Help! My tank is getting attacked by green algae

FSU3NOLES28

FSU3NOLES28

New member
I'll describe as thorough as I can... maybe you guys can help me out.

Tanks been up for 3 months... things were great until I had a bout with marine velvet. Killed all the fish in my tank. It seems like I started having this problem after I added my T5s (which were used), protein skimmer (which was used), and like an idiot listened to someone when I was topping off my water one day. Yea. I added a couple of gallons of regular tap water to my tank. My salinity had spiked to up around 1.030 and I got really nervous that the few corals I had in my tank were going to take a hit (shortly after my fish had). Don't know why I did but the kid I listened to said it shouldn't be a huge problem if I did it one time. So I did...

Since then I've been topping off with distilled water as people have advised me to do if I couldn't get RO/DI water.

all levels of Nitrates, Nitrites, PH, and Ammonia are good. I do water changes every week to two weeks. At minimum of 8 gallons per change.

Over the past 2 weeks or so I've had a large amount of green hair growing on the back of my tank. Last night I did a large water change (about 15-18g out of my 55g) I scrubbed off the back wall with a scrubber, cleaned my powerhead, pump for skimmer, my heater, and my filter. A bunch of the stuff I scrubbed landed on my substrate and I did my best to siphon it out when I was doing my water change. A bunch of it definitely settled though...

What caused my problem? Adding the tap water to top off? My lights are about a year old, do old lights increase algae?

Thanks in advance guys. I really appreciate it.
 
Your lighting schedule is fine. Could be excess nutrients that have led to the hair algea....possibly nitrate and phosphate build up

I had an issue with hair algea that was resolved by running GFO in a BRS reactor, upgrading my skimmer, getting a couple of turbo snails and cutting back on my feeding.

More info on your system..ie skimmer, water tests....might be helpful in figuring out what's going on.
 
daveml said:
Your lighting schedule is fine. Could be excess nutrients that have led to the hair algea....possibly nitrate and phosphate build up

I had an issue with hair algea that was resolved by running GFO in a BRS reactor, upgrading my skimmer, getting a couple of turbo snails and cutting back on my feeding.

More info on your system..ie skimmer, water tests....might be helpful in figuring out what's going on.
Click to expand...

System:

55g tank with live rock, 2 conchs, some red scarlet hermits, and a few corals (small xania frags, a nice sized hammer colony, a few mushrooms, a leather, a small zoa frag, and green star polyps. All my corals are doing fantastic.) I can see several of them growing new frags since I put them in.

I currently have 0 fish in it because of the marine velvet killing them off. I was told to hold tight for 3 weeks and check things again.

Aqua Remora Skimmer with MJ 1200 Pump.

Penguin Biowheel 350 filter without the wheels in it.

4 T5's. 2 white and 2 actinic that were used when I purchased them... like I said about a year old.

My parameters have always been great except a few spikes in salinity due to evaporated water.

Nitrates 2.5-5
ph 8.2-8.4
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
 
I'd add a phosphate reactor. I have a BRS reactor that I change every 4 to 6 weeks. I'd also invest in a RO/DI unit as in the long run it will save you money. I have one from the filter guys.

One important note is your nitrates and phosphate can read 0 because it is being consumed by the hair algea so testing can be misleading.
 
tap water is really bad,even for top off..Its hard to get a good reading on Nitrates and P04 with tons of algea in the tank,they hold much of them
 
Live rock also stores phosphates really well, so even after using RO/DI for awhile, you might still have GHA due to phosphates seeping back into the water from your rock. Our main tank had horrible GHA after moving it into the city. My bf and I purchased an RO/DI unit this past October, and just within the past month we finally have gotten rid of the GHA. IMO, I'd purchase an RO/DI unit ASAP and then just keep doing water changes once or twice a week for the next few months....
 
Hair algea is usually caused by nitrate or Phosphate build up like Daveml said.

Nitrate comes from couple things. Organic matter, non eaten fish food and the nitrogen cycle. (The fish pee amonia, bacteria turns that into nitrite and then another bacteria turns that into nitrate.) The only way to get Nitrate out is to make water changes.

Phosphate comes from frozen food and new water (Not 100% sure if it comes from anything else). To take it out you have to either make some water changes or buy some sort of Phosphate remover.

In my opinion what is happening to you is normal. You have a massive die off and your tank is out of balance. Adding the new lights might have played a role as well if they are stronger than what you had before.

Your nitrate should read 0. Keep making your weekly water changes. When I had that problem I did 15G water changes every week (55G) and picked the algea by hands every other days (Look for videos on youtube for that). I also connected my canister filter with new media in it.

To eliminate the problem you need to find the root cause. Check your "new water" for phosphate and other stuff. Do you feed frozen food? Maybe cut that down. Make sure you don't add too many fish at the same time.

It will take time to get your tank back to where you want it nime took about 4 months.

I hope this helps. Keep us posted.

-Sweet
 
So step 1 should be to get a phosphate kit and test my tank water for that?
When checking my "new" water for phosphates... should I just check my tap water or check water after it is mixed with my salt mixture?

Step 2: Fix my RO/DI Unit (As can be seen in a previous thread that I created.)

Step 3: Continue water changes

Step 4- possibly get a phosphate reactor

People mention keep lights out for 3 days... would that be okay to do or would my corals die because of it?
 
Idk if lights out really works or not....I certainly didn't do it because I was worried about stressing the corals too much. I also doubt that just three days of no lights will really kill the algae, and if it does, it might be more detrimental to your tank. I'm not really sure on that though, since I've never done it.

