red hair algae in my refugium

[jill]

Okay, everything was going great. Then we changed return pumps and I noticed that a whole bunch of stuff blew out of the returns into the display. I didn't worry about it but a few weeks later I noticed that I started to have a bunch of grey debry gathering on my rocks. I used a baster and thought I could blow it into the refugium where it would be eaten up. I did more water changes. My coraline algae started to die and I found that my calcium had dropped from 420 to 340 in a very short time. I boosted my calcium and mag but still the problem persisted.
Tonight I took a good hard look at my fuge and realized that red hair algae was choking out my calurpa. The whole thing looks like a big soggy mess.
I guess I will pull it out tomorrow and try to wash the red stuff away.
Any other ideas?

 

[iroll253]

I would try keeping the alk, calcium, and mag stable for a long period of time to get the coralline to recover. Also like you said pulling out your macro and manually removing the micro algae will deff help.

 

[Bored4ever86]

one way to get the stuff out is to take your whole ball of cheato and dip it in a bucket of old tank water (while doing a wc) and swirl/shake it in the bucket to remove as much as you can, empty the bucket and fill it again with more old tank water and do another shaking, return to refugium

as you have calurpa it won't be as easy but just blast it with a baster in the refugium, it'll dislodge the red hair/cyano and suck it up with your syphon

 

[jill]

Thanks for your advice iroll and bored. I did everything you said and the hair algae is gone. The coraline is also making a nice recovery.