Algae ID

[jk1151]

Hi. My tank is not quiet a year old yet. I just beat cyano and now I have what I thought was green hair algae but my convict tang doesn’t seem to be eating it so now I’m worried it’s bryopsis. It’s growing mostly in the lower flow area of my tank. Any help on if it’s hair algae or bryopisis is welcome. I can work on a better pic too If needed. Thank you!

 

[boehm742]

Looks like GHA to me. As for help beating it, im of no help, im dealing with a nightmare of it myself for months now...

 

[Uncle99]

Yup, GHA,.
Can you post your N and P values and how long they have remained that way.
Certainly you have a phosphate/lighting issue going on if your tank is a year.
Pull it off and out, scrub, lower nutrients (trace, not zero) and once done, consider Vibrant.

Herb fish and CUC are good for general maintaining, but won’t fix that, that’s a chemistry/ lighting issue when a tank has GHA and is at least a year old

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hair algae.
What is your phosphate level and are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
By chance, is your tank at or near a window?

Pull as much as you can by hand and reduce white light intensity. If it persists, liquid vibrant will help get rid of it also.

 

[JGT]

Green hair algae. Bubbles are very common. Manually remove/siphon out, check NO3 and PO4 are in range, lessen feeding, shorten light intervals, add CUC if you don’t have and a tang or 2 depending on tank size and lawnmower blenny. Be patient. Will take time to eradicate.

 

[Gobi-Wan]

Hi. My tank is not quiet a year old yet. I just beat cyano and now I have what I thought was green hair algae but my convict tang doesn’t seem to be eating it so now I’m worried it’s bryopsis. It’s growing mostly in the lower flow area of my tank. Any help on if it’s hair algae or bryopisis is welcome. I can work on a better pic too If needed. Thank you!

Welcome to R2R!
That looks like green hair algae to me. Bryopsis is like little feathers. Not much of anything likes to eat it when it gets long like that. The first thing I would try if you can, is next time you do a water change, take the rock out and scrub the crap out of it with a plastic bristle brush in the old water before you throw it out and use the old water to swish the rock around before returning it to the display. I bought a cheap dishwashing brush just for that when I used to battle GHA. That won’t get rid of it, but once it’s scrubbed down to a fuzz on the rocks your tang will be more likely to keep the lawn mowed if he’s into GHA. Some are some aren’t. I finally got rid of all mine when I started using an algae turf scrubber. It lets the GHA grow in the scrubber, where conditions are better for it than in your display. Then it uses up the nutrients and you can let nature do what it wants to do in your water rather than fight it. It’s feeding on nitrate and phosphate, so you can let algae grow in a refugium or turf scrubber, or you can find other means of reducing nutrients, but it’ll keep coming back until you find a sustainable way to control the nutrients. In the mean time you could read this too:

A Simple Guide To Common Problematic Algae And The Means To Control It..

As we all know algae is inevitable in both Marine and fresh water aquariums and if not watched and without proper procedures for removal can quickly turn a beautiful aquarium in to something that resembles a scene out of a old Swamp thing episode. Some are easy to control some are a non stop...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[jk1151]

Thanks everyone. Maybe lighting I guess. I’m only running at 50% but maybe that’s too much. It’s only at bottom of tank. My nitrates are 5ppm and phosphates .04. I feed minimally and changed feeding habits due to cyano outbreak. I do use RODI water for everything. I’ll do some manual removal and try messing with the lighting. Thank you!