Major Algae Issues. Any suggestions?

[Kerwin1721]

Good afternoon,

I have a 29gallon tank that has been up and running since August. I think everything is going well except the hair algae is out of control. I'm not sure what to do. Here are the water conditions:
Salinity - 1.025
Temp - 79.1
PH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0.05
Nitrates - 2
Calcium - 370
Alkalinity - 9.5dKh/3.4Meg/L
Magnesium - 1340
Phosphate - 40ppb

I am running a reactor with GFO and the skimmer is on all the time. The tank is drilled and has a home built sump with live rock and Chaeto. I have quite a few snails, hermit crabs and a sand sifting starfish. For fish I have 2 clown fish, Yellow tang, 1 bangai cardinal and a small damsel.

On top of everything the torch that I have has withdrawn and has lost two heads. Picture of the tank below, the torch is in the bottom right.

Any suggestion/recommendations would be appreciated!

 

[sbash]

The only real fix I know of is to fix your water parameters and wait it out. There are fish which will eat it eventually too (I have heard good things about lawnmower blennies) I would guess there is some over feeding going on, or you are dealing with significant die off from something. Look into either a bigger GFO or a better one (I have never used a GFO reactor, but if you are running one and still have phosphates, it is clearly not doing its job).

Do you have a refugium with some sort of macro algae?

How long do you run your lights?

How often and how much do you do water changes?

 

[moreef]

may want to look into Dr. Tims re-fresh and waste-away. You first dose re-fresh then waste-away and I have read a lot of positive things about it. I have some cyano and GHA im trying to get rid of now with this but I'm only 2 weeks into it. This isn't a cure all but should help a lot after about 4-8 weeks. Be sure not to overdose and of course find the source of excess nutrients to avoid recurring problems.

 

[Kerwin1721]

I feed my fish about every 3-4 days. The only die off that I have seen is the torch that has been withdrawing. Everything else seems to be doing fine. Nothing has died. I change 5 gallons of water every Saturday. In my sump I have Chaeto for macro algae. I also somehow picked up some red cotten algae which stayed down in the sump. The GFO reactor is a BRS reactor with a bit more than the recommended amount of GFO in for water volume.

I've been testing phosphates with a Hanna Ultra Low Range meter. With it checking parts per billion, I didn't think 4o would be that bad since it is still below the 1ppm that is bad from what I've read.

Light - I have an Aquatic Life Halo that has the whites on for about 8hour and blues on for about 10 hours. The rest of the time is moon lights.

 

[Kungpaoshizi]

Get some nopox and reef energy, this is one combo that turned my tank from that, into this (srsly, had algae everywhere, took about a month before the tank turned around)
Be sure to manually remove what you can with a siphon hose when you do wc's and that helps a lot too.

 

[moreef]

wow I would be starving if I was a fish in your tank . Although I could lose some weight The tank is only 6-7mos old so it will probably run the course and go away with time. Hope some one with more experiences with torch will chime in

 

[moreef]

btw are you using rodi?

 

[Kerwin1721]

Thanks for the suggestion. About three weeks ago I took each rock out and scrubbed it with a toothbrush in the bucket of water I pulled from the tank. I got a lot of it off and then it all came back. The last two weeks during water changes I have tried to pull off as much of the algae off as I can without spending all day.

I am using RODI water. I picked up a BRS 6 stage system very early on and make sure all readings come out at 0 TDS.

 

[sbash]

Oh, I missed the ppb, just saw 40, lol

So the chemistry might be alright. I am not sure what to thing about those nitrite levels, all my tanks have always tested 0, but I do not have a test which would report 0.05.

I had an outbreak this bad in a 65 gallon a few years back (about 6 months after the initial cycle), I cut the white light down to 6 hours, left the blue on around 10. I pulled the rocks without corals and scrubbed the algae off them and waited it out. It eventually went away.

Are the moon lights on after the blues turn out?

 

[moreef]

Check out Dr. Tims products they are 100% natural and you can even call and talk to him I guess

 

[Kerwin1721]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check out Dr. Tims.

My moon lights are on after the blues turn off. They are a really soft blue light. Should these be turned off completely? The refugium light is on the opposite schedule. It turns on when the blues turn off and the moon light is still on.

 

[KingTriton]

GFO will take forever to bring that down. Use this:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Life-USA-Phosphate-Treatment/dp/B0018CIQXC

A week after start using GFO again.

Also, check your RODI water with a handheld TDS meter such as COM-100 to assure 000 TDS

Remove algae daily by hand and weekly by brush until its gone.

 

[MikeyAl]

may want to look into Dr. Tims re-fresh and waste-away. You first dose re-fresh then waste-away and I have read a lot of positive things about it. I have some cyano and GHA im trying to get rid of now with this but I'm only 2 weeks into it. This isn't a cure all but should help a lot after about 4-8 weeks. Be sure not to overdose and of course find the source of excess nutrients to avoid recurring problems.

You could- particularly if you have cyano. I had a long drawn out ordeal wit hair algae. Ultimately this was my solution (thank you for all those on this forum who contributed).

First thing. Pick off the hair algae with tweezers and a toothbrush. You need to really blow off your live rock really good.
I used a
Turkey basted and blasted all the rock while having my powerheads full blast making sure the garbage was going into my filtration. I did this every other day for a week while performing a 10% water change.
I also invested in an additional nanostream to his in the rocks and rearranged my tank to ensure good water flow at all points in my tank with no dead spots.
I am now doing waste-away and follow up with blowing the rocks and 10% change.
Lot of work but algae seems to be gone.

P.s. GFO is great but the problem is re phos in your rock, not in your water. You have to get your rock clean.

Last thing. A dolabella sea hare is a great addition and is a voracious hair algae eater. But difficult to keep alive- and don't use refresh if you are gonna keep one (or snails for that matter).

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

And yea turn of the moon lights.
In crease the amount of light in the fuge.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

Absolutely get some Red Sea NO3/PO4-X. You could try some lanthanum chloride, but I don't think that will really work as it only targets phosphates and yours are pretty low. The NO3/PO4-X will kill the nitrates very quickly if you follow the directions. Keep up the dosing, and the GHA will disappear within a couple of weeks.

FWIW, I got my nitrates down with from 40 ppm to <1ppm in about ten days with the Red Sea product.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

BTW, that's one CRAZY purple mushroom on the left!

 

[Mike in CT]

If you can take the rock out again, try spraying them hydrogen peroxide on them, then rinse off in some tank water and replace. Lots of threads on it and I have found in very effective. Once the algae is under control you can have at the phosphate better because the algae is not absorbing it all before you can remove it.
Just my opinion, but I think every 3 to 4 days is too long without food. I would rather deal with algae then see my fish go hungry.

 

[sbash]

And yea turn of the moon lights.
In crease the amount of light in the fuge.

This is a good point. I had some flooding and my fuge light ended up filled with water (it still worked, but who wants to risk that?). I replaced it with a less powerful LED (probably not quite the right spectrum either), and I noticed a significant increase in diatom algae in my main tank.

 

[Tautog]

You didn't mention a UV lite in your set up. Leave the light on over the refuge 24/7, I never turn it off. I started May 1, 2015, and by September my rear glass was covered in algae, tangs took care of it. Then white spots, hard as a barnacle. After came coraline algae, and now coraline algae is everywhere. I haven't had any kind of algae bloom. I feed once a day 4 days a week where supplements are given, and twice a day the others. Your problem seems to be on the rock, get a tang or too.