Brown hair algea??

FloatinBy · Mar 21, 2018

Tank is roughly 8-9months old. Its a 100gal with a 25gal sump. Corals look great. Ive posted pics of the brown algea in question as well as my while tank and corals for a better whole view of tank. Currwntly my lights are ramping down for the evening thats why a little dark. I can get better pics tomorrow if need be. I juat began running GFO anf i always have carbon in the sump. I have a cheato reactor running lighta opposite of display tank. Parmaters are:

pH-8.3
NitrItes: zero
Ammonia-0
NitrATe-0
Phosphate 0.25
Alk 9.4
Cal 460
Mag 1460

The brown hair algea? If thats a thing is on rock with hawkfish setting on it in pic. As well as growing on back glass. Fish wise i have a yellow tang, 2 clowns, a chomis, and a hawk fish. I have nassarias snails as well as some hermits, a bunch of ceirths couple sallyfoots and a couple emerald crabs and a few other snails as cuc. Oh and a black long spine urchin. I do regular water changes every 3 weeks unless parameters show need otherwise. I just started gfo 2 days ago and am running it pretty light right now bc i read directions and said to do so until tank is use to lower phosphate and so not to strip it to fast? Amy other suggestions on getting rid of it? I have 2 led fixtures from reefledlights.com running at roughly 10% as i just installed a little over a week ago. (My blues are turned up a little higher then whites, idk if that matters or not). Corals open up massively and are growing. I have a few acons, frogspown, torch, candy cane. Green slimmer, blue somethimg or other sps, a plate coral, a kenya tree, hammer, birdsnest and zoas (im sure i missed a few) i feed rods food and put some selcon into it as well as nori with a few drops of selcon for my tang. Thank you for help. I am new to this hobby amd alteady want to go much much bifger but want to master my 100gal tank first lol.

Artillerydrill · Mar 21, 2018

FloatinBy said:
Tank is roughly 8-9months old. Its a 100gal with a 25gal sump. Corals look great. Ive posted pics of the brown algea in question as well as my while tank and corals for a better whole view of tank. Currwntly my lights are ramping down for the evening thats why a little dark. I can get better pics tomorrow if need be. I juat began running GFO anf i always have carbon in the sump. I have a cheato reactor running lighta opposite of display tank. Parmaters are:

pH-8.3
NitrItes: zero
Ammonia-0
NitrATe-0
Phosphate 0.25
Alk 9.4
Cal 460
Mag 1460

The brown hair algea? If thats a thing is on rock with hawkfish setting on it in pic. As well as growing on back glass. Fish wise i have a yellow tang, 2 clowns, a chomis, and a hawk fish. I have nassarias snails as well as some hermits, a bunch of ceirths couple sallyfoots and a couple emerald crabs and a few other snails as cuc. Oh and a black long spine urchin. I do regular water changes every 3 weeks unless parameters show need otherwise. I just started gfo 2 days ago and am running it pretty light right now bc i read directions and said to do so until tank is use to lower phosphate and so not to strip it to fast? Amy other suggestions on getting rid of it? I have 2 led fixtures from reefledlights.com running at roughly 10% as i just installed a little over a week ago. (My blues are turned up a little higher then whites, idk if that matters or not). Corals open up massively and are growing. I have a few acons, frogspown, torch, candy cane. Green slimmer, blue somethimg or other sps, a plate coral, a kenya tree, hammer, birdsnest and zoas (im sure i missed a few) i feed rods food and put some selcon into it as well as nori with a few drops of selcon for my tang. Thank you for help. I am new to this hobby amd alteady want to go much much bifger but want to master my 100gal tank first lol.

Is it stringy like this?

FloatinBy · Mar 21, 2018

Artillerydrill said:
Is it stringy like this?

Yeah on glass it is...on the rock its more like carpet but still longer fillaments

Artillerydrill · Mar 21, 2018

FloatinBy said:
Yeah on glass it is...on the rock its more like carpet but still longer fillaments

I have the exact same thing in my tank. Nitrate is between 1-5 and phosphate is undetectable. For a while now i have been thinking it is dinoflagellates but my fish and snails have been eating it for 3 months and no deaths... if i find a way to get rid of it i will let you know! I am going to try and bring my PO4 up a bit to see if it makes a difference.

