So I was gone for two weeks on vacation and had an autofeeder set up on my 46 gal tank which I think was over feeding it a little. I had a small hair algae problem before I left and got some red legged hermits and upgraded my skimmer to a much larger eshopps skimmer. I'm thinking about getting a small tang or other algae eating fish to help combat the problem but am not sure what kind. I have two small ocellaris clowns and a neon dottyback currently, so I don't think overpopulation would be an issue.
Green Hair Algae help
- Thread starter sfelman
- Start date
Adding a fish to cure a nutrient problem is the wrong approach in my opinion. Most tangs won't touch hair algae anyway so you'll be stuck with even more nutrients in the system. Starve the algae. Limit nutrient import, increase nutrient export. Change socks every day, run GFO and monitor PO4 to determine when it's been exhausted, remove detritus by blowing out rocks and stirring the top layer of the sand bed and of course lots of water changes. Manual removal as well. Good luck.
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MrHarvard
"ship it"
^^^^^Bingo!!!! This will keep it from continuing to spread. If all else fails keep your lights off for a few days and cut feeding back to once every 3 days (only feed what they can eat right then and there). Scarlett's are turbos along with manual removal should rid the tank of what you currently have. GL
Alright, I've also cut back lights by 2 hours. I'll go to lfs today and get some supplies. Might pick up another starfish as well to help me stir the sand bed since I only have one brittle currently. Will also do a water change today. I don't know much about running gfo but can look into it
Alright, I currently have chaeto in my sump but I'll look at the gfo reactors and media.
Thank you, I did a API phosphate test and got .25 ppm. I decided to get a acurel phosphate filter pad and cut it into a strip and put it in the sump. I don't have any more room in my sump for a gfo reactor so would have to get an out of sump or hob type of reactor if I went for this route so phosphate rx sounds like a good option to me. I also picked up a sea hare from the flag to eat some of the ha. They said I could return it once it had done it's job for some store credit which I will do. It's one of the club sponsors so I trust them.
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MrHarvard
"ship it"
Sounds like a good plan! If you end up wanting a reactor (GFO or carbon) I just picked up one of the IM mini-max desktop reactors 3 weeks ago and I am loving it. They work great and are very compact. I have it running in one of the back chambers of my 29g AIO along with several other things (media rack, heater, skimmer, return pump, rubble rock) and it works awesome. They come in 3 different sizes and they are really compact. Just figured I would mention this. GL!
I've had cyano and bubble algae problems in the past, around 2 years ago and was able to beat them with water changes and limiting food as well as an emerald crab for the bubble algae but this is probably the worst outbreak I've had. I just recently upgraded my tank about 6 months ago so that may be part of the problem as well. Hopefully in a month or two the problem will be gone, if it continues getting worse, I may have to get a gfo reactor.
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Used to have a 20 gallon with a small intank protein skimmer meant for nano tanks. Had that tank running for about 3 years. Now I have a 46 gallon tank with a 10 gal refuge that has a eshopps skimmer rated for tanks up to 120 gal and chaeto growing under the led lights that I used to use for my 20 gal. I also have some sand from my old tank with the chaeto which has a ton of copepods and amphipods living in it currently. My main has 5 t5 bulb fixture with reflectors. that I have been running 8 hours a day. Flow is greater in this tank than in the 20 gal, sand bed is shallower however. Any other info about tank you want?
