Now what? Nothing worked

[MoshJosh]

Keep in mind I am no expert, but if it were me. . . I would get rid of a bunch of current CUC especially the snails, and replace them with emeralds and pitho crabs (and accept the risks that come with them).I would manually trim, with scissors, any long bits. I would take a firm brush and scrub every inch I could effectively scrub, I have taken rocks out of the tank for this, and run fine mechanical filtration during the process and discard it after all the algae was collected. I would also consider running a fuge of some kind with chaeto. . .

Just my thoughts

EDIT: STOP FEEDING RODS! This is just my experience, but I have tried feeding Rods on two occasions and both times stopped after having uglies pop up! Literally just had this happen! I will never feed Rods again!

 

[Katrina71]

Mostly flakes and a few pellets I try to get down to the ywg/pistol.
About once a week I feed rods food.

I would try feeding only frozen for a couple of weeks. You may see a huge improvement.

 

[Katrina71]

I also see you are dosing phosphate? I would probably stop. Jmo

 

[MoshJosh]

I would try feeding only frozen for a couple of weeks. You may see a huge improvement.

I agree with trying feeding only frozen, that is what I do, but just based on my personal experience I would hesitate to suggest using Rods. I know there are people out there who swear by it, but there are plenty of others who prefer different frozen foods (in my experience Rods is most often compared to LRS and LRS seems to be the preferred choice). I feed Emerald Entrée, Marine Cuisine, Coral Cuisine, PE Mysis, PE calamus, and Prime Reef.

 

[sfin52]

Turf scrubber or a refugium this way you can control where it grows.. Algea will grow in a reef tank.s Our lights will cause it to grow. Changing spectrum may help to a degree. Remember algea grows with and around coral. That means it uses the same spectrum and par.

 

[Pvtgloss]

I also see you are dosing phosphate? I would probably stop. Jmo

I'm not Dosing po4.
I'm Dosing elima-np

 

[Katrina71]

I agree with trying feeding only frozen, that is what I do, but just based on my personal experience I would hesitate to suggest using Rods. I know there are people out there who swear by it, but there are plenty of others who prefer different frozen foods (in my experience Rods is most often compared to LRS and LRS seems to be the preferred choice). I feed Emerald Entrée, Marine Cuisine, Coral Cuisine, PE Mysis, PE calamus, and Prime Reef.

I rotate several frozen foods too. I do feed LRS and piscine pellets if I'm in a hurry. I think the binders in flake and pellets are prone to cause algae. Again, jmo.

 

[sfin52]

You could make your own

 

[Katrina71]

I'm not Dosing po4.
I'm Dosing elima-np

Ok. I see. I'd stop dosing anything. Your tank is since November?

 

[Pvtgloss]

Ok. I see. I'd stop dosing anything. Your tank is since November?

2 years this month

 

[Katrina71]

2 years this month

Ok. Yeah, I'd try only feeding frozen for a couple of weeks. I saw a huge algae growth when I had someone feed my tank just pellets for a week while on vacation. It's an easy solution to at least try without being risky to your tank.

 

[DHill6]

Do limpets eat hair algae?
Is there any cons to them?

Yes, they eat hair algae. I haven’t had a problem with them. I’ve seen them cleaning everything including skeleton sides of scoly. They’re a frilly orange snail. I have two in 34g.

 

[DHill6]

I also agree with feeding frozen, LRF is my main feed for LPS and mandarins.

 

[fluked]

I had really invasive hair algae, possibly bryopsis, but not sure on that for ages
I would spend hours siphoning it all off the rocks and it would grow back in a few days, it also meant that my nitrate was always showing 0, as any nitrate would go to growing the algae,
I tried vibrant (it didn nothing), i ended up using fluconazole, it was amazing, killed the problem algae i spent 6 months struggling against in a week.
I did lose a few lps after dosing it, but 6+ months of 0 nitrates meant they were pretty weak already, so i probably wouldn't blame the fluc there.