FloatinBy · Mar 21, 2018

Silicate maybe? Idk if can test for them or not tho

Artillerydrill · Mar 21, 2018

FloatinBy said:
Silicate maybe? Idk if can test for them or not tho

Not sure i do know the our tanks are almost the same age with almost the same numbers. I’ve never used anything but 0 tds water from my brs unit but i guess silicates could have got through.....maybe.

FloatinBy · Mar 21, 2018

Artillerydrill said:
Not sure i do know the our tanks are almost the same age with almost the same numbers. I’ve never used anything but 0 tds water from my brs unit but i guess silicates could have got through.....maybe.

Yeah my tds is zero as well. It just sucks. Like nothing is eatting it. Hopefully the gfo helps

Artillerydrill · Mar 21, 2018

FloatinBy said:
Yeah my tds is zero as well. It just sucks. Like nothing is eatting it. Hopefully the gfo helps

I get a lot of feedback about it being diatoms but I’ve been doing this for a long time and i know the difference, these are diatoms on steroids.

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

Any one else? I need help getting rid of this crap

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

FloatinBy said:
Any one else? I need help getting rid of this crap

Could this be dino? Some does have air bubles on tips. If so i want to stop it asap if possible

samnaz · Mar 22, 2018

I have the same brown algae in my tank, it came up randomly about two months ago.

Manual removal every 1-2 weeks and a water change have kept it at bay.

I still have some bits of it here and there but nothing to be concerned about so far.

samnaz · Mar 22, 2018

Just curious, do you have any clove polyps? I’m convinced a new clove frag introduced this brown algae. On the cloves stalks it grows like crazy, it’s unstoppable.

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

samnaz said:
Just curious, do you have any clove polyps? I’m convinced a new clove frag introduced this brown algae. On the cloves stalks it grows like crazy, it’s unstoppable.

No. I have some zoas, 4 acons, green slimer, plate coral, candy cane,birds nest, another sps, torch, hammer, frogspawn...i think thats it

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

A few more pics and clearly hawkfish likes to photo bomb

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

Should i not run my gfo? Amd stop cheato reactor? Try to get water "dirty" can i do a lights out with all these corals? Nothing seems to be touching this algea. Notice a little on tip of birdsnest amd had to pull off so i want this gone. Only on rock and back of tank. I had gha prior and got rid of it but now this crap.

Kayotic5011 · Mar 22, 2018

Hey guys, your having issues because your test are faulty...Not expired or bad, just giving faulty readings. The brown algae in question is using up your phosphates and silicates and possibly causing nitrates to be used up as well, though carbon and Chaeto will both reduce that. Do you guys have other algaes in your tanks at the moment? I ask this because there is whats known as bad algae growth and good algae growth. The bad growth uses the same nutrients as the good algae but does it in a different ratio. Your nutrients are out of wack, and you need to balance your water. The bad growth is using up the nutrients in a manner that it isn't allowing good growth to get what it needs, in turn locking out the vitals it uses to over take the bad growth. The growth on everything including corals says that your water is unbalanced to the point that your corals cant grow the benificals it needs to keep the bad growth off of it.

A good example of this is chaeto is a refugium, where the chaeto grows, notice there is no bad growth around it, none on it, even the sand bed where it sits is white. This is because the chaeto (good growth) is using all the proper nutrients from around it blocking out bad algae growth. This is indicating that your chaeto is healthy and doing its job. If your chaeto is discoloring and/or possibly growing bad growth on it then that means your water is completely upside down and the bad growth has a hold and your chaeto is being "Drowned out"...now chaeto is a high nutrient absorb-er and will usually out perform bad algae if provided with proper growth abilities, so if your chaeto is looking "Sick" then Id do a water change. Its going to do a couple things as long as your water is really reading TDS 0-10 it will start to take out the unbalanced water and replace it with water that you can then make right for your macroalgae to do its actual job. If you are running reactors and you have not just changed your media (carbon, GFO, PhosGuard, etc) then imo you should change them along with cleaning those filters while you water change. Stir up your tanks and let your filters pull out as much of the nasty as possible while vacuuming and doing the water change then clean your filters and gadgets, That way you have a better chance of getting this stuff out of your tank as a whole. Once you get the majority of it out allow your filters to do there job while constantly looking to make sure you keep them clean to filter as much as possible for the next few hrs while the tank settles. Doing all of this will remove the majority of the algae in question causing it to use less nutrients and in turn allowing the beneficial to take hold again. If you need to do a lights out for a day or so go for it because it will also help start to starve out that bad growth. Once you have your good growth under control you will notice the bad growth start to just vanish with minimal maintenance.

