Trying to understand hair algae

[beaker5377]

Hi fellow reefers.

I have been battling hair algae for a few months now (my fault i feed heavy). My issue is I stopped the heavy feeding, cleaned off any visible algae and siphoned it out, have changed out probably 200% of my water. I do have an algae scrubber and some chaeto, which seems to be doing the job at keeping my numbers around 10nitrate/.5 phos

I understand that my readings could be off as the system is using the phosphate therefor, probably giving my water test results incorrectly. My question is why is this hair algae always coming back? I've decreased feeding signifigantly over the last months. If it is coming from the rocks, is my only resolution to restart??

Thank you

 

[Jekyl]

Hi fellow reefers.

I have been battling hair algae for a few months now (my fault i feed heavy). My issue is I stopped the heavy feeding, cleaned off any visible algae and siphoned it out, have changed out probably 200% of my water. I do have an algae scrubber and some chaeto, which seems to be doing the job at keeping my numbers around 10nitrate/.5 phos

I understand that my readings could be off as the system is using the phosphate therefor, probably giving my water test results incorrectly. My question is why is this hair algae always coming back? I've decreased feeding signifigantly over the last months. If it is coming from the rocks, is my only resolution to restart??

Thank you

The ugly phase comes for all who used dry rock. Mine lasted months also. Pics of tank? Size? Clean up crew?

 

[homer1475]

More then likely, you started with dry rock, and the rock is leaching phosphates which contributes to the algae.

It will burn itself out over time. Just keep phosphates low, and keep manually pulling it out as it grows.

 

[beaker5377]

IT was indeed dry rock, when it went in about 2 years ago, can it still be leaching that far out? Will post some pics when I get home

 

[brandon429]

there was interim gardening needed, by hand, this whole time it's not about water-only controls. you need to guide your current rock, and keep it / this is the journey

there are ways of hand-removing anything bad on the rocks, where they look great every day.

I once moved into a new house and refused to mow the garden for two years similarly, eventually sufficient pressure arose to have me fix that

post a tank pic, and how many gallons.

if you really want to know about GHA you can't ask us here, you'll get only opinions. you need to source out threads that cure gha in other people's tanks, no fewer than ten pages of jobs and post the links for review, we w pick the ones that have the least tradeoff invasions and the most gha cures as the win. it's hard to find those.


-that will narrow down your consultation pool for working means. I have one/ a gha beating thread longer than ten pages but it's only helpful for tanks up to about 40 gallons, much past that and you can't rip clean the tank you're stuck with conventional methods/which makes many want to quit indeed.

 

[Jekyl]

Pics of tank? Size? Clean up crew?

 

[mtraylor]

If you want to get rid of gha you have to first
Stop the source of the problem. Then increase you clean up crew to proper size. A couple urchins will go a long way. Then let them do there job. You can also do manual removal as well. It always takes a while.

Is phosphates .5ppm or .05ppm

 

[beaker5377]

Thank you for the replies. Phos is .05. Tank has been up for about 2 years, RS350. Hopefully these pics are useful.

 

[mtraylor]

Your problem that I see is easily resolved with the proper size cleanup crew. About 30 snails and one or 2 urchins and the problem goes away and stays maintained. About 10 nesauras snails and 20 other of what you want.

 

[mtraylor]

That would be good start

 

[Turbo's Aquatics]

So the system is 2 years old, when did you put on the algae scrubber?

How long were you overfeeding prior to that?

 

[beaker5377]

So the system is 2 years old, when did you put on the algae scrubber?

How long were you overfeeding prior to that?

The scrubber has been there for about 8 months. I was generally always overfeeding :\

 

[Turbo's Aquatics]

Gotcha. Here's a possible explanation. Keep in mind, quite a bit of this falls under "anecdotal" because studies are limited, but user experience/feedback is plentiful.

When you have new/dry rock, there's always a curing period. If you "cook" them, then you set the stage for a healthy system by letting bacteria/microbes/nature do the work of ridding the rock of potential nuisance nutrients and such. But a lot of people let the rock cure in the tank. Not totally wrong, just a different set of circumstances.

