Can hair algae be toxic?

[Electrokate]

Hi,
I seem to be hijacking another thread so starting this one instead.
I have a tank with bad hair algae. It's not bryopsis. It started in the skeleton of a brain coral I was trying to grow, which was improving til the algae attacked. After a year of growth it had almost fully recovered and in 2 weeks a year's growth is gone. It almost looks like the algae attacks the coral tissue and using the turkey baster on it causes an inch of brain tissue to blow off the skeleton. I think it's toast...

When I use a turkey baster to blow off rocks the algae blows around and settles in other places where it starts growing almost immediately and kills what it touches. Mostly affects sps. The debris loosened upon the tank causes the fish to gasp and several got severe fin rot the first time I did it, suspect gill damage as well since they don't retire for the night behind the rocks since then, now they hang out in high flow areas.
If I put snails on it they close up and let the current blow them off. The yellow tang won't eat it either, if it tries it it spits it out afterwards and spits several times after like a bad taste is in its mouth.

The tank has a CPR backpack on it, also had a second skimmer a while but both the skimmers I tried in the sump were unstable. Nitrates were high for the last couple months, how high I don't know because the Doc Wellfish kit said 160+ and the Salifert said 20-40 ppm. Hard to read those color charts. Never had any phosphate in the tank. Alk is usually at 12.5 and Ca fluctuates from 400-480. Mg is usually 1050-1100 per Salifert. Salinity 1.024 temp 78.5 lights were 2 175 watt 14 Plus brand halides (they are terrible) now are XM 10K's. Actinics are T6. Fuge packed with chaeto, some caulerpa and a mangrove. Tank has been up about 14 months. That's all the details I can think of.

Am being told to remove the DSB, so will do that next. Some say get more snails, increase or decrease photo period, try a mimic tang, angelfish (got a potters in quarantine and it won't eat the stuff). Some say get rid of the rock and get new stuff, bleach or bake it, torch it, put it in the sun... I think I am going to throw away the small rubble and put the bigger stuff in a cooler with powerhead and heater and shut the lid. That ought to kill the algae at least. Some people said don't do carbon and others said increase it. I am doing Kent carbon, anyone know if this product has a good rep? Most of my nitrate trouble started with using Boyd chemipure, the stuff that is supposed to be like long acting carbon. Was hoping it would take the yellow tint from the macros out of the water. Don't know if that was a bad idea. I took it out.

Ideas? Is there a toxic strain of hair algae? I don't want to keep blowing off the rocks if it's going to kill my fish, since pretty soon it will be a FOWLR anyways. Might as well keep the fish!
Kate

 

[Elmo18]

Hi Kate.

IMO...your 'dsb' isn't made up of the right size sand particles. THe last time I saw it...it was more of a smaller crushed coral type sand. Minimal denitrification and great for detritus to get trapped. Sugar-size...i.e. oolitic, Southdown, or what I will suggest for future DSB..

At this point, I think removing the bed will be better, than leaving it in....although it is again my opinion...

I do not think hair algae itself is poisonous.

Best,
Ilham

P.S. How is the tang doing

 

[Electrokate]

It's actually that aragonite stuff sold as "aragalive". Not as big as crushed coral but you are right, it traps stuff like crazy. It's crap and I sold tons of it working at the fish store, so I guess this is my karma. SO much stuff I sold at the fish store is garbage... This present problem began with my habit of unplugging the powerheads during water changes and then forgetting about them. Zero flow... not good. The return and scwd combo is nothing in terms of force.
The water is now milky and the big anthias is laying on it's side gasping, the Monti digitata that the algae wrapped on are all dead. Ugh. Think the tank is in full crash so am just going to take it down at this point and get rid of it. I think I am better off just doing nanos. Maybe I can use the parts to make a flow through series of nanos...
Kate

 

[fishcrazee]

It's frustrating, I know Now you know how all those pioneers like on Little House on the Prairie felt, remember Pa and that first season, where he had a drought, then a fire, then like 6' of snow and they were all trapped in the cabin........ that's how I feel sometimes with my tank

 

[Electrokate]

Yeah, I have been stubborn and tried to make this tank work for a year. Nothing with it goes right and I do mean nothing. You'd be amazed. If the hair algae is not the poison I wish I knew what it is, everything is dying. When I blow off the rocks things get worse. Must be some kind of waste product? I don't know, but think I don't like this hobby much right now.
The real stubborn part is my boyfriend. If I paid for something I did with his money since I can't work. So if I buy something IE $150.00 of aragonite chips I can't just decide it was a bad decision and get rid of it. Ditto all my other bad decisions like disposable T-5's, magnetic ballasts, superskimmer that dumps water all over randomly, Marineland SOS skimmer (NOT SILENT!!!) insufficient rusting cheapo return pump, oceanic salt (Ca at 750), Hagen test kits, plastic hydrometer, tiny sump, Plus brand halides etc. Most of my mistakes were due to being cheap. LFS gave me all the sick coral and fish I could take to "save" them which meant introducing who knows what to the tank. Got flatworms, RTN, little blue starfish that eat zoanthids, every kind of pest anemone... Tried to keep acros without a calcium reactor too.
Sometimes I really like freshwater tanks. So easy... then they get fish TB or something equally fun! I need a nice mellow cheap hobby like smoking crack or something.
Kate

 

[fishcrazee]

Awww, :big hug: I know, I know, I had one of those snails that eats zoos at night, I accidently konked a fish with a rock, then the algae wars (still going on I wish I had known what I know now so I could have saved myself a bunch of money! I hope you don't give up totally, just think of all the vast experience and knowledge you have now?!