I just went through this and it was mainly because the water filter system I was using turned out to be a total dud and it was pushing out a high TDS of like 70 when I thought it was way lower...(what I get for not testing, though at the time its what I had)....and when I say I had a bad problem with it, I'm not exaggerating. I dosed my tank with H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) at a dose of 1 ml for every 10gal of water (I also under dosed that because I was skeptical). After a couple days I noticed a receding in the bad growth, and a long with that I used a power head and made a make shift filter to help my over flow take on some of this nasty and the way it makes the tank look. In this make shift filter I put some filter pad made to reduce nitrates (not carbon pad), this a long with the extra water flow, the water changes, and the new RO+DI system I bought has drastically helped my situation for the better. A quick note on the Hydrogen Peroxide I only used this for a couple doses but did see a difference in when I did it. There were no changes to my corals or good algae's but instead a receding in my bad growth. There is a thread all about the use of it on this site I think you should read into if you haven't, before trying this method so you can see if its right for you.

I seriously hope this helps in some way shape or form. I know how irritating this stuff can be, specially when you wake up to see it worse everyday, but in short and imo your water nutrients are completely out of wack, there is a lack of the nutrients there should be which in turn makes you have an excess of nutrients there shouldn't be causing the bad growth to over come the good by blocking out the food the good growth it needs to grow proper.

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

Kayotic5011 said:
Hey guys, your having issues because your test are faulty...Not expired or bad, just giving faulty readings. The brown algae in question is using up your phosphates and silicates and possibly causing nitrates to be used up as well, though carbon and Chaeto will both reduce that. Do you guys have other algaes in your tanks at the moment? I ask this because there is whats known as bad algae growth and good algae growth. The bad growth uses the same nutrients as the good algae but does it in a different ratio. Your nutrients are out of wack, and you need to balance your water. The bad growth is using up the nutrients in a manner that it isn't allowing good growth to get what it needs, in turn locking out the vitals it uses to over take the bad growth. The growth on everything including corals says that your water is unbalanced to the point that your corals cant grow the benificals it needs to keep the bad growth off of it.

A good example of this is chaeto is a refugium, where the chaeto grows, notice there is no bad growth around it, none on it, even the sand bed where it sits is white. This is because the chaeto (good growth) is using all the proper nutrients from around it blocking out bad algae growth. This is indicating that your chaeto is healthy and doing its job. If your chaeto is discoloring and/or possibly growing bad growth on it then that means your water is completely upside down and the bad growth has a hold and your chaeto is being "Drowned out"...now chaeto is a high nutrient absorb-er and will usually out perform bad algae if provided with proper growth abilities, so if your chaeto is looking "Sick" then Id do a water change. Its going to do a couple things as long as your water is really reading TDS 0-10 it will start to take out the unbalanced water and replace it with water that you can then make right for your macroalgae to do its actual job. If you are running reactors and you have not just changed your media (carbon, GFO, PhosGuard, etc) then imo you should change them along with cleaning those filters while you water change. Stir up your tanks and let your filters pull out as much of the nasty as possible while vacuuming and doing the water change then clean your filters and gadgets, That way you have a better chance of getting this stuff out of your tank as a whole. Once you get the majority of it out allow your filters to do there job while constantly looking to make sure you keep them clean to filter as much as possible for the next few hrs while the tank settles. Doing all of this will remove the majority of the algae in question causing it to use less nutrients and in turn allowing the beneficial to take hold again. If you need to do a lights out for a day or so go for it because it will also help start to starve out that bad growth. Once you have your good growth under control you will notice the bad growth start to just vanish with minimal maintenance.

I just went through this and it was mainly because the water filter system I was using turned out to be a total dud and it was pushing out a high TDS of like 70 when I thought it was way lower...(what I get for not testing, though at the time its what I had)....and when I say I had a bad problem with it, I'm not exaggerating. I dosed my tank with H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) at a dose of 1 ml for every 10gal of water (I also under dosed that because I was skeptical). After a couple days I noticed a receding in the bad growth, and a long with that I used a power head and made a make shift filter to help my over flow take on some of this nasty and the way it makes the tank look. In this make shift filter I put some filter pad made to reduce nitrates (not carbon pad), this a long with the extra water flow, the water changes, and the new RO+DI system I bought has drastically helped my situation for the better. A quick note on the Hydrogen Peroxide I only used this for a couple doses but did see a difference in when I did it. There were no changes to my corals or good algae's but instead a receding in my bad growth. There is a thread all about the use of it on this site I think you should read into if you haven't, before trying this method so you can see if its right for you.