 

[VintageReefer]

It sounds exactly as if your rock is what’s called phosphate bound and it has spent the last year or two attaching/absorbing phosphates like a sponge

Very common for tanks in the 1-2yr age range. Happened to me on my first few reefs.

There are a few ways to fix this. None are fast. Some more efficient than others. But manual removal of algae will make the tank look better but it wont fix the root issue.

Options
Lanthanum - will work and one of the faster options but rock needs to be treated and soaked outside of the tank for a period of time. IMO I Would not introduce this back into the tank. I’ve heard bad stories….but also done properly it can work

GFO - will work but probably needs to be changed / replaced every 1-2 days for weeks to months

Water changes - will provide temporary reduction/dilution of phosphate in the water, then rock will leach (usually within 24 hours) and replace what was taken out to reach equilibrium. Constant large daily water changes for weeks to months eventually will make an impact but this is the most time consuming and laboring option

Algae turf scrubber - my method. Constant growth of turf algae constantly slowly working on pulling phosphate from water, 18-20 hours a day, and then constantly slowly the rocks are leaching it’s back into the water. As phosphate unbinds from rock it becomes hair algae and often the problem gets worse before it looks better. It’s a necessary but temporary phase. After a few weeks - months the rock wont be able to leach / release - unbind any more phosphate; and the hair algae growth will be significantly reduced or even eliminated.

The scrubber is safe and natural and is working almost around the clock for you needing no effort other than emptying a screen or compartment once every 10-14 days. Mine takes about 6 seconds start to finish to empty. Others take a minute or two. And that’s once every 10-14 days

The turf algae that scrubbers grow is over 5x more efficient than an equal amount of cheato, and it’s faster growing than hair algae. It’s basically a phosphate and nitrate sponge. And yes the display will still get phosphates and hair algae but this tips the scales in your favor reduces the amount of free phosphate available for other algae.

This is by far the easiest method but the cons are There is a larger up front cost compared to other methods and it still takes time - 1 month before scrubber is established + weeks to few months for all phosphate to release from the rock. But from then on you are in the clear and it will prevent the issues from returning

If you want to see a tank filtered only by an ats and no skimmer, GFO, water changes, filter socks/floss, etc take a look at my tank thread I keep this up to date and I have been using scrubbers 10 years on my various reefs to combat hair algae. I still get some but it’s so little I don’t even care. Food for a few snails and crabs that I enjoy having

 

[Dorsetsteve]

In my personal opinion.

You need to provide a photo of your problem. There are algaes and bacteria that look like hair algae that aren’t and they need different interventions than actual traditional hair algae. You need to establish this.

It’s been demonstrated many times that nutrient levels and nuisance algae don’t follow a perfect pattern, all of our our tanks are in excess of the natural environment where these algae’s still grow. You are doing the right thing to attempt to predate on it.

Your fish stock appears to be pretty low so you do not need to be feeding much at all. In this respect pick your poison but pick it clean for now. Food is simply nutrient in a package, whether that’s frozen or prepared (like flake) makes no difference. What creates issues is feeding too much or feeding things that don’t get eaten. If I throw an apple weighing 50g or 50g of cereal at you you’ve got a much better chance of making less mess and waste from the apple, clearly that’s an over simplification but I think we often go the cereal route and wonder why the floors a mess.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Can you show a pic in white lights? I mean, looking at your pic, I can't help but think you're over reacting lol, I don't see any algae in that pic. A couple tufts of algae are not a big deal, but I don't see what you are describing.

 

[Pvtgloss]

So I added a tuxedo urchin. He's only a half an inch in diameter. Five Mexican Turbo snails. 10 astea snails. All together they'd probably 20 astreas.
There's already 20+ hermits, a baby tang, and three mollies.
I'm going to start a Flux rx treatment today.
I've been picking it out and doing 10gal water changes every few days. It's a 55gal system. Here's a few pics of the algae. It's all over every Rock in every crack and crevice. It's hard to grab with the tweezers cuz it just slides right through them. I've tried rubber tip and stainless.