what did i do wrong

SWBeginer

SWBeginer

Member
my tank is full of hair algae though i thought i did a pretty good job to maintain the tank.

I change 20% of water every two weeks.
skimmer runs fine with full cup of skimmate once a week.
feed fish with frozen mysis shrimp once a day. not feeding corals.
running GFO and carbon reactor.
all the parms are in their level.
T5 bulbs are 10" above water surface.

what else i had missed? should I does vodka?
 
Have you done any testing? Nitrate and phosphate are the big algae makers.

How long has the tank been up?

Where did you get the rock? I ask because some dry rock seems to leach phosphates. It doesn't show up with the usual test kits, but seems to be enough to get HA growth.

Do you make your own salt water? RO/DI for fresh water?

What grazing beasties do you have in the tank?
 
Dont know how true this is but I have seen people talk about low calcium causing it. Also I was having a hair algae issue. I went to feeding mysis every other day. Cause when I was feeding everyday I think I made the clean up crew lazy. I do 10% water change and clean skimmer every week, change out carbon every 4 weeks and change out phos stuff every 8 weeks and still had hair algae. So cut back your feeding to every other day and your clean up crew should start working soon
 
1kwksvt said:
Dont know how true this is but I have seen people talk about low calcium causing it. Also I was having a hair algae issue. I went to feeding mysis every other day. Cause when I was feeding everyday I think I made the clean up crew lazy. I do 10% water change and clean skimmer every week, change out carbon every 4 weeks and change out phos stuff every 8 weeks and still had hair algae. So cut back your feeding to every other day and your clean up crew should start working soon
Click to expand...

I agree with Robert on feeding the mysis every other day as well. Do you thaw the mysis in a cup of tank water and then dump it all in at feeding time? If so, I would recommend you strain the mysis through a net to get rid of the excess stuff/nutrients that the mysis are frozen with.
 
water (ro\di is the only water to use), over feeding, wrong spectrum of light (i am not saying this is the cause, but it's a huge cause), underfiltration are all the go-too reasons.

how old is the tank...if its a newly established tank, it could just be the HA phase. keep your lights off and it will go away.


Otherwise, keep your lights off for a while, stop feeding the nutrient rich mysis so frequently. (I feed PE mysis maybe 2x per week, but i feed Pellet 6x daily, and a mix of my own grocery store available seafoods (fish, squid, shrimp, scallops,etc) soaked in selcon 2x weekly)
 
tank is well established for 14 months now. yes, I use RO/DI.

(feed every other day) my pair of Baggai Cardinal only take mysis shrimps though.
will do "I would recommend you strain the mysis through a net to get rid of the excess stuff/nutrients that the mysis are frozen with. "

will a REFUGIUM help? does vodka help?
 
Reefer54 said:
water (ro\di is the only water to use), over feeding, wrong spectrum of light (i am not saying this is the cause, but it's a huge cause), underfiltration are all the go-too reasons.

how old is the tank...if its a newly established tank, it could just be the HA phase. keep your lights off and it will go away.


Otherwise, keep your lights off for a while, stop feeding the nutrient rich mysis so frequently. (I feed PE mysis maybe 2x per week, but i feed Pellet 6x daily, and a mix of my own grocery store available seafoods (fish, squid, shrimp, scallops,etc) soaked in selcon 2x weekly)
Click to expand...

Six times a day?!?!? And I thought I fed a lot lol.
 
SWBeginer said:
tank is well established for 14 months now. yes, I use RO/DI.

(feed every other day) my pair of Baggai Cardinal only take mysis shrimps though.
will do "I would recommend you strain the mysis through a net to get rid of the excess stuff/nutrients that the mysis are frozen with. "

will a REFUGIUM help? does vodka help?
Click to expand...

Yes a refugium would help with nutrient export vodka would also do the trick, but id suggest trying to find the main culprit on why all of a sudden your hair algae is growing. I only state that cause your tank has been established over a year. Anything you have changed in the last month as this began to happen? Any phosophate tests done? What's the Tds from your RO? Etc... Your just going to have to go down a list and cross each potential problem off.
 
