Hair algae first steps?

[Red2143]

I have a biocube with 4 fish and now a couple corals. After having the lights on for a week I see hair algae forming all over the rocks and glass. I do >10% weekly water changes and believe nitrate and phosphate to be low. Api test kits seem to show under 10 for nitrate and under. 5 phosphate.

What are my next steps? Should I add some kind of clean up crew? Manually remove the algae? Try to lower N and P?

 

[brandon429]

if you do that you'll get a never ending succession of dinos and cyano over and over. do this:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

give your setup the first rip clean of many. its the best nano care method possible.

 

[LiamPM]

Assuming by nitrogen you mean NitrATE?

Firstly, id get some images up of your tank - Let others say for sure the algae you have before taking any drastic measures. Many algaes look similar but very few are treated the same.

Then id get a couple of more well respected text kits. API - Although ok for cycling, is not worth much in the way of NO3 & PO4 and those are both numbers you need a much better level of accuracy on.

PO4 of 0.5 is fairly high - Not low. Most aim for below 0.1 to 0.03 in general. This could well be a contributing factor to algae but you would need a far better text kit to give you an indication of where its at beforehand.

I woudnt add anything or do anything drastic - My next step would be a better set of text kits for NO3 and PO4.

 

[Duffer]

get better test kits...if those phosphates are that high that is your main issue...water changes will not help as they only will take out phosphates that are in the water column, phosphates bond to rock and sand...

you want phosphates .03-.1

lower the phosphates is your best bet

 

[Jared Bryant]

Spend less time on test kits and more time with a hose sucking out the algae.

 

[Red2143]

Assuming by nitrogen you mean NitrATE?

Firstly, id get some images up of your tank - Let others say for sure the algae you have before taking any drastic measures. Many algaes look similar but very few are treated the same.

Then id get a couple of more well respected text kits. API - Although ok for cycling, is not worth much in the way of NO3 & PO4 and those are both numbers you need a much better level of accuracy on.

PO4 of 0.5 is fairly high - Not low. Most aim for below 0.1 to 0.03 in general. This could well be a contributing factor to algae but you would need a far better text kit to give you an indication of where its at beforehand.

I woudnt add anything or do anything drastic - My next step would be a better set of text kits for NO3 and PO4.

Yes, nitrate. Thank you

 

[Red2143]

Spend less time on test kits and more time with a hose sucking out the algae.

That's what I'm wondering. Is there a level of nitrate and phosphate that eliminates the problem or am I spending money on expensive kits and will still have to deal with algae

 

[bushdoc]

You will probably spend money on “ expensive” kits and deal with algae and other issues at the same time. You do need basic tools though and some of them are actually not that expensive.

 

[brandon429]

funny thing about rip cleans~ I use them to cheat my pico into the oldest pico on earth. it's only 17 years old because 100 rip cleans made it live that long. without them, it'd be algae crashed by 2007

do I mind having to cheat in order to reef? nope

before rip cleans the option was to take down the tank, get new rocks and corals, start over. old cycling science told us heavy cleaning would strip the bacteria off surfaces, and now that we're up to about 20,000 rip cleans done on web tanks and all the results are great, we now know that old cycling science is dumb and not applicable. our filter bac are 10x tougher than we ever knew. rinsing out filthy sand is a very very important part of the process as well.

when people put dosers like Fluconazole into the tank, very likely to kill algae as intended/it does work/they sink those rotting plant cells back down on top of waste already in the bed, feeding the original plant mass and this is where messy dinos/cyano tradeoff invasions occur.


if someone does a rock rasp+ rip clean and it looks sharp but the algae is a particularly adaptive strain that whiskers again on the rocks in a few months, I'm not against using Fluc or other med cheats as long as it's post-rip clean for obvious reasons, nothing to sink or add to.

*key algae tuning: everyone chases high PAR ratings and they're blasting light much higher than needed by corals and plants love this. tuning lights to dimmer than you thought was ok, still heavy on blues and very light or no white spectrum, helps bigtime in growback control.

a rip clean doesn't cure algae, it gives you a skip cycle reset button so you don't lose corals while you aim to get lucky on the second go round. once you find the preventative, no more rip cleans. I've never found that preventative.

 

[Jared Bryant]

That's what I'm wondering. Is there a level of nitrate and phosphate that eliminates the problem or am I spending money on expensive kits and will still have to deal with algae

Not really. Some people will have high nitrates and no algae and vice versa. Same with phosphates I had 0-0 for both but still had algae. I have found if you stay on top of manual removal the algae will eventually lose the fight. It can take weeks but I just put on some good music, crack a beer and enjoy the time at home with my hobby.

 

[Gedxin]

Not really. Some people will have high nitrates and no algae and vice versa. Same with phosphates I had 0-0 for both but still had algae. I have found if you stay on top of manual removal the algae will eventually lose the fight. It can take weeks but I just put on some good music, crack a beer and enjoy the time at home with my hobby.

It will take months in some cases. I've been manually removing algae for the better part of a year from my nano. So frustrating.

 

[ReefGeezer]

A phase where algae grows is expected when starting tanks with dry rocks. This can last quite a while. Limiting nitrate and phosphate can help keep it from getting out of hand. So can manual removal. But, it is going to grow. Getting a clean-up crew in there can help also. Snails, small Urchins and etc. can eliminate a lot of algae. But it will still grow.

Get a Denture Toothbrush to scrub the rock and make rock scrubbing part of your weekly maintenance.

 

[Red2143]

A phase where algae grows is expected when starting tanks with dry rocks. This can last quite a while. Limiting nitrate and phosphate can help keep it from getting out of hand. So can manual removal. But, it is going to grow. Getting a clean-up crew in there can help also. Snails, small Urchins and etc. can eliminate a lot of algae. But it will still grow.

Get a Denture Toothbrush to scrub the rock and make rock scrubbing part of your weekly maintenance.

Whats the best tool for removing the hair algae from the glass, particularly near the sand line

 

[Jared Bryant]

Whats the best tool for removing the hair algae from the glass, particularly near the sand line

I use a syphon hose with a scraper in the other hand. Scrape lose and the hose will suck it out. For the rocks I zip tie a large toothbrush style brush to the hose and scrub and suck into a filter sock in my sump.

 

[brandon429]

razor blade glued into a split dowel, dont do the options that scrape/scratch

 

[ReefGeezer]

Whats the best tool for removing the hair algae from the glass, particularly near the sand line

Razor Blade. Cut a small notch in a piece of 3/8" flexible PVC (or a dowel rod) so the blade snaps into to it at about 45 degrees. You can scrape to your heart's content.