Halymenia hair

[Joseph_Joe]

Hi all,

I planted a piece of halymenia 1.5 month ago and it started growing some brown hairs all around its leaves (attached picture, although not very clear)
It is planted 1cm below the sand bed.
My tank is new with no livestock yet (at the end of cycling) so my phosphates are almost null. However, I am dosing Iron once per week and i had a huge diatom growth that lasted 10 days and disappeared 1 week ago.
Can you please tell me what are those hairs for, and shoud I do something ?
I tried once to remove them, but the halymenia is fragile so as soon as i removed some twigs of that hairy stuff, few halymenia parts came away.
Thanks in advance.

 

[shakacuz]

tank may still be too "new" to support macro algae. there could be hair algae growing on it that is essentially starving/outcompeting it. iron alone is not enough for macro algae to grow/thrive. you need certain trace elements like manganese and nutrients (nitrate/phosphate)

 

[Joseph_Joe]

tank may still be too "new" to support macro algae. there could be hair algae growing on it that is essentially starving/outcompeting it. iron alone is not enough for macro algae to grow/thrive. you need certain trace elements like manganese and nutrients (nitrate/phosphate)

Yes, I decided somehow to my macroalgae soon in order to control my nitrogen cycle but I forgot to count for phosphate load. My nitrate is high, 50 ppm and I bought some phosphate booster. I will see how it goes