Organic Matter/Detritus Trapped in Hair Algae

[scuba-al]

There is a whitish yellowish brown matter that accumulates on and under my live rock within the hair algae and in my live sand (no hair algae). Simply moving the magnet cleaner within 3" of a piece of live rock causes a small cloud of detritus and/or organic matter (???) to float around the tank for an hour or two. This obviously cannot be healthy or right for my tank.

The strange thing is, I siphon as much hair algae off my rocks when I do my weekly 4 gallon water changes (~15%). Yet, the rocks still obviously contain that detritus on their surface. Again, I do have a hair algae outbreak so this past week or so I have been doing 1-2 gallon water changes daily. This is when I REALLY noticed that the detritus is all over my rocks.

Stats: JBJ Nano 28 Gallon 14 months old with 17 pounds of Tongan live rock, 105 watts total of PC's (5 hrs daily), 1 watchman goby, 1 4" frag of Kenya tree coral, and 6 palythoa polyps. pH is 8.4. I do weekly water changes of 4 gallons (~15%) and have 15 cerith snails which keep micro-algae levels perfect. Any snails not as small and slender as ceriths perform the dreaded "bulldozer effect" on my Tongan live rock. I feed 2 random palythoa polyps very small pieces of fish weekly and my goby a small piece of fish (the size of his eye) twice a week. No skimmer (don't give me crap about this my system has been perfect on just water changes until this HA outbreak).

Should I brush the crud off with a toothbrush in the dirty, siphoned off water or pluck out as much hair algae as I can? When I pluck out the HA the tank is full of whitish particulates for hours.

 

[Zappo]

Plucking algae tends to make it spread unless you remove the rock from the tank first because of all the little stray hairs that drift away. Normally I'd say increase your flow or move the powerheads so that they kick up the detritus and send it to the sump or skimmer. But since you have neither, siphoning it out regularly is about your only option.

 

[scuba-al]

The flow is as high as it goes for the pumps, I'll move around the powerhead

 

[elegance coral]

Detritus is rotting organic matter. Hair algae is very good a trapping detritus, which then fertilizes more hair algae growth. In the wild, it often traps so much detritus beneath it, that the algae is no longer attached to the surface it started growing on. It's just growing on the thick layer of detritus. You can simply lift it up like a piece of sod.

Your tank is probably so loaded with phosphate at this point, that it will take a long time to remedy the problem. Personally, I would break it down and start over, but I'm sure you don't want to do that.

Short of a complete overhaul, you'll just have to keep sucking as much hair algae and detritus out of the tank as possible. You can't allow detritus to accumulate anywhere in the system. Even the sand bed. Eventually, you should be able to get a handle on this problem, but it will take a long time. I wouldn't purchase any stony corals until this problem is solved.

 

[hollister]

You want good water flow to reduce excess from collecting and control feeding habits for a good start.

Whats used for water flow and do you have a lid on your tank?