed them every 3 days BUT each gets a different measurement of food based on stock and water volume etc. So your right you cant just say 3 times a week and X grams of food but as a general rule daily is too much in our opinion and 1 times a week is too little, so find what works. We just suggest every 3 days as that seems to be a happy medium overall. Obviously if you have an over stocked tank that is bursting at the seams then maybe you do need to feed every day or every other but that is really not as common in our experience.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Hello,

Any tank can be fed every 3 days regardless of size and stock, but it does take knowing exactly that to feed it correctly.

We have for example 25g nano, 90g, 125g, 225g, 500g, 1000g, 2500g systems and we feed them every 3 days BUT each gets a different measurement of food based on stock and water volume etc. So your right you cant just say 3 times a week and X grams of food but as a general rule daily is too much in our opinion and 1 times a week is too little, so find what works. We just suggest every 3 days as that seems to be a happy medium overall. Obviously if you have an over stocked tank that is bursting at the seams then maybe you do need to feed every day or every other but that is really not as common in our experience.

I would say that many aquarium life need as much as two to three times per day. The reason I have butted in, is newbies read these posts and assume all fish can be feed in this manner. A blanket statement of feed your tank every three days does not take in account many fish that need small meals through the day. Just my 2 cent's

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Bump.. curious if anyone has any more info on this

You're using a refugium to grow algae to reduce nutrients. If algae "A" grows better than algae "B", why not go with the flow and let the hair algae be your nutrient export? No different than an algae scrubber...

 

[bushdoc]

Agree that suggestion that every aquarium could be fed every 3 days is plainly baseless and I hope young reefers will not follow this advice. Or did we misunderstood it? Are we talking about fish or coral and algae feeding?
Now, hair algae and chaetomorpha-I think that once hair algae gets established, they will almost for sure outcompete chaeto.
So you can accept it as EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal suggested or give it a longer pause and keep refugium in the dark for a bit and restart from scratch.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

You're using a refugium to grow algae to reduce nutrients. If algae "A" grows better than algae "B", why not go with the flow and let the hair algae be your nutrient export? No different than an algae scrubber...

Or, try caulerpa instead of chaeto. I could not keep chaeto alive after many attempts, but find fern/feather caulerpa grows like gangbusters.

 

[bushdoc]

Or, try caulerpa instead of chaeto. I could not keep chaeto alive after many attempts, but find fern/feather caulerpa grows like gangbusters.

Yes, he could try caulerpa, it grows like weeds, unless he lives in California which bans most if not all caulerpa species.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Good thing I live in Washington, lol, I just added it to my new refugium, along with red grape and dragons breath.. way nicer looking than chaeto.

 

[floridareeflabs]

I would say that many aquarium life need as much as two to three times per day. The reason I have butted in, is newbies read these posts and assume all fish can be feed in this manner. A blanket statement of feed your tank every three days does not take in account many fish that need small meals through the day. Just my 2 cent's

Hello,

Its never butting in on here, its just lots of great information typically.

We completely agree with your statement and our statement really comes from the fact that we feel 75% of reefers over or under feed their tanks and get into out of balance situations.

We did mention that if tank is overstocked you may need to feed daily but we should have also said if you have finiky life in the tank or other requirements that feeding more often may be neededll!

Also, feeding is only a small part of it and ensuring copepod population and phytoplankton is being added. We feed every 2-3 days but our fish are not ornamental for sure but we do dose pods and phyto multiple times a week which also helps control nuisance algae and feed other tank life.


So, your right that there are many fish (sea life) that require daily or multiple times a day feeding but in our opinion if someone has fish like that they probably are not dealing with hair algae. We just recommend a schedule to stabilize tanks and get things under control. Once under control usually fish and life is added or removed and changes can be made.

Our foot is in mouth that we should have been more specific but also mentioned the other items we dose systems.



Other info that can contribute to issues:

Those who water change small amounts daily or every 2-3 weeks/monthly and feed heavy are very different than many reefers who water change once in a while and feed irregular and tend to struggle with hair algae but again not always the root cause just calling out what appears to be common.

