Should I worry about this "hair" on my LR?

[kerinin]

I had a bad outbreak of dinoflagellates a couple months ago and the tank is finally starting to recover, but there's still a small amount of "hair" growing in a couple places on my LR. Should I worry about it, or would this be considered "normal"?

Does anything jump out as being a problem?

Thanks!

 

[jlmawp]

How old is the tank, and what are your levels currently?

 

[kerinin]

The tank is about 6 months old, but I ended up having to raise the pH pretty high to kill off the dinos - that was about 2 months ago. Phosphates, amminia, nitrates & nitrites are all undetectable, Ca=425 Alk=3.6Meq/L pH=8.1.

One of the changes I made to the tank after the dino problem was to replace the Tunze 9004 skimmer I had been using with a much larger Reef Octopus Classic 1000. It's had a substantial impact, and I wish I'd tried that earlier.

 

[Tisbe]

I would not be too concerned right now. Are you seeing algae grow rapidly anywhere else besides the rock? If not, then my guess would be the rock releasing some built up nutrients. Where did the rocks come from?

Depending upon your equipment, husbandry techniques, how much you feed and how much nutrients are in the rock (if that is the real problem) then it could simply go away on its own over time. If you can increase the removal of nutrients it will speed up the process. Without knowing your nitrate and phosphate levels, water change cycle and other equipment you have, it is hard to advise you on a method to increase the removal of the nutrients. In my experience algae issues are solved over weeks and months so be patient on whatever path you take and give it time to work.

Some you may want to look into for this situation or ones you have in the future are (in no specific order): carbon dosing, algae scrubber, sump with macro algae & GFO. All help remove nutrients and have positives and negatives in regards to their implementation and results. Before doing any, read up and ask question if you are unsure.

 

[kerinin]

Thanks!

The tank is a Fluval m90 (37-gal). I'm running GFO and Phosguard in media baskets and doing ~10% water changes weekly. I was running a reverse-cycle light on one of the rear compartments with some chaeto in it for awhile, but it seemed to be growing more nuisance sludge than chaeto so I pulled it out. The LR is from the LFS, supposedly from Fiji.

Thanks again!

 

[Tisbe]

It sounds like you are doing fine. Since the rock is from the LFS there really is no way to know if it came from another reefer who was getting out of the hobby because their tank was over run with algae. Or it could have come from an area known for phosphates. This happens with some dry rock also. I just finished purging my rocks in the tank. Life happened and my tank basically got neglected for years 4+. The new SO looked at me one day and said either fix it or take it down. Well now, 6 months later and doing what you are doing plus carbon dosing and now the tank is beautiful again. To give you an idea of my problem, I was having to manually remove 1-2 inch long algae every 2-3 weeks and I only had 2 clowns, a 30 head frogspawn and a plate coral in my 90 gallon tank. For the previous 3 years. The key for me was adding the GFO and carbon dosing.