Hairline algae

[Bryancalderon]

I have a question,
Does anyone knows how to get rid of algea hairline, I had a outbreak this last week and trying to figure out how to stop it. I heard lawnmower blennies are good?

 

[sfin52]

Increase your algea clean up crew.

 

[Mark Gray]

CUC but you need to find the cause NO3 PO4 I started a large fuge and my GHA has almost gone away now

 

[sfin52]

So what then? what's the End Game?
Haven't really talked about it much here because the thread is mostly about trying to get people past the outbreak phase.
If you've reduced dinos to invisible and are now growing lots of algae that you didn't really want, what happens next?
How much algae should we be growing? This paper lays out the large daily algae production in a reef,

Notice that in a reef that looks coral dominated and algae free, algae production is higher than coral.
Algae generally have Carbon as ~25% of dry weight, so this 3 g of C is 12 g total dry weight per square meter. algae can be anywhere from 70-90%+ water, so this 12g dry weight would be ballpark 50 or 60 grams a day fresh weight of algae in 1 square meter (or two 55gal tanks.)
So if your 55gallon tank grew 30 grams of algae a day every day, would you freak out? Probably so!
But that's what real reefs do.

This is 30 grams of algae material (less actually - I couldn't get it fully dry). Reefs grow this on average every day in the surface area of a 55g tank. And yet on a reef, you never notice it...

The difference, I would argue is grazers. Real healthy reefs have a grazer army scaled to the job. When they don't for some reason, disaster occurs. (See how urchin disease wrecked caribbean reefs)

I submit that if you know all the algae grazers in your tank by name, you ain't got enough. Nor is going out and buying a few tangs going to create balance either. A sensible approach may be to find a heavy lifter or two and then fill the gaps with algae grazers that can reproduce in a reef tank and let their population scale up to the the tank's new healthy level of algae production, let these invisible armies keep your algae in check.
(admittedly, if your livestock is voracious invert predators, this could be a big challenge.)

You'll probably also want to grow some of that algae outside the display through a fuge or scrubber or similar, but if your scrubber is so effective that with minimal grazing, there's no noticeable algae production in the display, then that sounds like you've still got the same problem.
Above all we can't view algae growth as something to be avoided. That way lies madness.

or just run a sterile frag tank and nuke it every few weeks/months when something you don't like gets a foothold.

Those are the only sustainable end games I can see.

 

[sfin52]

I know this quote came from a Dino thread but it has a lot of relevance in algea control.

 

[MOREEFIN88]

hi bryan, i'm new to the hobby too. i was reading some info of the pros and cons of starting a tank with dry vs live rock and a lot of more experienced reefers were having algea bloom problems with dry rock with good water peramiters. one of the solutions i saw that they came up with was to lower-dim, or only turn on the lights in the dt on for a cupple hrs a day or even black them out for 24 to 36 hr dpending on the coral in your tank. algae (plants) need light for photosynthesis to grow ect. if you cut out the light in the display tank your fuge <good algae> (will have a better chance to keep up.)