We see and hear that so many people make a bunch of changes right away and never know what is helping or making things worse so we always say "less is more". Document each change and wait for effects then change more as needed. Feeding is usually the biggest nutrient import that sets off things per nitrates and phosphates and adding chaeto is great but if it zeros out numbers then hair algae among other things tends to surface. If chaeto cant thrive then the tank is lacking something or there is something consuming the nutrients it needs (hair algae) , which usually means not 100% stable even though basic numbers check out like alk/calc/mag/nitrate/phos/ammonia etc. Obviously light is extremely important as well, but chaeto can grow with minimal and not wither away.l but light schedules are important l.

We struggled to grow chaeto years ago and found what worked for us and it was tough when tanks were new and didnt have enough processes stabilized yet.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I am looking for advice on my refugium. I started a new tank about a year and a half ago. It's a Red Sea Reefer 625 with 3 Radion XR15s on the display and a Kessil H160 on Grow setting for the refugium. I've added a ball of chaeto from Algae Barn 5 different times over the course of having the tank, and each time it slowly withers away as it gets outcompeted by hair algae.

Below is a list of things I have tried:
1. Increasing refugium light time/intensity
2. Decreasing refugium light time/intensity
3. Adding powerheads to get chaeto to roll
4. Dosing ChaetoGro
5. Increasing the amount I'm feeding
6. Decreasing the amount I'm feeding
7. Cleaning out the hair algae from the refugium every 2-3 days for a couple of weeks straight

Despite all of these attempts, the hair algae always wins. While trying to remove hair algae from the refugium, it eventually starts to grow on the chaeto and I am faced with the choice of removing a lot of chaeto in an attempt to get rid of the hair algae, or removing only some of the hair algae, which allows it to grow back faster. I never let the hair algae get out of control in the refugium and my Apex shows that, despite having the Kessil turn on at night and off during the day, the pH always dramatically drops at night and dramatically increases during the day. I would expect the macro/Kessil to at least keep the pH somewhat stable at night, but that's not happening. My nitrates and phosphates have been kept super low, even when feeding a lot, which is great. There is a decent amount of green algae (kept short by my snails and tang) on the rocks in the display though, so maybe that is what is helping the nutrients rather than the chaeto.

I have looked at a few threads here and elsewhere regarding this problem and every time people say hair algae works the same as chaeto, so just let it take over. The nice thing about chaeto though is it looks cleaner, and it's easier to harvest, so I would much prefer to have that! I've never had this issue in my previous tanks with refugiums, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong in this tank.

I had the same issue nearly 30 years ago, and someone recommended iron dosing. I tried it and it worked.

What happened with the Chaeto grow dosing?

 

[Darkrooster]

I had this exact problem for about 7 months. I over harvested my cheato and lost it. Then replaced it with a coarser thicker type and it is a slow Grower and always lost. Then I read an article about different types of cheato growth rates. Apparently if your struggling get the very fine thin hair like cheato is grows very fast so can put compete. I looked for months and finally found some up here in Canada and I bought a huge bunch and split it to make sure I had two colonies haha. Not needed it has grown like wildfire. My nutrients are great. So see if you can identify what type of cheato you have. If made a world of difference for me! I will look for the article to post as well.

 

[Darkrooster]

Chaetomorpha Strains are Much More Different Than We Ever Knew | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Chaetomorpha is a genus of macro algae that almost every modern reefer will be familiar with, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about the thin wiry green algae. Whether you call it ‘chee-to’…

reefbuilders.com

 

[floridareeflabs]

I had this exact problem for about 7 months. I over harvested my cheato and lost it. Then replaced it with a coarser thicker type and it is a slow Grower and always lost. Then I read an article about different types of cheato growth rates. Apparently if your struggling get the very fine thin hair like cheato is grows very fast so can put compete. I looked for months and finally found some up here in Canada and I bought a huge bunch and split it to make sure I had two colonies haha. Not needed it has grown like wildfire. My nutrients are great. So see if you can identify what type of cheato you have. If made a world of difference for me! I will look for the article to post as well.

We agree! The chaeto we grow is exactly this, fine hair/fast growing chaeto. If you have the right Chaeto it will grow so fast you will need to harvest to keep from overflowing your sump, but more importantly it will be absorbing the nutrients you do not want too high in your system!