Either way, if you start heavy feeding, the rock can act like a sponge in a way. your nutrients won't seem to be an issue because they don't show up on a test kit - they're getting sucked into the rockwork.

Over time, things start to balance out and (measurable) nutrients rise. Then you start changing things to get this number down (adding filtration, etc).

Putting strong algal filtration on the system sways the needle the other way: now you're sinking the nutrients into the scrubber. Those nutrients that are locked up in the rock can start to mobilize. I say "mobilize" instead of "get released" or "leech out" for a reason. Things get locked into the physical structure of rock (i.e. phosphate/phosphrus + calcium in a crystalline matrix) and also form a soft layer that is more "leechable".

The soft layer can get mobilized relatively quickly, so once you lower the N/P in the water with the scrubber, these start to get pulled out and sunk into the scrubber.

Then the hard stuff starts - by that I mean, the phosphate locked in the crystal matrix. That structure needs low pH to get broken up, and certain bacteria do this by creating a localized low pH to mobilize the phosphate. Then it gets processed by the bacteria and eventually becomes a potential food source for algae (algae and bacteria have a largely symbiotic relationship). The result is algae growth on the rocks in your tank, because you have light, flow, and food right there.

This whole process can take months to consume away all the stuff in the rocks. I've heard of it taking 6+ months. Hopefully not with yours.

One of your options is to remove all your coral and put that into a dedicated coral tank (so you can keep those in good light conditions/etc and then pull out all your rock and cook it to clear out all the junk and "reset" it. Just to be clear, "cooking your rock" does not mean literally boiling it (just covering my behind).

Other option is to acid bath the rock, followed by cooking it.

Probably a few other options, but cooking w/o acid bath is probably going to give you the best long-term results

HTH
Bud

 

[brandon429]

I support algae filters as I have never seen them linked with bringing in fish disease and wiping out a tank. In Jay's article biosecurity where he mentions the risk of reactive additions to reef tanks as disease vectors, a turf scrubber is not mentioned. ideal to try.

 

[beaker5377]

Thank you for your replies. I did indeed start with dry rock and cycled in the tank. Fortunately we are moving in the next months so I will be able to pull everything, acid bath and restart.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics]

One thing I would recommend, if you're going to have to tear it down anyways, you might skip the acid bath stage. Because that kills everything off.

What you want to do is keep the biodiversity that you have, because that's the part that takes 6-12 months to get established. You've already got it, so don't destroy it.

Pack up the rocks in 5g buckets, they can sit in those during the move and you'll retain a lot of diversity.

Then when you get settled, get a cheap stock tank (the black plastic ones) and put them all in there run some cheap power heads, a skimmer and a heater. Follow the cooking process, this uses bacteria & microbes to consume everything out of the rocks. You'll still do some water changes and dunk the rocks often to loosen the detritus (byproduct of consumption) and after that's all done, you'll have solidly healthy rocks that you can use for firing up your tank, and you'll have good biodiversity.

Side note, Algae Scrubbers seem to work better in a system with good biodiversity. So now you're setting yourself up for long term success.

Acid bath is really a last resort, a quick fix that ends up not being that quick in the long term

 

[vetteguy53081]

With a simple blackout for 3 days and addition of snails and urchis (see below) and squirting via pipette 3% peroxide to roots of the algae- you can beat this without tear down.

Snails:

asttrea
turbo grazer
trochus
cerith

Pencil urchin
8-10 carribean blue leg hermits

 

[ReefRusty]

With a simple blackout for 3 days and addition of snails and urchis (see below) and squirting via pipette 3% peroxide to roots of the algae- you can beat this without tear down.

Snails:

asttrea
turbo grazer
trochus
cerith

Pencil urchin
8-10 carribean blue leg hermits

3 day blackout out woule this have some sode affects on the corals? I did this when I had cyano which worked.