One year in....

[Bryant Day]

Folks,
Need a life line / tutorial. 55 gal tank, 6 LPS corals, 1 magnificent fox face, 1 lemon peel, 2 golden nugget clowns, one 4 line cleaner wrasse, 1 neon dotty back, two shrimp, three conks. Canister filter and Reef Octopus HOB skimmer. I have been dosing NoPox for about three months.
Parameters:
pH 7.9
dKh 8.3
CA 390
Mg 1530
salinity 1.025
Temp 79
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate was 1 now 3
Phos .04
I do 20% water changes every 5-7 days.


I have been wrestling with green hair algae for about one month. What do I need to do / change to get rid of it?

Best
Bryant

 

[Dilan Patel]

get phosphates down to 0 and get nitrates down. Limit the amount of feeding done and basically try to limit amount of nutrients...Perform waterchanges weekly to help bring them down and maybe get some turbo snails they helped me a bunch. The corals should be fine for a little while without po4 and nitrate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

How much NOPOX are you using?

 

[Bryant Day]

Randy
My nitrate is between 10 and 2.5, per the instructions on the bottle that equates to 2 ml / 25 gal. I have ~50 gal w/ rock displacement. I am currently dosing 2 ml every 8 hours, so slightly above what is recommended.

Best

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The problem with such directions is they do not take into account other circumstances, such as a lot of algae sucking up nutrients relatively fast, leaving not that much behind.

If you want to attack the algae (green algae, I presume) by reducing nutrients as opposed to herbivores (they can be very effective), then you need to intercept the nutrients before the algae get them.

I'd suggest first trying with some sort of phosphate binder.

 

[S&SReef]

Are you feeding dry flake or frozen? I found rinsed frozen to significantly lower phos over dried foods.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Are you feeding dry flake or frozen? I found rinsed frozen to significantly lower phos over dried foods.

What sort of frozen food?

In general, I challenge that idea. At least I challenge whether the change is meaningful unless you are perhaps talking about frozen food from a grocery store where added phosphate is used as a preservative.

I discuss it here:

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate
Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it "off the charts". Let's assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the "in tank" phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the "in tank" target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.

 

[Bryant Day]

What sort of frozen food?

In general, I challenge that idea. At least I challenge whether the change is meaningful unless you are perhaps talking about frozen food from a grocery store where added phosphate is used as a preservative.

I discuss it here:

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate
Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it "off the charts". Let's assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the "in tank" phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the "in tank" target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.

What sort of frozen food?

In general, I challenge that idea. At least I challenge whether the change is meaningful unless you are perhaps talking about frozen food from a grocery store where added phosphate is used as a preservative.

I discuss it here:

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate
Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it "off the charts". Let's assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the "in tank" phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the "in tank" target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.

I feed Dry 6 days / week once per day New Life Spectrum THERA+A regular formula, Frozen once per week LRS Fish frenzy

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

All foods have a lot of phosphate and feeding is nearly always the primary source.

 

[GoVols]

I have been wrestling with green hair algae for about one month. What do I need to do

For what ever it's worth...
When I got hair algae for a few months, Phos. and Nitrates were spot on and my (lfs) double checked my #'s they confirmed my numbers.
A few days later I noticed it was only on my (OLD) live rock. So I started to wonder is the (OLD) live rock leaching goodies.
So I took a shot and brought a GFO reactor online for the first time in my life.

Came to this conclusion:
The live rock was leaching and fueling the hair algae. The algae was holding in most of the goodies, thus tricking myself and my (lfs) to the spot on tests.

The hair algae was totally gone after two weeks of bringing the GFO reactor online (started at a very low dose) and not seen a speck of hair algae since.
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I feed LRS once a week like you. It's a very good food but a little goes a long way. So the days that I feed the LRS I do not feel any need to feed my corals "Reef Energy".

Regards, GoVols