 

[stlcard]

I am looking for advice on my refugium. I started a new tank about a year and a half ago. It's a Red Sea Reefer 625 with 3 Radion XR15s on the display and a Kessil H160 on Grow setting for the refugium. I've added a ball of chaeto from Algae Barn 5 different times over the course of having the tank, and each time it slowly withers away as it gets outcompeted by hair algae.

Below is a list of things I have tried:
1. Increasing refugium light time/intensity
2. Decreasing refugium light time/intensity
3. Adding powerheads to get chaeto to roll
4. Dosing ChaetoGro
5. Increasing the amount I'm feeding
6. Decreasing the amount I'm feeding
7. Cleaning out the hair algae from the refugium every 2-3 days for a couple of weeks straight

Despite all of these attempts, the hair algae always wins. While trying to remove hair algae from the refugium, it eventually starts to grow on the chaeto and I am faced with the choice of removing a lot of chaeto in an attempt to get rid of the hair algae, or removing only some of the hair algae, which allows it to grow back faster. I never let the hair algae get out of control in the refugium and my Apex shows that, despite having the Kessil turn on at night and off during the day, the pH always dramatically drops at night and dramatically increases during the day. I would expect the macro/Kessil to at least keep the pH somewhat stable at night, but that's not happening. My nitrates and phosphates have been kept super low, even when feeding a lot, which is great. There is a decent amount of green algae (kept short by my snails and tang) on the rocks in the display though, so maybe that is what is helping the nutrients rather than the chaeto.

I have looked at a few threads here and elsewhere regarding this problem and every time people say hair algae works the same as chaeto, so just let it take over. The nice thing about chaeto though is it looks cleaner, and it's easier to harvest, so I would much prefer to have that! I've never had this issue in my previous tanks with refugiums, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong in this tank.

Have you Looked into adding uv light to your setup? Sounds like you're struggling to stabilize the "au natural refugium method".

Also, just because your test results for nitrate and po are low doesn't mean you don't have really high nutrients. You obviously do otherwise the hair algae wouldn't be thriving.

Couple ideas if you havent tried these yet

Increase water flow in the DT to get the water column cleared faster after your "heavy feedings".

Change your filter socks more frequently, if you use them.

Switch your macro algae to "sea lettuce" from algaebarn. You might have better results. (I hate chaeto because it gets everywhere).

 

[Tritie]

I had this exact problem for about 7 months. I over harvested my cheato and lost it. Then replaced it with a coarser thicker type and it is a slow Grower and always lost. Then I read an article about different types of cheato growth rates. Apparently if your struggling get the very fine thin hair like cheato is grows very fast so can put compete. I looked for months and finally found some up here in Canada and I bought a huge bunch and split it to make sure I had two colonies haha. Not needed it has grown like wildfire. My nutrients are great. So see if you can identify what type of cheato you have. If made a world of difference for me! I will look for the article to post as well.

Where in Canada? I think I'm having the same problem.

 

[floridareeflabs]

Hello. Crassa chaeto or angel hair is in our option the easiest and best chaeto to grow. It consumes nutrients so fast and can grow crazy fast. Most chaeto will die off though due to lighting issues or lack of nutrients. Example: we have seen chaeto die off in systems that were less than 8 months only while more established (“dirty”) tanks is really thrives. It wants iron,ammonia,nitrate,phosphate and some other minerals in the water. Clean water really is problematic as well as old water that nutrients have all been consumed.

As for hair algae taking over, this is also a sign of out of balance and in our experience phosphate and nitrate issues but also nothing else is out competing so we suggest adding phytoplankton as well as a good sand/rock bed in a refugium or sump that can really help with the Nitrification process so things don’t get used up faster than you can dose.

Many add chaeto in their tank and see it either die or grow wild but eventually they see it die back or stunt which is because it consumed too much and they get other issues like hair algae. Dosing nitrate/phos/iron is usually needed unless you feed a pellet type food often and or heavy aside from live or frozen foods. The other side is like mentioned they harvest too much and nutrients get super high which leads to other issues.

Every tank is different and we are just generalizing info based on experience, happy to help if any questions; just reach out!