 

[Elmo18]

Keep your chin up Kate. Things will be better.

Trust me...I've killed more fish than you! Awhile back I lost about 100 or so day 3 clownfishes from a failed heater.

Things do go sour....but the next time around you're more planned for it.

Best,
Ilham

 

[Electrokate]

Well...I have also killed tons of FW fish. Some of which are sort of like, well, extinct or at least endangered. I do my best to breed what I can for these projects and sometimes things go wrong, usually involving stocking to densely and getting ill so I don't clean as often as I should. Most of my killies are of unknown status in the wild, either way I hate losing fish.
Yeah, I am plain burned out, broke and tired of listening to this huge tank make noise all night. Might sell it but then last night it occurred to me that it would be ok for discus. That's a fish I haven't tried killing before, and I hear it's really easy to do It would be a great plant tank though. Easy to light with standard flourescents. Marine fish and all the paraphenilia involved are just too expensive. I can slide a certain amount to them no problem and my friends have been very generous with their leftover supplements and such but I think considering my limited funds and bad back smaller tanks would be smarter overall.

What I really still need to figure out is what poisoned the fish? The first time I blew the rocks off there was a lot of detritus in the tank, fish immediately were gasping and the 3 anthias lost the ends of their fins, one is now dead. Each session of blowing detritus off clouded the water less, but still was stressful to that anthias. Something I blew around seemed to affect it's gills and definitely affected the fins. What could it be? And how can algae cause tissue morbidity in brain coral? Removing the sandbed might be a good idea but I am still going to need to figure out what poisoned the fish. Today the water is still pretty milky but better, I can see a few fish swimming around. Only got about 1/3 of the substrate out though. Will get the 50 up today so I can move the fish and coral over and reall get the job done.
Kate

 

[Elmo18]

Have you ever thought of a water change.......? Just a thought..

Best,
Ilham

 

[DonW]

Have you ever thought of a water change.......? Just a thought..

Best,
Ilham

Lots of medium sized water changes do wonders. It just sound like your tank is polluted. Maybe suck some of the SB out with each water change.

Don

 

[Electrokate]

I have done 3 water changes in the last 2 weeks. 1/3 of the tank in all cases with gravel vac applied. That's pretty much my solution to everything

Set up a 50 and will move the best of the rock and the fish over into that, then drain the tank and thoroughly clean out the substrate. Might just sell it at this point since it's been nothing but a source of misery from the beginning. Probably will have to find new homes for some fish though. The Montipora digitata all died, the plate corals look bad, and the anthias also died. He was such a nice fish. Funny thing is though, the problem is the rocks not the substrate. So at least some of the rocks will end up in the garden.

On the plus side the bangai's were trying to spawn yesterday, or rather the female wanted to. The male is still kind of small and young, he was trying to get away from her. Am thinking when I catch the two huge males from the big tank I might set one of them up with this female. These big males' fins are so huge the 2nd dorsal goes all the way to the tips of their tails. Hope they don't get beat up. Will use dividers to see if they go ballistic and if not will have supervised conjugal visits. I see now what the breeders say about the face color. The female's face lost all color and you could see through it. Weird. Everything I read said the male's jaw darkens but my males are always dark, but the female lightened...
Kate

 

[chazbier]

Sounds like confusion. Keep everthing simple, everthing asociated with a reef environment; your method, fish, rock, inverts, corals and equipment can get out of your control fast. The simpler the more success. Then you can complicate things and drive yourself crazy. Just don't start out that way.

 

[sryder]

kate, first thing you need to do is slow down and take a step back. you can probably ask anyone here and they will tell you of some sort of problem big and small. I for one had introduced a brain coral to my tank several months ago and the next day it was dead. the best i could figure was that as it died it released poisons into the water. the next day another coral had succumb and so on until 90% of my corals were dead. I could not change water fast enough to keep up. i believe that the rest of the corals thought they were being attacked, especially the leathers. then they i believe, released thier own toxins and started a coral war in my tank. my fish also took a hit. after it all settled and thought it was over is when the hair algae started to invade. I started the same way blowing it off of the rocks and made it worse. next i removed the rocks and scrubbed them, rinsed them and replaced them. that helped alot. I also removed any sign of algae that was on the glass, overflows and everywhere else in the tank. I did water changes, more water changes and most of the algae is now gone. there is still small patches which i remove by hand if possible and if not i remove the rock and scrub, rinse,replace. I make sure now to do proper maintenance and remove any and all detritus that i can before it breaks down. I found that smaller more frequent water changes was better for me at keeping down the nitrates especially after all of the die off. I reaquascaped my tank yesterday and was realy impressed how well the tank recoverd and looked. any way i hope this helps. keep your head up, be diligent do the proper husbandry and in no time you will be back on track. steve