Green Hair Algae

[MidTnMike41]

My tank has been up for about a year, six months in it was looking great, no algae or cyano anywhere in the tank. Almost over night all my rock turned fuzzy and within a week I had a major green hair algae outbreak. I am changing filter socks every 2-3 days, running GFO, 20 percent water change every 2 weeks, and skimming. All my water parameters looked perfect except for nitrates, they were about 50 when the GHA took over. I tried chaeto and it grew fast but so did the GHA. I finally decided to start dosing vinegar and a month later I have 0 nitrates, .02 phosphates. Its been another month with everything reading 0 but it's still there. Some of the GHA is starting to turn red.

My question .... How do I get rid of this stuff? Will it eventually die off? It's to much to remove manually. None of my fish or corals seem to be affected by it, just looks horrible.

 

[Art13]

As long as you stunt the growth with reduced nutrients, it shouldn't spread much, as long as you have a clean up crew to handle eating it, you'll eventually win the battle. Mine was dying back, but it's a slow go, i'm trying some marine algaefix to get rid of the rest, too soon to tell how it works for me. phosphate might leach from the rocks as well, and it will continue to grow in that case until the rocks even out with the tank and it doesn't leach in anymore.

 

[Sk8r]

It's phosphate overload. Check your ro/di for expiration.

 

[MidTnMike41]

I checked my water. Getting 0 onTDS.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

Sounds like your rock and sand were absorbing phosphates for the first 6 months and finally reached their saturation point and are now leaching phosphates. I'm going through the same thing since my wife was taking care of the tank while I was gone for 6 months. Just cut down on feedings and increase nutrient export. The green hair algae is just doing what nature intended it to do. Most people suggest gfo but in my opinion it's way to expensive. I'm just reducing feeding and manually removing it twice a week. It will take awhile for it to die out but it eventually will run out of phosphate to absorb.

 

[bertoni]

.02 ppm for phosphate is low, but I might try replacing the GFO more frequently. GFO can be exhausted in a few hours. Sometimes, GFO is enough to kill problem algae, but not always. Spending a few minutes a week removing as much as is easy to get might help with the process, but I wouldn't spend much more than that, personally.

Giving the vinegar dosing more time might be appropriate, too. A lot depends on how quickly you want to try to kill the pest. I had a small patch of hair algae in a tank at one point, and I just let it be. It faded away after some number of months, especially when my royal gramma started pulling it apart to catch small animals in it.

 

[Dan_P]

Funny thing about algae is that it can sit dormant and then sprout when conditions are right. Phosphate level might be the reason. It can also be just bad luck in what you put in your system.

Getting it under control takes time so be careful about trying a new remedy every couple of weeks.

 

[Dan_P]

Sounds like your rock and sand were absorbing phosphates for the first 6 months and finally reached their saturation point and are now leaching phosphates.

This is a popular conjecture, but it's just a guess. I have observed the same phenomenon with granite stones and silica sand which do not adsorb phosphate. You might want to apologize to your wife just to be on the safe side. It probably wasn't her fault.

 

[MidTnMike41]

This is a popular conjecture, but it's just a guess. I have observed the same phenomenon with granite stones and silica sand which do not adsorb phosphate. You might want to apologize to your wife just to be on the safe side. It probably wasn't her fault.

Haha. How did you know I blamed it on my wife? I'm not saying your right but your not wrong.

The only thing I plan on changing is upgrading my skimmer. I have an entry level skimmer that does ok. I made some space in my sump so I'm not limited by space anymore.

 

[SCRID]

I am fighting the same problem. My nitrates and phosphates are reading in the normal range but yet the GHA is growing like mad. I manually remove it and in 3 weeks its back to the same length. My LFS says the phosphates are high but undetectable because the GHA is using it up as fast as it is presented. My theory is that if I remove the GHA manually, and then test for p04 a day or so later shouldn't I see a spike in p04? Or another way to think of it is if p04 is cupcakes, and I brink some home every day but there are never any in the house because my wife is eating them as fast as I bring them in. Then I remove her from the house for a few days I should see an increase in cupcakes in the house? Well I've done this and never seen a spike in the p04. My next step is to test the food I'm feeding with (reef-frenzy) in a separate container with some fresh mixed salt water along side a container (control) of just salt water. And test for p04 after an hour or so.

 

[MidTnMike41]

It's funny you say reef frenzy, that's exactly what I am feeding and the algae started a few weeks after I started feeding it. It's probably not as much the food's fault as it is my own. It is hard for me to portion out the right amount in frozen foods that are not in cubes. I know I am feeding more than I should. I mean I know my wife is feeding them too much. Just kidding, I am just as guilty. Now I want a cupcake!

