I wonder if I will ever figure this out

[jtl]

We have been fighting a variety of HA since day one (1.5 years). This is not anything close to an infestation probably because we pull, brush, scrape every week along with water changes. It is very close to the surface but does get around some of the frags, It is more of a red variety, not cyano, we have a little of that as well on the sand bed that gets picked off weekly. To my point. I am trying to get all of this under control and reduce the maintenance time.

My nutrients are pretty low. NO3 at 0.2 and PO4 at .040. My chaeto does not grow. I see little point in using GFO. I have thought about a tang or a lawnmower blenny but they seemed to be hit and miss. Same with urchins, crabs, ect. Any thoughts what to try next. I even thought of a ATS but if the chaeto doesn't grow with low nutrients why would that work?

 

[Frtdrmrose7]

Any pics?

 

[SPR1968]

Your PO4 is probably not that low, but is actually being used as fuel for the hair algae to grow,

Your nitrate is also very low and this along with the indicated low phosphate may be why the Chaeto isn’t growing because it has no nutrients

If it were my tank, I would use GFO and change it out on a regular basis and hopefully the HA should die off, but this can be a slow process.

When I had a HA outbreak, I solved the phosphate issue, but for a quick fix I added Vibrant liquid. It killed it off in 2 doses and because the phosphate was under control it never came back. There is a very long thread on here on vibrant.

And just be aware if your running low nutrients you could have issues with cyno if there is nothing to out compete it. Nothing wrong with nitrates of 5-10ppm, food for the corals.

 

[jtl]

Your PO4 is probably not that low, but is actually being used as fuel for the hair algae to grow,

Your nitrate is also very low and this along with the indicated low phosphate may be why the Chaeto isn’t growing because it has no nutrients

If it were my tank, I would use GFO and change it out on a regular basis and hopefully the HA should die off, but this can be a slow process.

When I had a HA outbreak, I solved the phosphate issue, but for a quick fix I added Vibrant liquid. It killed it off in 2 doses and because the phosphate was under control it never came back. There is a very long thread on here on vibrant.

And just be aware if your running low nutrients you could have issues with cyno if there is nothing to out compete it. Nothing wrong with nitrates of 5-10ppm, food for the corals.

I agree with you. My plan was to set up my reactor to run GFO and maybe dose some Neonitro to move the NO3 up a little since the GFO will not affect NO3. I never had an issue with cyano until I used Vibrant several months ago. A major piece of the puzzle is why are the nutrients high or more specifically why is the PO4 high enough to cause HA growth. I only have 5 small fish in a 100 g tank and only feed them a modest amount of food once per day. It could be that the rock is still leeching PO4 but I thought Reef Saver Rock did not have that issue. I thought about getting or making a ATS but I have a large (15 g) fuge and if chaeto won't grow why would an ATS do any better. I am at the point of just wanting to take care of what I have and grow out the coral so I can sell them as colonies and recoup some of my $$ before I tear the tank down. As much as I enjoy looking at the tank, it is time to do some extensive traveling while we are still able and not be tied to a reef tank.

 

[Super Fly]

if HA is growing in tank but chaeto wont in the sump, it's bc the tank HA is out competing the sump chaeto for NO3. ATS can help to out compete the tank HA from your sump. If u decide to try ATS, I'd suggest turning it on after cleaning the tank of HA first.

It's hard to travel while keeping a reef tank unless it's established and automated, i.e. ATO, auto feeder. Can be done, just dont put fish that only eats live food and keep fish that'll eat dry food so auto feeder will keep them alive. Longest I've been away was 11 days and tank was fine.

 

[jda]

It is probably a proximity thing. Your dead/dry rock is releasing phosphate and the GHA is closer than the other things and will grab it all up. There is no such thing as non-phosphate live dead/dry rock (even Reef Saver) - your tank is proof of this - it is a matter of how much. Terrestrial phosphate is a real thing. If people knew the total cost of using dead/dry rock, then they might have made different choices and ordered some real live rock.

If this is correct, then usually people see this start to subside in 24 months, or so, so you are getting close.

You just gotta try stuff until you hit. Pincushion Urchins can really work. So can sea hares, lettuce nudibranch, chitons and limpets - some of these will require that you turn the flow way down while they go to work. If you can get these to eat the algae down, then the amount of P in the water column can go up and you can use some GFO to remove it. Fish can work too, if the tank is large enough... rabbitfish and some of the bristletooth tangs are really good.

