Vodka dosing hair algae ?

[evanjah1]

Been out of the hobby for a decade or so.. finally made in back in .. but man I don’t remember it being so hard lol.. I have a 92 gallon corner tank . Salinity 1.026 nitrates are reading zero . Phos .25 -.50ppm according to the drop test.. now here’s my issue .. I used to vodka dose .. so I did this according to a chart I found . Probably why my nitrates are reading zero. Problem is I have a hair algae outbreak and now a little cyano. I temporarily paused vodka dosing thinking it was too much . I was only up to 1.75 mls. I hate about 110 gallons total including my sump. A bubble magnus curve 7. So it’s overkill. But hey maybe I wanna upgrade someday lol.. anyhow. I have led lights on about 8 hrs a day. My bioload isn’t super heavy. I have a few small chromis and a small octopus . A decent cleanup crew .. I’ve been manually removing hair algae and scrubbing with. Toothbrush ..I have an mp40 for flow . And I move it around recently to try and kill the hair algae. Any ideas of what I can do? The tank is maybe 2 months old now . So not super established . I bought live rock from a guy. He had it sitting in a tote with no light, just an power head for a long time .. any tips would be awesome !!!

 

[evanjah1]

Used to vodka dose as in with my old tank so I decided to do it again…

 

[rishma]

vodka dosing can be very effective for nitrates, as you’ve figure out. But is not so effective for phosphates. When nitrates are already zero, the vodka will do little to reduce phosphate. With nitrates that low, I would NOT dose vodka.

Your high phosphate could be from feeding or possibly there was high phosphate bound to the rock from previous service.

The idea that high phosphates leads to algae issues is somewhat of a debate these days. I know it used to be gospel. I’m personally on the fence, but the logic is that if there is enough nutrients to grow the hair algae, having excess doesn’t make it grow more. It’s not limiting. I think that logic is sound, I just haven’t entirely parted with dogma of years past.

New tanks often have algae battles as organisms battle to establish on fresh surfaces. Fish and clean up crew to eat the pest algae is a good approach. You likely won’t beat it by trying to starve it (and that would be bad for your current/future corals.)

If you want to reduce phosphate you’ll need to use GFO or lanthanum chloride. Your 0.25-0.5 is likely not a big issue right now. Established tanks can run well at those levels.