hair algae

evanjah · Jan 6, 2012

I have a good amount of hair algae after switching from vodka to bio pellets...My display tank looks great and nitrates and phosphates test and retest at 0.. the hair algae is growing in my 180 in my basement which is connected to my display..Im sure its the bio pellets because I never had it before..Ive been running them for almost 2 months now...Other than hair algae I have been super pleased...

Any tips or guesses guys?

revhtree · Jan 8, 2012

Man I hate Hair Algae! If you have found the source for it and corrected it, it should start going away. How long has it been?

Me z · Jan 8, 2012

Bio pellets take six weeks for the bacteria culture to begin. You should have maintained your vodka dosing regimen while the pellets were establishing themselves and slowly stepped back on the dosage until the pellets were fully colonized with bacteria. And of course your tests for po4 and no3 will test zero. The hair algae is using it all up to grow if there wasnt any present you wouldnt have hair algae. Use some gfo for a while and you will see a decrease in the algae. Also I forget the ratio that carbon dosing pulls out of nitrate to phosphate, but its like 25ppm no3 to 1ppm phosphate. It takes 25ppm no3 to reduce 1ppm po4 to zero(these arent the exact numbers I forget what they are). So say your po4 tests at 2.5 and your nitrate tests at 25ppm. The pellets or vodka can only drop the po4 to 1.5ppm to get it to zero you will need to remove it with something else like a big fuge or gfo or both like I use. Its not the most effective solution to reduce po4 which is mianly what algae feeds on, thats why I run gfo along with my biopellets and I have to replace mine weekly. But I have no nuisance algae what so ever.

chefb_5 · Jan 8, 2012

or you can buy a sea hair! that is working for my alge farm.

Jeppeterpan · Jan 9, 2012

Me z did a good job covering isue. I had a problem w hair algae back in the day (knock on wood!) and I was amazed how much hair algae that 4 turbo snails could eat! No relapses on hair algae cause of a few things...Water changes, no overfeeding, running gfo constantly, carbon, open aquascaping w lots of flow, protein skimmer, religiously clean sump socks, filters, no overfeeding, and no overstocking, lighting, and I'm sure I still missed some! Lol.

chefb_5 · Jan 9, 2012

hi

Me Z did indeed. I didn't read any of the post I just through out a way to get rid of alge if you have ALOT of alge like I do. By the way it's getting taking great care of.