Hair algae growing on my chaeto??

[mikus]

I've been having a hard time keeping my nitrates up, so I have been feeding more and have recirculated my skimmer cup waste line to flow into my fuge. My chaeto began to look healthy again, and has slightly more than tripled in mass (started from baseball size). I run my H380 on the fuge for 8 hours at night. Within the last few days, I have noticed that the chaeto does not look as healthy once again, but there is hair algae beginning to grow in the fuge, even on the chaeto. Is this normal? Should I increase or decrease my photo period? Any thoughts/input would be much appreciated! I am leaving in 2 days for a week and hope to not come back home to a disaster!

 

[Sailingeric]

I have a Philips LED grow light I got from Home Depot, I live on all the time. I usually have to pull a hand of chaeto every couple of weeks.

 

[LiveWire]

I normally run my Fuge lighting only when my tank lighting is off. I have never had hair algae on my chaeto. Had cyanobacteria on it before but never hair algae. Have you checked your parameters lately?

 

[Ling_Thing]

I've been having a hard time keeping my nitrates up, so I have been feeding more and have recirculated my skimmer cup waste line to flow into my fuge. My chaeto began to look healthy again, and has slightly more than tripled in mass (started from baseball size). I run my H380 on the fuge for 8 hours at night. Within the last few days, I have noticed that the chaeto does not look as healthy once again, but there is hair algae beginning to grow in the fuge, even on the chaeto. Is this normal? Should I increase or decrease my photo period? Any thoughts/input would be much appreciated! I am leaving in 2 days for a week and hope to not come back home to a disaster!

Sounds like you need more trace elements for the chaeto to actually grow, look at brightwells chaetogro and you have to remove chaeto every once and awhile can’t just let it keep growing into a basketball

 

[mikus]

I normally run my Fuge lighting only when my tank lighting is off. I have never had hair algae on my chaeto. Had cyanobacteria on it before but never hair algae. Have you checked your parameters lately?

I have checked. All are at zero, or at least undetectable using the red sea test kits. There is plenty of uneaten food after I feed, that is then quickly removed by my cuc and bacteria, so I know that the nitrogen cycle is being fed sufficiently. Even though I have my skimmers overflow recycling back into the fuge, a ton of sludge is still building up in the skim cup. Thinking about taking my skimmer offline, but worry about the lack of gas exchange.

 

[mikus]

Sounds like you need more trace elements for the chaeto to actually grow, look at brightwells chaetogro and you have to remove chaeto every once and awhile can’t just let it keep growing into a basketball

Thanks for the info. I think between the chaeto and skimmer (even though skimmer is recirculating the waste), the Chaeto is pulling everything out so quickly. I may have to dose to grow the macro. Have you ever dosed nitrate?

 

[Ling_Thing]

Thanks for the info. I think between the chaeto and skimmer (even though skimmer is recirculating the waste), the Chaeto is pulling everything out so quickly. I may have to dose to grow the macro. Have you ever dosed nitrate?

Yes I had to use that to dial in my chaeto because I was running it too long at first now I’m around 7 hours on only.