Assuming you havent added any new rock or sand in the last few months and your T5 bulbs arent over 10 months old, then over feeding is probably the culprit. I wouldnt feed mysis more than a couple times a week. I feed pellets and nori most days, mysis on occasion.

I had a very bad hair algae breakout a couple years ago which I beleive was caused by old T5 lights, but not positive. After trying just about everything to battle it, the only thing that worked was buying a package from (reef cleaners . org) and pulling out the hair algae by hand every couple days. It toook about 10 days to clear up after recieving the clean up crew.

Of course this will only work if you also solve the reason behind the extra nutrients.

* Straining mysis is a good idea, although I tried that and didnt notice a difference. I still just throw it in the tank :)
 
I made a strainer cup out of a solo cup and a thumb tack then use another solo cup under it thaw your mysis cube in r.o. water the lift top cup out and let drain. I also turkey bast all my mysis in one at a time when my maroon clown stops chasing then I am done feeding. But dropping my feeding to every other day is what help me. I to only feed pe mysis
 
I also feed heavy but I carbon dose to combat the issue of excess nutrients.

Imo don't just try to add vodka without knowing what's going on and what your getting into. I'd say getting us some test results and pics to make sure it's not biopsies will help a bit in a recommendation. If your sure it's hair algae the above methods and getting a cuc should help you a lot. The main thing is if you have a high load of food going in you need to have a hefty way to export it. I change filter socks every 2-3 days vacuum some of my sand bed every water change, carbon dose and run a decent skimmer. And I feed about 4-5 times a day and try to keep p04 under. 09 and n03 under 10..

I actually am having an issue with too low of nutrients so I had to adjust accordingly.

Carbon dosing doesn't really remove p04 as fast as n03 so if Ha is your only reason to try it I'd say up your gfo and clean up crew and keep the p04 in check. And make sure it's actually hair algae and not the other fern looking devil =).
 
Slowly and safely raising your magnesium with TechM will kill bryopsis, the formula has a mineral impurity that's been pretty successful with killing bryopsis for a lot of people.

Running a refugium with a competitive macro algae like Chaetomorpha may also help to starve out the nuisance algae.
 
How big is your skimmer rated for? It could be your skimmer is just not pulling out enough fast enough. Is your skimmer "just at" your tank size or is it "oversized"?

I always go oversized.

Also are you sure it is hair algae vs bryopsis? Bryopsis is usually indicative of low magnesium as mentioned it.
 
zeroinverse said:
How big is your skimmer rated for? It could be your skimmer is just not pulling out enough fast enough. Is your skimmer "just at" your tank size or is it "oversized"?

I always go oversized.

Also are you sure it is hair algae vs bryopsis? Bryopsis is usually indicative of low magnesium as mentioned it.
Click to expand...
Roger that on the oversized skimmer

Hmm never heard of bryopsis being indicative of low magnesium. I experienced the opposite and actually my old tank was on the high side on mag always 1500ppm.

Bryopsis is one algae that ime is against the grain on all other ones I've encountered. Imo Your coral will die before you starve it out and there's not a chance you can use macro to starve it either.. It's the devil =) once it takes root in your tank. I battled it for over 2 years, I tried the tech m treatment numerous times(still have 2 gallons of it lol) and a few times way overshot the target level of 1850. while in my case it did make it dwindle to almost nothing it still came back eventually. And at the expense of quite a few monti colonies fwiw.

I wonder if there are a few more resilient strainsas some people can do a single tech m treatment and done and the others like me fight it all the way to tear down.. Or maybe it's to what presence you let it get to before you try to fix it..

Mine was so bad despite low numbers of p04/n03 my only way of eradication was to not include any rock that had any evidence of it in my new system and it sits dried in my back yard on the rocks it lived on. I chopped up any zoas it was present in and hacked the bases off my acros that had it around the base.

It's a terrible thing to get especially when it gets a hold and I hope I never have to deal with it ever again and I will be diligent to a T to make sure if I see it that piece either gets hacked up, tossed out or given away at full disclosure of why it is what it is.

So to the Op if your interested in telling the difference if you aren't sure let me know I have some pics somewhere(sure you can just search them faster) for reference and good luck in your algae battle
 
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