Chaeto vs Hair Algae

[ctopherl]

Is there some chemistry-based approach I should be taking to make sure the chaeto in my refugium thrives and hair algae doesn't suffocate it? Right now the hair algae is winning and I remove gobs of the stuff weekly by hand.

I'm sure many will say "add cleanup crew" but that feels more like addressing the symptom than the cause. Are there specific levels of anything chemistry-related that I should be monitoring/testing/dosing/maintaining to make sure the chaeto wins out?

Tank is ~1.5 years old mixed reef and doing great. The refugium has one of the cheaper kessil refugium-specific lights on it (H80 or something similar?). It is set at max intensity and in between the grow/bloom settings. The light runs 11 hours per day.

The only time I've noticed the hair algae suppressed and the chaeto thriving was when my nitrates and phosphates went sky high (~15ppm N and .2ppm P), but I assumed that high of P was not good for corals so I lowered it back down.

 

[Dan_P]

Mexican Turbos are great, but they die once they eat all of the algae, at least for me. I got to where I like urchins better because they can find other things to eat like coralline, nori or whatever - they seem to live a lot longer. Ceriths and Nerites can also find enough film to eat when the hair is gone, but they are not huge eaters to begin with. I also found that Mexican Turbos would eat the "easy" algae first, but they would eat the hair later on - they also were tough and could live in a tank where I had a golden puffer that would chew up glass heaters, rocks and anything else, but the Turbos would live.

I have been terrified of macro going sexual on me, so I only do chaeto now, so I lack any good knowledge on other macros except for ulva and bryopsis which show up one day and I got luck enough to have a Magnificent Foxface that at them all and then the urchins eradicated all of the roots, I guess. The stuff thrived with no additional anything, but it was short lived for a few months.

Maybe I forgot to mention above that most of the snails and especially an urchin will start to slow down if residual N and P levels get too high and will flat out die if they get much higher. It is one of the many cruel jokes of nature, but inverts and even good macro need residual N and P at reasonable levels and they do better when they are lower.

I ended up feeding my Mexican turbos when the aquarium was stripped of algae. I have 15 and they eat one 8x8 sheet in about two hours. They are plum size now. They are in a fish mostly system. Macro algae going sexual is not an issue with these eating machines. But they are not for every system.

These snails don’t seem to be bothered with 20 ppm NO3 or 0.5 ppm PO4. I am aware of the warning that inverts are sensitive to these nutrients, though I am skeptical, and put in the Ulva culture to keep the NO3 around 6 ppm and periodically use GFO to keep the PO4 below 0.5 ppm, just to play it safe.

One last observation. I did stress the snails, not moving and eating very little, when I dosed the recommended amount of Chaeto Gro. I backed off to 1/7 the amount and they recovered in a week or two. I came across an article on cobalt poisoning (In Chaeto Gro). I might have got lucky.

 

[TanksJB]

I was a little surprised when I calculated a while back that only a few grams of new macroalgae growth can totally deplete a 100 gallon aquarium of manganese. That might be part of the chaetogro effect.

What is Manganese good for other than algae? I dose it but thinking about stopping because I can't seem to get rid of hair algae. If it won't grow without it then problem is solved unless there are other problems.

Tank is about a year old and I have never been able to get coralline or macro to grow in sump or tank despite several tries. 12/1 ATI test from Germany says 8.95dkH, Magnesium 1355mg/L, 454 Calcium, Iron 62m(mu not m)g/L. The only thing that is out of whack is Barium at 106m(mu)g/L which I attribute to using BRS gfo. I have since removed it and I will see if that works on the next test, otherwise I have no idea. I used FluxRx from Blue Life on 12/20 and hair algae doing fine so far. Phosphate is .15 and Nitrate is 8.3. Blue legged hermites don't do squat. Trochus snails have died I guess because I can't see them anymore. I just ordered some more and different clean up crew.

Okay Randy, I respect your work in this area and you have been helpful in the past. Can you give a suggestion or two or point to a good article or thread that will be helpful? Thanks, TanksJB

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What is Manganese good for other than algae? I dose it but thinking about stopping because I can't seem to get rid of hair algae. If it won't grow without it then problem is solved unless there are other problems.

It is likely that all living organisms need manganese at some level, though there may be exceptions.

Reducing it does not seem like a suitable way to deal with algae, IMO.

 

[jda]

Generally speaking, if you limit macro algae you will also limit micro algae (think dinos/zoox in your coral) - it is more complicated than this, but at the macro level (no pun intended), this works.