Hair algae issue

Dennis2213 · Jun 22, 2022

So for the last 4 months i have been battling hair algae. So bad i have considered starting from scratch. All my parameters are normal, nitrates or less than four. My phosphorus is less than one, and I have dosed every biological bacteria that I can think of with no resolution. A week and a half ago I want to my local fish store and bumped into an old school reefer that has been in the hobby for over 40 years. He asked me what my issue was and I explained to him. He asked me a weird question about my magnesium, I told him I usually keep my magnesium between 1280 to 1320. He asked me to do something that was pretty unique, he told me to bring it up to 1550-1600 and keep it there for a while. It took me a few days to get it to that level slowly, but I have held it there. The last few days the hair algae is just shedding off in large Matts. My sump is completely clean and as of this morning about 70% of the hair algae that was in my main display has peeled off and captured by the filter socks. I would like for someone to explain how magnesium and hair algae play a role together. And how is this something that's not the lasted throughout all the forms?

christianscorals · Jun 23, 2022

unfortunately I have no input but thanks for sharing. very interesting

Spare time · Jun 23, 2022

The magnesium doesn't matter. This likely comes from the old strategy of using kent's magnesium supplement at high levels to kill bryopsis. It wasn't the magnesium that killed the bryopsis, but some contaminent in the kent solution.

PeterEde · Jun 23, 2022

Dennis2213 said:
So for the last 4 months i have been battling hair algae. So bad i have considered starting from scratch. All my parameters are normal, nitrates or less than four. My phosphorus is less than one, and I have dosed every biological bacteria that I can think of with no resolution. A week and a half ago I want to my local fish store and bumped into an old school reefer that has been in the hobby for over 40 years. He asked me what my issue was and I explained to him. He asked me a weird question about my magnesium, I told him I usually keep my magnesium between 1280 to 1320. He asked me to do something that was pretty unique, he told me to bring it up to 1550-1600 and keep it there for a while. It took me a few days to get it to that level slowly, but I have held it there. The last few days the hair algae is just shedding off in large Matts. My sump is completely clean and as of this morning about 70% of the hair algae that was in my main display has peeled off and captured by the filter socks. I would like for someone to explain how magnesium and hair algae play a role together. And how is this something that's not the lasted throughout all the forms?

Everything I've read about high Mg is to control Bryopsis. Never seen a mention of using it to control hair algae