green hair algae going crazy

[rbruce1000]

I need some help here, My tank has been up and running for almost a year now. All of a sudden about a month ago i started to get little patchs of green hair algae. Now this *&^%% is going crazy all over the Place. I have tested my water and everything is good. My wife is all over me about getting ride of it. For away she was starting to finially like my tank. So please some one out there help me out. I have some live rock with no corals on it. Can i take it out and do something with it. I also do 5gl water changes every week.

NO4-0.0
alk-11
nitrates-none
sal-.025

PH- 8.2 to 8.3

 

[Blue Baron]

What are your phosphate readings? What is your main source of nutrient export? How old are your lights? Do you have a cleaner crew, or something to further breakdown detritus? What is your flow like in your tank? Are you using RO/DI water for your water changes? Have you recently added anything to your tank?

 

[NaH2O]

In addition to the above questions: how large is your system? What are your inhabitants? How often and what are you feeding? Can you post a pic of the algae?

 

[rbruce1000]

my phosphate readings are zero, i check them every couple of days my Metal Hl light is only about 2 months old, PC's are about 4. My tank is 90Gl. I havent put any corals into the tank since this problem has started. I use Water from Shark reef for water changes and make up water. for fish i have one blue tang, 1 yellow eyed tang, 2 damsals, the corals are all softies. by the way my PC's are both 7100k blue. I feed my fish every couple of days one cube of formale one. I'm thinking of doing bigger water changs maybe triple of what i do now. for water flow i use 1 seio 1100 and two MJ1200 in the tank. i also have the flow coming out from the sump.


thanks for the help

 

[Blue Baron]

Do you have an ample cleaner crew? Where is all the detritus from your fish going?

 

[Skimmy]

the next time you do a water change, save the water and pull your rocks out and scrub them in the water, violently shaking them to remove as much detritus as possible, then give them a rinse in some freshly made saltwater.
a plastic bristle brush made to remove old paint works great as they are stiffer than most vegetable brushes, you can get them at lowes/home despot.

do you have a sandbed? and if so how deep, and what maintenence does it receive?
how much skimmate do you get from your skimmer daily? you should try to get about a cup a day at least.
how much flow through your sump? it sounds like you could use alot more flow, ie; 2 maxijet 1200's and a seio for a 90g isnt very much.

do you defrost and rinse your frozen food in ro water?

do you own a turkey baster for blowing detritus from your live rock a couple times a week?

 

[Krish]

Sorry to hear about your algae problem...I know how frustrating it can be. Everyone seems to have asked the majority of the important questions already. One thing that came to mind when thinking about your situation is, I can't see it necessarily being really a problem with make up water, clogged sandbed, excess phosphates and nitrates, in-adequet skimming etc because all of you numbers seem excellent with 0 po4 and nitrates. Unless...The only other thing I can think of is maybe your test kit could possibly be bad and giving you a false reading or you aren't really reading any nitrates or phosphates because the algae in your tank is using them up (which is causing it to grow thus the reason you are seeing growing numbers of algae but not showing any readings when you do tests) I've heard of this being the case many times before (unless I dreamed that ). I guess a another question would be which test kits are you using and how old are they?

 

[reedman]

Welcome to the fun of a reef tank. When my hair algae came I later found out it was fueled by elevated temps as a result of an incorrectly calibrated temp sensor. You might want to check your temp with a mercury thermometer.

Like the other posts say, nutrients are fueling the algae. Find the nutrient source and you can stop the algae. Anything disturbed recently? Re-scape the tank? Disturb sandbed? Dose anything new? Lose any animals?

 

[daytonaconnecti]

in post #6 it said, do you defrost and rinse your frozen food in ro water, how inportant is that to do? when i stwitch to bb, i started using formula 1 frozen food, every other day, what iam doing is taking a cube and thinly sliceing a little at a time, then cutting it into 4 pices so each fish will have a chance to eat, i just feed alittle and watch so not to over feed, each fish just gets alittle....

 

[blueberry]

i've heard if you take the rock out and scrub it then dip it in vinegar for a second the vinegar wil neutrilize the stuff the algae grows off of.after you rinse it in vinegar don't forget to rinse it in new saltwater before adding it to the tank.

 

[Skimmy]

yyeeeouch! never heard of a vinegar bath for my live rock, that would pretty much toast any bacteria/organisms on its surface and anywhere the vinegar contacts the rock. and it would greatly decrease the ph if even a small amount made it back into the display. you might as well boil it if your going to do that. but then you wouldnt have "live" rock.

rinsing your frozen food is fairly important, imo. probably more so for foods like brine shrimp and other fleshy foods with alot of water as opposed to the formula gel cubes.

 

[lj_smith]

Are you pulling the hair algae out. Hair algae traps detrius within it self which supplies it's own food supply as the detrius breaks down into nitrates and phosphates.

 

[NaH2O]

The only other thing I can think of is maybe your test kit could possibly be bad and giving you a false reading or you aren't really reading any nitrates or phosphates because the algae in your tank is using them up (which is causing it to grow thus the reason you are seeing growing numbers of algae but not showing any readings when you do tests) I've heard of this being the case many times before (unless I dreamed that ).

No, that is correct. If the algae are utilizing the nitrates and phosphates, then it won't be available in the water column for the sample. Another thing to try would be taking a water sample from inside the live rock, and taking a sample out of the sandbed. If any of the pore samples are measurable, then you've found the source. Sometimes its hard to narrow down a source (thinking of my tank, as I never had measurable amounts of anything either).

What type of skimmer are you using?

in post #6 it said, do you defrost and rinse your frozen food in ro water, how inportant is that to do? when i stwitch to bb, i started using formula 1 frozen food, every other day, what iam doing is taking a cube and thinly sliceing a little at a time, then cutting it into 4 pices so each fish will have a chance to eat, i just feed alittle and watch so not to over feed, each fish just gets alittle....

Rinsing in RO/DI water is good practice. When foods are caught, they get sprayed down with sodium phosphates, so by rinsing them, you are removing that extra phosphate source. You can put the frozen foods in a cup with RO/DI to let it defrost, then dump it into a brine shrimp net to remove the excess water, and use that to feed the tank.