Definitely get a phosphate kit, along with the reg test kits if you don't have them. If your "new" water is RO/DI, there shouldn't be any phosphates in it, especially if you're using good salt when you make up your new water. After that, just consistent water changes (at least 1x a week, preferably more) and manual removal of the GHA (I used an extra pair of tweezers that I had...make sure to rinse in fresh water after and dry them off so they don't rust) should work.

If it's really bad and you want to speed up the process, you can either buy phosphate pads to put in your filter (make sure to rinse and change often) or a phosphate reactor. I don't own one, so I'm not sure how often you'd have to change out the phosphate media...I'm sure others can chime in with more info.

Good luck!
 
MD Ocean Girl said:
Idk if lights out really works or not....I certainly didn't do it because I was worried about stressing the corals too much. I also doubt that just three days of no lights will really kill the algae, and if it does, it might be more detrimental to your tank. I'm not really sure on that though, since I've never done it.

Definitely get a phosphate kit, along with the reg test kits if you don't have them. If your "new" water is RO/DI, there shouldn't be any phosphates in it, especially if you're using good salt when you make up your new water. After that, just consistent water changes (at least 1x a week, preferably more) and manual removal of the GHA (I used an extra pair of tweezers that I had...make sure to rinse in fresh water after and dry them off so they don't rust) should work.

If it's really bad and you want to speed up the process, you can either buy phosphate pads to put in your filter (make sure to rinse and change often) or a phosphate reactor. I don't own one, so I'm not sure how often you'd have to change out the phosphate media...I'm sure others can chime in with more info.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Perfect. Thank you.

Id assume scrubbing off the GHA with a tank scrub brush is only making things appear to be okay. Its actually not getting removed so it's probably not really helping things. Correct?
 
Yes. Unless the GHA is actually taken out of the tank, it's actually not being "removed" from the system. It's a tedious process, but picking the GHA off the rocks does work....plus, it made me feel better to see algae free rocks, even if it was just for a few days. lol

I'd also make sure to siphon your sand bed when you do water changes to try to decrease any detritus buildup in your tank. In my case, there's dead zones with little to no flow behind the rockwork in my bf's and my 40gal long, and the tank does better every time I get back there with a sand siphon and remove the buildup.
 
Here is my vote:
Dual gfo/carbon reactor. LFS usually has them. Pretty inexpensive.

More Flow, If you can afford it, switch out the rock and sand. Build an open rock structure.

Buy R/O water from LFS or somewhere with good quality water until you RO is working.

Reduce photoperiod.

Get a lawnmower blenny, cleaner shrimp and a bunch of different kinds of snails. Let them do their thing. It will not be fixed in a day but in two months.

Good Luck.

~Austin
 
I had a algae problem just after i added new lights my clean up crew was decimated by a mantis I got in some live rock,my outbreak was localized to my highest rocks on one side of my tank but spreading.I cleaned my rocks every few days by blowing water at the algae with my medicine dropper some of them had zoas or some other life on them that i didn't want to disturb by picking at it(i didn't realy remove it from the tank but my tang wolud pick at the floating algae and this might have jump started his taste for the stuff)changed my filters often,kept in-takes clean(this is in my getto starter tank with hang on filters and skimmer i am looking in to how to do an overflow but don't think I can drill it) and added 10 or so blue legs and 2 emerald crabs.my problem all but cleared up (the zoa rock still has a little and i have 1 fist sized rock that still needs a little attention)I run artinic for 10 hours and white for 4 hours and do feed my fish kinda alot but do it in small doses but they are hogs and want to eat any time I'm near the tank.I did try a lawnmower but for some reason he didn't survive very long 2-3 days so I didn't replace him this is the only loss of life I had .I carry a heavy bio load in this tank its only a 55gal and so far this is the only problem i've had aside from predation.I hope this helps it took about a month or so but looks pretty good now,yours might take a little longer without a tang but I probably wouldn't risk adding one with your velvet issue.
 
Just giving an update. Things seem to be getting better. I haven't had my white lights on as long... been running the actinics for the full 7-8 hours and the whites for about 5-6.

Just getting an awful lot of the brown dust on my glass. I think that's diatom?

I'm going to take a look at the RO/DI unit that is installed under my sink that is currently not working. Hopefully I can figure out whats wrong with it today. It'd be great to get it fixed.
 
I would definitely start with the RO unit. Then like others said a phosphate remover. They're really not too expensive, and definitely work. It should help that you're not feeding the tank.

As far as the test kits go, if you measure really low levels of Nitrate and Phosphate, you should be OK. Another thing to check and add that has worked for me in the past is Magnesium. You can add it as Mag Sulfate or Mag Chloride. It doesn't need to be done very often, but maintaining a higher level of Magnesium somehow helps keep hair algae growth down.
 
I should add that I'm not just regurgitating stuff I've read - I actually battled hair algae once and I did two things: added Magnesium and started using a phosphate remover. Within one week I noticed the algae literally dying and falling apart. I had already been using RO water for changes, keeping everything else decent and still had algae.
 
hang in there. this might be a good time to review the fundamentals. your fishless so a tank reset wouldn't sting as much. water quality,live rock, lighting ,flow. cheat any one long enough and problems are a matter of time. water is easy,buy it or make it. t5's should be replaced once a year give or take. cooking live rock /seeding dead rock will only take a few weeks. chances are you can buy, sell, or trade rock without spending much. flow is a bit harder. random /chaotic flow can be done on a budget or with plug and play units like the mp40's. it's easy to get carried away chasing symptoms and not look at the overall big picture.
 
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