ID

[coopthetitan]

Hello everyone! I have been having a battle with extremely high phosphates and this algae which has almost completely taken over my tank for the past few months. I need help with IDing this algae and some steps that I can take to get rid of it. Any help would be appreciated!
15 gallon Reef Casa Studio
N Clear Fleece Roller
Protein Skimmer
Parameters
Phosphate .9 (caps out my Hanna Checker so probably higher)
Nitrate 5
Calcium 485
Alk 9.5

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

it looks like green hair algae to me. Do you do water changes? Do you dose anything? How much do you feed and what kind of food do you feed?

 

[coopthetitan]

it looks like green hair algae to me. Do you do water changes? Do you dose anything? How much do you feed and what kind of food do you feed?

Pretty average feeder. Feed lightly in the morning and lightly in the evening with an autofeeder filled with TDO chroma boost. I do a 2 gallon water change every week. I used to dose NOPOX until it crahsed my nitrates and made them undetectable. I do dose 2mls of reef energy per day for coral growth

 

[EnterName]

There are only a limited number of "green hair algae" with features distinctive enough to identify them from photos like these. However, the treatment always comes back to:

• Herbivores that are willing to eat it (CUC)
• Manual removal (e.g. a toothbrush and a tube to siphon it out directly)
• Nutrient control (even though its effectiveness is somewhat disputed by now)

Some people opt for the chemical/pharmaceutical route with fluconazole, a fungicide that disrupts the algae's ergosterol synthesis and effectively kills it, but I wouldn't go there yet.

Even though nutrient control has been questioned more and more (for valid reasons), I would still try to bring phosphate down with granular ferric oxide (GFO). It will take a while, but it's far more effective at reducing phosphate than water changes alone as phosphate depots will keep redissolving from rocks and substrate. Binding phosphate to something else instead won't waste so much water and salt, and has been proven more effective.

 

[coopthetitan]

There are only a limited number of "green hair algae" with features distinctive enough to identify them from photos like these. However, the treatment always comes back to:

• Herbivores that are willing to eat it (CUC)
• Manual removal (e.g. a toothbrush and a tube to siphon it out directly)
• Nutrient control (even though its effectiveness is somewhat disputed by now)

Some people opt for the chemical/pharmaceutical route with fluconazole, a fungicide that disrupts the algae's ergosterol synthesis and effectively kills it, but I wouldn't go there yet.

Even though nutrient control has been questioned more and more (for valid reasons), I would still try to bring phosphate down with granular ferric oxide (GFO). It will take a while, but it's far more effective at reducing phosphate than water changes alone as phosphate depots will keep redissolving from rocks and substrate. Binding phosphate to something else instead won't waste so much water and salt, and has been proven more effective.

Thank you for the response! I dont have a media reactor atm but I think that will be my next purchase. I do have media bags so ill buy some GFO at my LFS and put that in my back chambers of my AIO. It is weird that my phosphates are so high but my nitrates are so low. Is there any explanation for that?

 

[EnterName]

Thank you for the response! I dont have a media reactor atm but I think that will be my next purchase. I do have media bags so ill buy some GFO at my LFS and put that in my back chambers of my AIO.

Filter socks do the job as well. Just put some filter floss on top so the GFO doesn't clog up with detritus as quickly.

It is weird that my phosphates are so high but my nitrates are so low. Is there any explanation for that?

Carbon dosing (for example, NO₃:PO₄-X) has a stronger effect on nitrate than on phosphate.
Why?

1. Organisms need more carbon than nitrogen, and more nitrogen than phosphorus. So it's only natural that less phosphate than nitrate gets consumed, whether you compare them by weight or by moles (number of ions).
2. Even without a skimmer or water changes, nitrate has a way to leave your system: denitrification. Phosphate can't escape that way. In the ocean, it eventually gets buried in deep sediments, but there's no real equivalent to that in a reef tank (phosphate that binds to sand or rock can be released again later). So the only ways phosphate can leave the tank are water changes, adsorbers that get removed later, algae removal, or the skimmer pulling out organic phosphate or particles.
3. Many frozen foods, as well as pellets and flakes containing fish meal or bone and certain preservatives are rich in phosphate compared to nitrogen. Rinsing frozen food might actually help to some extend.
4. Ammonia/Ammonium is taken up before it is oxidized to nitrate, so it's possible there is much more nitrogen available in your tank than the tests might suggest. That's also a reason why reading 0ppm nitrate doesn't automatically mean there is a nitrogen limitation in your tank.
5. Probably many more reasons

Our testing methods are too limited to determine the N:P ratio reliably, so I wouldn't worry about the ratio between nitrate and phosphate. I actually "proved" this mathematically recently after Dan_P pointed out that N:P ratios aren't really something we can reliably work with using our testing methods.