RobbyG
Active member
Hair Algae is the hobby killer. Most people have abandoned their tanks because of a long war with algae.
I have dealt with several out breaks over 35 years of keeping tanks. I can tell you that it's not nutrients leaching pout ofo your rocks and that blackouts do nothing more than kill the larger visible sections and release back the Nitrate and Phosphate from their decay back into the water. As soon as the lights go back on the surviving spores will start to grow very quickly and in a month you will be back to square one.
They Algae needs two things to survive, nutrients and light.
Your Nutrients cannot be zero or the Algae would not be thriving. Your Nitrates and Phosphates must be something other than zero! I suggest you get new reagents and test again.
Water changes, less feeding and a cleanup crew do go a long way to solving the problem but if it doesn't you might also want to pick a method for lowering your Nitrate. Carbon dosing, Sulfur reactor. Just pick something if water changes do not solve the problem.
BTW a friend of mine has a way of getting rid of it, but he has two tanks. He removes all the fish and corals from the first tank and then does the opposite. He cranks up the light and flow until the Algae is in heaven. He lets it grow until strands are like a foot long and everywhere. Then he just harvests out the long stuff and lets the rest grow some more. Within a about two months the Algae has eaten through every nutrients in the water and just starts to die off rapidly. When its all gone He then uses a large amount of carbon in his reactor and kills the lights for three days to polish the water.
I have dealt with several out breaks over 35 years of keeping tanks. I can tell you that it's not nutrients leaching pout ofo your rocks and that blackouts do nothing more than kill the larger visible sections and release back the Nitrate and Phosphate from their decay back into the water. As soon as the lights go back on the surviving spores will start to grow very quickly and in a month you will be back to square one.
They Algae needs two things to survive, nutrients and light.
Your Nutrients cannot be zero or the Algae would not be thriving. Your Nitrates and Phosphates must be something other than zero! I suggest you get new reagents and test again.
Water changes, less feeding and a cleanup crew do go a long way to solving the problem but if it doesn't you might also want to pick a method for lowering your Nitrate. Carbon dosing, Sulfur reactor. Just pick something if water changes do not solve the problem.
BTW a friend of mine has a way of getting rid of it, but he has two tanks. He removes all the fish and corals from the first tank and then does the opposite. He cranks up the light and flow until the Algae is in heaven. He lets it grow until strands are like a foot long and everywhere. Then he just harvests out the long stuff and lets the rest grow some more. Within a about two months the Algae has eaten through every nutrients in the water and just starts to die off rapidly. When its all gone He then uses a large amount of carbon in his reactor and kills the lights for three days to polish the water.
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