Hair algae taking over refugium!

[ZachP]

So I got my refugium up and running, it quickly stripped nitrates. So I’ve been dosing nitrates to keep them around 2-5ppm for the past 1-2 weeks. Now I suddenly have hair algae completely taking over my fuge, pretty sure it’s going to choke out my chaeto. Also phosphates are .02

Any ideas how to grow chaeto but not hair algae?I threw some snails down there but there’s no way they are keeping up with it

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Why do you prefer chaeto over hair algae? As long as it's growing and your removing it it is achieving the same goal. Also I doubt your nitrates are 0, the algae is just eating it up before your test kit can read it. Might be time to stop dosing nitrates...

 

[Aere]

Better there than the display!!! It's fine

 

[ZachP]

Why do you prefer chaeto over hair algae? As long as it's growing and your removing it it is achieving the same goal. Also I doubt your nitrates are 0, the algae is just eating it up before your test kit can read it. Might be time to stop dosing nitrates...

This is what I was thinking at first until I realized that hair algae is going to end up clogging up my pumps and stuff pretty quickly.

Ya maybe I’ll stop dosing for now and see what happens

 

[schuby]

Chaeto requires phosphate, nitrate, & iron to grow. When it dies, say due to lack of iron, it decomposes and releases all the phosphate, nitrate, & iron it consumed. The hair algae may be feeding on your dying Chaeto.

Why are you running chaeto when your phosphates are effectively zero and you have to dose nitrates? Seems like it will do more damage than good to your tank.

 

[ZachP]

Chaeto requires phosphate, nitrate, & iron to grow. When it dies, say due to lack of iron, it decomposes and releases all the phosphate, nitrate, & iron it consumed. The hair algae may be feeding on your dying Chaeto.

Why are you running chaeto when your phosphates are effectively zero and you have to dose nitrates? Seems like it will do more damage than good to your tank.

The tank is pretty new, 3 months old. I set it up with live rock and I’ve had very high phosphates from the beginning (I have other threads about this), believe phosphates are leaching from the rock. The refugium has been doing a great job in keeping them down as long as I dont zero out my nitrates.

I’ve heard of dosing iron to keep chaeto healthy but don’t know a lot about it. Maybe the chaeto is dying from lack of iron and that’s the problem. It did seem like that chaeto stopped growing and hair algae started all at the same time, so that would make sense to me.

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Chaeto does need iron to grow, but unless you have a way to test iron levels I don't recommend dosing it. I grow chaeto and gha in my fuge. Actually just lately the gha has been growing better than the chaeto. Fine by me. It never leaves the fuge or clogs anything