Algae or not?

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Beeba

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 29, 2003
Messages
300
Location
Portsmouth, OH
My tank seems to be doing very well lately but I've noticed this algae type stuff growing in spots on my rock. Can someone help me identify it? What causes it and is it good or bad? I seem to be noticing more of it everyday.

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Looks like your garden variety hair algae. It is a complete pain in the you know what. It was almost enough to make me want to get out of the hobby.

You need to find out where the nutrients are coming from that are feeding it.

Good luck.
 
I agree with Jason. Beeba, how old is your set-up right now? If I'm not mistaken - it is young? Perhaps it is just part of your algae cycle. You can remove the rock and scrub the algae patches off and rinse in old water after a water change. Also, blow the areas often with a turkey baster. The detritus that gets trapped in the algae helps to continue the growth.

Do you routinely blow the LR (not just this particular one) off with a turkey baster or power head?
 
What would the nutrients be? Phosphate? I do have phosphate in my tank from a previous problem with a dechlorinator but it is gradually decreasing with every water change. Would a lawnmower blenny help? I had one but my anemone ate him. That is about how long it has been since this algae has been growing.
 
Everytime I do a water change I blow the rock really well with a powerhead. I do that until the water is mucky and then do a 1/3 change. My tank is now 5 months old.
 
Phosphates are part of the fuel. Increase the amount of blasting with a turkey baster/power head to the algae patches....try every day for a while and see if that doesn't help. Remove what you can manually, too.

Jason, what did you do to help eradicate your hair algae?
 
When removing manually will it hurt if the algae floats in the tank? I guess I'm wondering if it will just go out through the filter or if it will attach elsewhere.
 
If you can't take the rock out, you can keep a siphon close to where the manual removal is taking place.
 
I can take some out but some of it has corals on it or is on the bottom and can't be removed easily.
 
I took the two larger pieces of rock that had the most algae on them out and scrubbed them in tank water then returned them to the tank. Looks much better. I'll blow the rock with powerheads daily and try to clean off as much as I can manually. I'll post again later to let everyone know if this works. I'm sure I'm not the first to have this problem so maybe if I keep posting my results it will help others.

Thanks Nikki and Jason
 
I had that bad on my LR too

MY tank was only a few months old and I probably was leaving the light on too long every day.

I didnt' have anything but my cycle fish in so I added mini blue legged hermit crabs but they couldn't help much, so I added 6 snails, 3 different species and now 75% of my rock is back to the color it's supposed to be. The snails loved the stuff in my tank.
 
My hair algae got totally out of control. Much worse than what my first picture showed. I'm not saying it is now completely gone but it is getting better. I took all the rock that I could out and scrubbed the crap out of it in a bucket of saltwater. I then scrubbed the algae off the back of my tank and my overflow. I added a phosphate/nitrate sponge to my filter system and then turned out my lights for 3 days. My tank has never looked better. I plan to turn the lights out again for a few days this coming week. I bought a lawnmower blenny to help the tang eat the left over algae. I'm staying on top of it until it is completely under control. Here is a picture of how it looks now.
 

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