 

[jda]

Also, are you dosing iron or changing water? If not, then that could be why the chaeto is stalled. Macros can quickly deplete iron and it needs to be added either via water changes or a supplement. You have enough N and P in the water to grow chaeto... mine will grow with P of .01 and N of .1.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Seems to me , algae and coral need the same things to grow.
Chasing around nutrient numbers really seems pretty pointless when you consider that. Particularly when they get that low.
I played that game with bryopsis. What a waste of time and starving corals that was Batman.

Get more animals that eat alge. Thats pretty much what the old timers did. And they couldn’t test for Po4.

 

[niQo]

I feel your pain! I’ve been dealing with GHA for over a year now. Very frustrating! There have been some glimpses of victory, but I still haven’t gotten it figured out. I tried Vibrant for many weeks and although it did seem to help for the softer GHA, it made no dent in a coarser GHA/turf algae which is definitely less fun to deal with so I stopped using it. I picked up a tuxedo urchin and he mows down the algae really well and leaves the rock bare! Perhaps worth a shot?

 

[jtl]

You all make good points. Since I have the GFO sitting here I may as well give it shot. I do 10% water changes weekly and I also give the chaeto a shot of of iron once a week. I put in a little NeoNitro to raise the NO3 to 1ppm. We shall see what happens. The HA is minimal at this point because we spend way too much time scraping, pulling and brushing but I don't want to deal with a major issue like I see in some tanks. It is also a case of certain frags attracting it, not wide spread at all but I still want it totally under control so I can just let the chaeto do what it is supposed to do. I am not chasing nutrient numbers but there is a point where they support coral growth and coloration and where they don't contribute to algae and I am not there yet.

 

[jtl]

I feel your pain! I’ve been dealing with GHA for over a year now. Very frustrating! There have been some glimpses of victory, but I still haven’t gotten it figured out. I tried Vibrant for many weeks and although it did seem to help for the softer GHA, it made no dent in a coarser GHA/turf algae which is definitely less fun to deal with so I stopped using it. I picked up a tuxedo urchin and he mows down the algae really well and leaves the rock bare! Perhaps worth a shot?

Does the urchin knock things over? They also eat all of the corraline I'm told.

 

[jda]

You can get a 4 pack of urchins from ReefTopia for like $24. Add in a hundred turbos and maybe a few lettuce nudibranch and they will probably get it all. The lettuce nudis are incredibly effective, but they need the power heads turned off for a few days and then kept low for a while after this - they can get blown around and sucked through the pipes. If they knock it all back to nearly nothing, then you will need to give some of them away or they can starve and die.

Urchins can eat coralline, but they will not usually until all of the soft algae is gone. I have urchins and still more coralline that I want - I wish that they would eat more. They can knock things over, but not as much as a Mexican Turbo. You might have to risk losing a bit of coralline and picking up a few things to make progress.

 

[jtl]

You can get a 4 pack of urchins from ReefTopia for like $24. Add in a hundred turbos and maybe a few lettuce nudibranch and they will probably get it all. The lettuce nudis are incredibly effective, but they need the power heads turned off for a few days and then kept low for a while after this - they can get blown around and sucked through the pipes. If they knock it all back to nearly nothing, then you will need to give some of them away or they can starve and die.

Urchins can eat coralline, but they will not usually until all of the soft algae is gone. I have urchins and still more coralline that I want - I wish that they would eat more. They can knock things over, but not as much as a Mexican Turbo. You might have to risk losing a bit of coralline and picking up a few things to make progress.

Urchin maybe but no way 100 turbos

 

[PapaWhisky]

What lighting do you have in your sump? I was having a similar issue (Algae in tank, Cheato not growing in sump). I changed out my light for a Kessil Tuna Flora. Two weeks later my Chaeto had doubled in size and the tank algae was gone.

 

[jtl]

What lighting do you have in your sump? I was having a similar issue (Algae in tank, Cheato not growing in sump). I changed out my light for a Kessil Tuna Flora. Two weeks later my Chaeto had doubled in size and the tank algae was gone.

I am using a par 38 that has mostly red and some blue. Reefbreeders used to sell them and they are close in spectrum to a Kessil H380 or so I think. I once had pretty good growth of chaeto. Things all seemed to go south when I dosed flukes after losing a couple of fish, than algae started to grow to I dosed Vibrant which did nothing except encourage the growth of cyano. At one point I even dosed H2O2 which seemed to help a little but at what expense to corals I don't know.