2 months in and already green hair algae???

[tooflyblm]

Hello All,


I brought a used 60 gallon cube tank with live rock and it's been up and running for almost 2 months and I'm seeing (what I believe to be) green hair algae. My water parameters are:

Salinity 1.024
pH 8.3
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10
Calcium 360
KH 6
Phosphates .25

I don't have a media reactor (yet) but I dropped a bag of PhosNet in my sump. Anything else I can do to beat this algae?

Thanks for any input.

 

[DannyB]

Do you have any CUC?

 

[rjl45]

Cuc will take care of the basic algae situation; a media reactor, or my personal favorite an algae scrubber will help with nutrient export. Basically, algae grows when it has 3 things, nitrates, phosphates and light. Too much of these and algae can grow like crazy.

What's your photo period? Running lights 10 hours, 12 hours, longer? What kind of lights? With MH or PC bulbs, as they become old the color spectrum shifts toward red, inducing more algae growth.

 

[brandon429]

Post full tank shot

The algae distribution we can see helps to plan. GHA belong on the reef and are adapted well, there is no appropriate age for a tank to correlate with GHA control, they can show up anytime.

 

[tooflyblm]

Thanks for all the replies. Hopefully, I will be able to answer all your questions

Tank is 60 gallon cube
lights are 120w full spectrum dimable led's
whites run at 30% from 3pm to 7pm
blues run at 50% from 6pm to 10:30
CUC - 10 hermits and 10 snails

 

[brandon429]

I am 100% certain changing nothing about your params, lighting, nutrients, if that tank was mine it would be algae free only through hand guiding. Your work lessens over time as coralline sets in to help exclude algae

The sandbed can be cleaned, it absolutely does not have to go through an uglies phase, that is a preference.

Your reef is perfectly balanced nothing is out of line, it is lacking matched grazers and coral covering all surfaces, outcompeting algae for space. If you leave it in the tank it may or may not go away or get worse to fill in all open real estate under strong lights.


Myriad things you could dose to the water, I wouldn't. I'd just clean the right areas, repeat guiding until maturation takes over. An entire sales industry exists to support the water-only action option, and most people won't clean because they have concerns about causing a cycle.

If you clean it safely, and use a cheat mechanism here or there results are drastically different. Zero ugly stages zero algae forever in fact, it's how I reef but not for all. There is an otherwise unspoken rule in reefing that when you set up a tank, you never lift out live rock to clean it, must stay submerged forever or you fail, no allowance to clean it or hand guide it early. Can only act by doing things to your water, never directly on target. That's a totally ok practice for someone to follow if they choose to but that method won't work for me.

 

[rjl45]

+1 with what Brandon said.
Everything looks good. I siphon the sandbed every time I do a WC. Pulling the algae out is "nutrient export" lol

 

[Salty1962]

Your going through the pains of a new tank setup. I've been going through it as well, my tank has been up @5 mths now. I bought a Lawnmower blenny and a Flame Tang, you will be very surprised at how much algae they clean up in a short period of time. Bryopsis is my only foe now

 

[tooflyblm]

Thanks for all the input. Since my last update, the algae is starting to clear up in most spots. I remove the algae that is to long for my CUC by hand. The algae that is on my rocks I remove by hand or just enough so my CUC and get to it.