Algae Cycles

Treefer32 · Jul 11, 2020

October will be 2 years that my tank is operational. My 350 gallon display with 75 gallon sump. 120 pounds of fine oolite sand. 125-150 lbs of rock.

I have a couple rocks that I've mentioned before keep growing hair algae. My nitrates were 12-16 and phosphates .08. (Red sea pro tests). I run a Diablo DC Skimmer (rated for 500 gallons), Algae Turf Scrubber from Turbo Aquatics (L4), and A 25 micron cannister filter that I replace with a cleaned bleached cartridge every 3 weeks. I realized my DI was exhausted and putting particles back in my water change water (TDS was up to 11 on my DI output)

I replaced the DI and and replaced my top off and water change water with 0 tds water.

I went to weekly 10%-12% water changes (instead of every other week). I have seen the green hair algae dying off. It's not nearly as prevalent as it was on the rocks it covered. Still a couple small patches, but not overpowering. Great progress! However, I have massive amounts of Cyano now? It seems if I eliminate the algae the Cyano takes over. If I somehow reduce the cyano, the hair algae takes over?

Is there a correlation between what Cyano gets rid of and what Hair algae gets rid of?

Reefer5640 · Jul 11, 2020

Have you tried vibrant

Reefer5640 · Jul 11, 2020

I’ve found it gets rid of the algae at a slower rate So you don’t have a huge die off which fuel the cyano. I like chemi clean for cyano. I’ve had to kill off cyano almost every time I finally beat hair algae.

Treefer32 · Jul 12, 2020

Yeah, I've done Vibrant - fuels cyano for me. I think I'm going to wait a couple months stay on the water changes weekly or even twice a week and see if things slowly clean up.

bevo5 · Jul 12, 2020

All algae is opportunistic. When one goes, another can use up the available nutrients and take over. Managing nutrients is the only way to end that cycle.

Fluconazole is great for hair algae and won’t harm anything else. You could dose that and wait for all the hair algae to die off -then do a nice big water change and go from there. Chemiclean does work great for cyano. Maybe that one-two punch along with nutrient reduction will get you there.