I seriously hope this helps in some way shape or form. I know how irritating this stuff can be, specially when you wake up to see it worse everyday, but in short and imo your water nutrients are completely out of wack, there is a lack of the nutrients there should be which in turn makes you have an excess of nutrients there shouldn't be causing the bad growth to over come the good by blocking out the food the good growth it needs to grow proper.

I do have coralina algea growing like wild fire on my glass and starting on some rock. The bit that was on birdsnest was right on top of a tip so could have just snagged there after floating in water column. (Birds nest is fully extended and happy and no discoloration) i cut back my light 2 6hrs a day starting today. And i have tested my rodi system with 3 different meters and all read 0. I also use a 6 stage system and my city water reads 112-120 prior to system so i trusr my source water. Maybe i brought something in with the cheato. I think im going to stop it and let nitrates rise a little bit bc thay seems to ne a consensus to not have zero reading on nitrates and phosphate

FloatinBy · Mar 22, 2018

I use salifert test kits fyi

Kayotic5011 · Mar 22, 2018

FloatinBy said:
I do have coralina algea growing like wild fire on my glass and starting on some rock. The bit that was on birdsnest was right on top of a tip so could have just snagged there after floating in water column. (Birds nest is fully extended and happy and no discoloration) i cut back my light 2 6hrs a day starting today. And i have tested my rodi system with 3 different meters and all read 0. I also use a 6 stage system and my city water reads 112-120 prior to system so i trusr my source water. Maybe i brought something in with the cheato. I think im going to stop it and let nitrates rise a little bit bc thay seems to ne a consensus to not have zero reading on nitrates and phosphate

Im willing to bet your right about the snagging a floating piece of nasty, because your corals look way to good to not be able to keep that growth at bay, and I have to agree on the possibility of bringing something in on the chaeto. It only takes a tiny strain of that stuff to all out take over the tank....I personally hate the stuff and it drives my ocd crazy lol.....anyway here are a couple comparison images for you from my mess. Also Coraline algae is a calcium based algae. Its not the same as other algae growth or micro algae, though it shares a common interest with halimedia as it is a calcium based macro algae itself. Here is an image with some of that nasty growth, the rock in the center with the hitch hiker brain coral is the one that got it worst, though its on everything its just harder to see in this image. I just kept cleaning my tank so it kept it at bay...kinda...crap even got on my red garcilaria.

Since this image was taken I moved one of my returns to the other end of the tank for better water movement... now in this next image is the same rock, never taken out of the tank or scrubbed because of the live coral. I instead starved it of the nutrients it needed and it started to recede without effecting the corals. I also believe the little bit of H2O2 I used helped and though I'm still ehh about the treatment, it clearly did something. This nasty use to grow on my sand bed too, that has also started to reduce itself to a point that its almost gone. The chaeto in my refugium is going crazy and everything is now on the track of re balancing its eco system and riding itself of all that nasty. Sorry the image quality is bad on the second image I used my cell phone instead of my EOS 60D.

That make shift filter in the corner has helped a lot but will soon be coming out because to me its an eye sore lol, but also because I will be getting a better wave machine and will be able to not need that there to move water....I didn't ever think I was going to get rid of it, but to my surprise its going away...yay

Also I'm sure your test kit is fine, the false readings imo are from the algae in question using up the nutrients and telling you that there are none when there really are. I think its a survival tactic of the algae lol but most of all, the reason everyone including myself has a hard time with finding the cause. In the end I dont know what I did to start the process of ridding my tank of this except for changing my water from 70TDS to 0TDS with my RO+DI system and doing what I mentioned above by moving water around more and adding that make shift filter onto a power head.

I think your on the right track with your lights, If my water was all good and what not like yours then I'd be looking at my lights as well, but I hope someone with more info can help. This problem seems to be different for everyone though visually its the same, which kind of leads me to believe its a type of cyno or bacteria more than an algae...hints the reason I think the H2O2 could have had an effect.....but I don't know that for sure as Ive heard of H2O2 having effects on bad algae growth too. Please keep me informed on how this develops for you Id like to know how changing your light cycle effects the outcome on the growth.