Losing battle with hair algae

[ScottyD36]

I have two tanks a Fluval 13.5 gallon and a CObalt CVUE 40 gallon tank. The Fluval is almost 2 years old and my Cobalt is about 13 months old. When I first got my Fluval a few months in I had some hair algae problems that I was able to solve pretty quickly with some crabs and snails and never looked back. Now my CVUE 40 gallon I have been battling hair algae since the beginning. I have introduced crabs for it, urchins, even Tailspot Blenny to see if it would do anything. They have not touched it at all. I will pick my urchin up and put it right on top of the algae spot and it won’t even touch it. I have used peroxide to try and get it to melt away with little success. I manually remove each week with a water change. None of this worked so I put a reactor in to remove phosphate. That seemed to work a little bit but not to much. I even put a refugium in with chato try and steal some nutrients away to starve it out. My parameters are pretty normal.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite -0
Nitrate -20
Phosphate - .13
Alkalinity - 10
Calcium - 431
Magnesium - 1165
Temp - 76.6
Ph - 8
I run two Prime 16. On the Eddie Putra setting.

If anyone has any suggestion to help me out it be greatly appreciated. Here are pictures of my tank and hair algae.

 

[BostonReefer300]

Hi, sorry for your troubles. Thanks for listing your parameters---that's quite helpful. What test kit are you using for PO4? The reading you listed is high, so if your PO4 reading is accurate, that would be the most obvious culprit. Assuming your running a skimmer and collecting skimmate at a good clip, you should be able to get your PO4 down with regular water changes and that should take care of your GHA problem (which doesn't look too bad by the way).
What type of reactor are you running? GFO will strip out PO4 very fast, but then you risk bottoming out and getting a dino explosion. You should aim for PO4 between 0.1 - 0.05 ppm. You may also want to target a lower NO3. I try to keep mine in the mid single digits. Raising Mg also seems to help with algae in my experience (though others would argue about that). In any case, keeping your Mg at 1400 or even higher isn't going to hurt anything and it has several other benefits.
Hope that helps. PS I really like your major rockwork aquascape!

 

[Pkunk35]

Nice tank! Love the scallop.

the 20 nitrate and .13 phos are prob really fueling that algae which tbh doesn’t look that bad to me. Maybe reduce those slowly to get a handle at the regrowth of it once it’s pulled out. I personally like bacterial products for doing this slowly (although it’s not that slow). Again, SLOWLY from my experience, esp phosphate.

when you say peroxide, are you putting it on the algae full strength? Pieces of rock that you can pull out, try scrubbing or pulling out as much of the algae as possible then applying full strength drug store type peroxide on the area for a min or two. Hair algae should turn white and die from it within a day

 

[Pkunk35]

Hi, sorry for your troubles. Thanks for listing your parameters---that's quite helpful. What test kit are you using for PO4? The reading you listed is high, so if your PO4 reading is accurate, that would be the most obvious culprit. Assuming your running a skimmer and collecting skimmate at a good clip, you should be able to get your PO4 down with regular water changes and that should take care of your GHA problem (which doesn't look too bad by the way).
What type of reactor are you running? GFO will strip out PO4 very fast, but then you risk bottoming out and getting a dino explosion. You should aim for PO4 between 0.1 - 0.05 ppm. You may also want to target a lower NO3. I try to keep mine in the mid single digits. Raising Mg also seems to help with algae in my experience (though others would argue about that). In any case, keeping your Mg at 1400 or even higher isn't going to hurt anything and it has several other benefits.
Hope that helps. PS I really like your major rockwork aquascape!

Totally agree with the mag

 

[ScottyD36]

Nice tank! Love the scallop.

the 20 nitrate and .13 phos are prob really fueling that algae which tbh doesn’t look that bad to me. Maybe reduce those slowly to get a handle at the regrowth of it once it’s pulled out. I personally like bacterial products for doing this slowly (although it’s not that slow). Again, SLOWLY from my experience, esp phosphate.

when you say peroxide, are you putting it on the algae full strength? Pieces of rock that you can pull out, try scrubbing or pulling out as much of the algae as possible then applying full strength drug store type peroxide on the area for a min or two. Hair algae should turn white and die from it within a day

I would shut off my tank and just target shoot some peroxide onto the algae.

 

[ScottyD36]

Hi, sorry for your troubles. Thanks for listing your parameters---that's quite helpful. What test kit are you using for PO4? The reading you listed is high, so if your PO4 reading is accurate, that would be the most obvious culprit. Assuming your running a skimmer and collecting skimmate at a good clip, you should be able to get your PO4 down with regular water changes and that should take care of your GHA problem (which doesn't look too bad by the way).
What type of reactor are you running? GFO will strip out PO4 very fast, but then you risk bottoming out and getting a dino explosion. You should aim for PO4 between 0.1 - 0.05 ppm. You may also want to target a lower NO3. I try to keep mine in the mid single digits. Raising Mg also seems to help with algae in my experience (though others would argue about that). In any case, keeping your Mg at 1400 or even higher isn't going to hurt anything and it has several other benefits.
Hope that helps. PS I really like your major rockwork aquascape!

I use a Hannah phosphate tester. In my reactor I am running phosguard.

Hi, sorry for your troubles. Thanks for listing your parameters---that's quite helpful. What test kit are you using for PO4? The reading you listed is high, so if your PO4 reading is accurate, that would be the most obvious culprit. Assuming your running a skimmer and collecting skimmate at a good clip, you should be able to get your PO4 down with regular water changes and that should take care of your GHA problem (which doesn't look too bad by the way).
What type of reactor are you running? GFO will strip out PO4 very fast, but then you risk bottoming out and getting a dino explosion. You should aim for PO4 between 0.1 - 0.05 ppm. You may also want to target a lower NO3. I try to keep mine in the mid single digits. Raising Mg also seems to help with algae in my experience (though others would argue about that). In any case, keeping your Mg at 1400 or even higher isn't going to hurt anything and it has several other benefits.
Hope that helps. PS I really like your major rockwork aquascape!

I am using a Hannah test kit for the PO4. The reactore I am running is the OCT MF-800B. I run phosguard in it. I am going to use a small amount of GFO now in it.

 

[dakoop]

I am getting beat up by hair algae right now. Tagging along