Is this Green hair algae too? Looks like a cotton ball

[Zpmada]

I attached a photo of the algae in question. The top circled algae looks hairy, so I'm certain that one is gha. What about the three that I circled on the bottom of the picture? They look more like green cotton balls than green hair.

Thank you.

 

[Sk8r]

Is it translucent, ie, kind of diffuses light in a weird way, as a pufball? There's a pale whitish 'cotton' algae that is like that. And it is harder to deal with than common 'hair.' Google 'cotton candy algae' and it will give you information, pix, and some remedies.

 

[Zpmada]

Is it translucent, ie, kind of diffuses light in a weird way, as a pufball? There's a pale whitish 'cotton' algae that is like that. And it is harder to deal with than common 'hair.' Google 'cotton candy algae' and it will give you information, pix, and some remedies.

I think it's a green hair algae of some sort. Our new bicolor blenny eats it and is controlling the growth on the rocks.

My sandbed is another problem. I have brown hair algae covering my sandbed 2 weeks after gravel vacuuming it the entire sandbed. (See attached photos).

This algae problem began after I removed two large Mexican turbo snails. They kept knocking over my frag plugs, so I thought that I could replace them with 7 red leg hermit crabs. The hermit crabs cant keep up but the blenny is taking care of the rockwork.

Maybe a smaller fighting conch for the sandbed? I heard they stay off the rocks and thus shouldn't knock over coral.

Tested my parameters:

Nitrate: 0ppm/0.2ppm (seems undetectable hard to tell)
Phosphate: 0.10 ppm
Alkalinity 7.9
pH: 8
Magnesium and calcium are fine.

I dont like that my nitrate looks like 0ppm while my phosphate are 0.10ppm. My skimmer runs 24/7. Should I turn it off? I have a film of some sort on the surface of the water so maybe the skimmer should keep running. In my sump I have a bubble/slime algae floating on the surface in corners. I feed new life spectrum food twice daily but feed slowly so everything gets eaten. Should I feed more heavily and is spectrum food low in phosphate and likely to increase my nitrate without increasing phosphate if I increase my feeding?

I gave chaeto in my sump with a grow light on for 12 hours overnight when the display lights are off. Should I cut the sump light down to 10 hours? Maybe 8 hours?
Thanks

 

[taillonjohn]

you should not have film on the surface of the water, the skimmer cant pull it from the water if its floating on top. The film is dissolved organic matter. I suggest to point a powerhead at the surface, it should be a lot of agitation, that will put the film back into the water so the skimmer can pull it out. That will be less nutrients in the water to feed the algae

I dont have a sump so I can't advise, but I figure the logic is the same, the water surface should be agitated.

 

[supperfish]

Look like green hair algae, like the one in this article https://portlandaquarium.net/coral-type/

 

[Zpmada]

Look like green hair algae, like the one in this article https://portlandaquarium.net/coral-type/

Hmm I don't see GHA in that article. Only coral types