Is this an unusual hair algae?

Titleist · Jun 12, 2019

So I've had a new dry rock tank cycle and it's been clean for over a month under full radions. Threw some chaeto in and some chaeto fert along with mild ammonia dosing to keep things going while I have a few fish in quarantine.

Threw in some corals and the nuisance algae commenced. The cycle went like: some dinos show up, nothing terrible but some. Started getting what looked like string-like dinos, brown in color, which slowly turned green. Now I have the same long hair, loosley growing hair algae in the tank. Doesn't look like the typical hair algae Ive had in the past which seemed more densely packed. I have thicker single strands that can go up to 5 inches in the tank with some balling together like yarn.

So before I throw in the fish I was considering fluc. I'd like to keep the chaeto as this will likely happen again when the next corals come in.

Can anyone ID this type of algae as hair and whether it responds to fluc well? I know I'm taking my chances on some chaeto damage but I'm more interested in what type this is and whether it responds to fluc well.

And I either have a bloom or precip. I'll be testing tonite to see what the numbers are on alk, calc and mg.

EmdeReef · Jun 13, 2019

Looks like hair algae. How big is your tank? What fish do you have? Tangs, foxface etc will probably clear it up without the use of chemicals.

Titleist · Jun 13, 2019

Actually looks like long human hair in spots. Odd how in some spots it looks like a cheap hair transplant, very evenly spaced from each other.

Have no fish just a few corals. Been dosing a little ammonia to keep the bio going until my first 4 get out of quarantine. I do have chaeto which was growing nicely till the hair took over. I keep pulling the hair to let the chaeto feed. Just going to let the chaeto fill the fuge, slow down on ammonia and see if the chaeto can take over. Not sure which benefits more from chaetogro, I'd figure they both can use it but not sure if dosing that helps the chaeto more so I'm going to slow down on that as well. Hopefully by then the bloom is gone. Alk is 8.5, calc is 485 and mag is 1275 so I'm thinking it wasn't precip.

Tank is 200. Debating on getting like 5 trochus but there's minimal surface algae to consume and I'm not sure they'd eat this stuff