 

[SCRID]

Yeah before the reef frenzy I was feeding large mysis in cubes and never had GHA. The LFS talked me into the reef frenzy. My light cycle is 6.5 hours, and I have tried a 3 day blackout with no ill effects on the GHA. I have been running GFO in a reactor for about a year and a half and use phosphate RX frequently for about a year. My ATI bulbs were changed out in DEC. 2015 and still look good however the blackout test should have eliminated them from the picture.

 

[bertoni]

My theory is that if I remove the GHA manually, and then test for p04 a day or so later shouldn't I see a spike in p04?

Maybe. Other patches of the algae might grow more rapidly and consume the difference, or the precision of our hobbyist test kits might not allow you to measure the change, for example. There are other possibilities, as well.

 

[taricha]

Yeah before the reef frenzy I was feeding large mysis in cubes and never had GHA. The LFS talked me into the reef frenzy. My light cycle is 6.5 hours, and I have tried a 3 day blackout with no ill effects on the GHA. I have been running GFO in a reactor for about a year and a half and use phosphate RX frequently for about a year. My ATI bulbs were changed out in DEC. 2015 and still look good however the blackout test should have eliminated them from the picture.

Sometimes I find the N to P ratio of foods is important for determining what builds up in a system. (Nitrates or phosphates)
Mysis seems to have one of the lowest P per protein ratios of anything in this article http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

 

[Dan_P]

My theory is that if I remove the GHA manually, and then test for p04 a day or so later shouldn't I see a spike in p04?

You will never see a change in phosphate because the amount of phosphate per gram of dry weight of hair alga is small AND the grams of dry weight you harvast is miniscule. Therefore, you have simply removed a tiny amount of "phosphate extractor" and any increase the next day will be correspondingly miniscule. On top of this, you have two problems, one chemistry and one marine biology working against your theory.

The chemistry problem is the low sensitivty of our phosphate test kit. You cannot detect small changes. The marine biology problem is that we really do not know what is causing any particular alga bloom. Our assumption that all blooms are phosphate driven is convenient, maybe true, but simply a guess. Why isn't nitrogen or iron driving the bloom? The notion that the level of phosphate in the water is connected to alga growth is just a conjecture. Nutrient sources can be very local, such as a patch of sediment or a notch in a live rock while the phosphate level in the water is undetectable. So if you could measure miniscule amounts of phosphate locally, you might see no change, but you might see a change in iron or nitrate or ammonia.

I'll cover cupcakes some other time...

 

[Dan_P]

another way to think of it is if p04 is cupcakes, and I brink some home every day but there are never any in the house because my wife is eating them as fast as I bring them in. Then I remove her from the house for a few days I should see an increase in cupcakes in the house?

I hope your wife doesn't read your posts. You are really asking for it

 

[SCRID]

I may have located my trouble.
My rodi water filter is putting out 0 TDS. I always try to rinse out my 40 gallon acrylic mixing tank before use with tap water and either vinegar or bleach. Kinda hard to get all of the remaining rinse water out so I usually stick a clean towel on the bottom to soak it up before filling. Yesterday I started filling G the tank and periodically checking the rodi water stream into it And it always read 0 TDs. By the time I had 10 gallons in it I decided to check the TDs right from the tank and it read 17 ppm. The tank has a mix pump, heater, and airstone in it. Need to find out if it's just the residual tap water or the pump or heater putting impurities in the water.

 

[bertoni]

That TDS level could be a trace of contamination on some part of the equipment or carbon dioxide from the air. Carbon dioxide will dissolve and convert partly to carbonic acid, which will measure as TDS. I might rinse the container, pump, and heater and wipe them with some vinegar, but I wouldn't worry much otherwise.

 

[K.C.]

Kinda hard to get all of the remaining rinse water out so I usually stick a clean towel on the bottom to soak it up before filling.

What was the towel washed with ?

All laundry detergents contain salts, typically sodium salts such as sodium nitrate, sodium sulphate, sodium phosphate and sodium silicate.

Now that chances that you're introducing anything from the towel would seem pretty small but my point is there are nutrient sources for the algae everywhere and it doesn't take much.

Manual removal of enough to get ahead of it will go a long way. Pain the butt but we've all had to do it.

Carbon dosing, change the GFO and carbon every 2 weeks and keeping feeding to a minimum will all help.

It's a process and it takes time.