Please help ... hairy algae unstoppable .....

[redfin9]

Algae going on for months now. All started after a disease wiped out 6 fish (probably put too many in too fast as a newbie) about 5 months ago. Since then I have been super diligent(was before too) cleaning really trying to treat by keeping up, Bi-weekly changes, got a decent skimmer, don't have a lot of fish for the tank size and haven't added anything but some snails since the walking dead was eradicated 4 months ago.

I have been reading all sorts of this and that on the forum, online. All tank vitals have not been off the charts at all. So today I did a massive clean. Created a temp tank in a tub, took all rock out in temp tank, changed water, vacuumed as much of the hairy sand out. Scrubbed each rock, a lot. then dipped in RODI and let most of the live rock air dry only did not let dry rock with coral on it. Added new live sand (PIA that is). This process took me about 4 hours today and I think it was not even 10 min after the dust settled the hair grow back! It actually seemed like it came back FASTER than just doing the regular water change with a vacuum.

I used the light setting from my "fish guy" who I purchased the tank from and who set it up. (newbie I am). Maybe that is it(pic of settings)

Red Sea XL425 - 112g (88g view)
2x Hydra 26™ HD LED lighting
1 VorTech MP 40 and 1 MP10
Skimmer -Reef Octopus
REGAL 150INT 6" INTERNAL PROTEIN SKIMMER (VARIOS)

Temp: 80.6
PH 8.2
No ammonia, no nitrates


Fish:
Hippo Tang
Leopard Wrasse
Green Bird Wrasse
Pajama Cardinal

Brittle Starfish
Choc Starfish
snails, couple emeralds ...

3 small SPS corals

 

[Alexreefer]

Ok, we will help you along. Let's get some help as well. #reefsquad. First, can you post your params? no3 no4? Also, your light schedule is over 12 hours long so maybe try and reduce that. I believe in the sand rinse method. I did it and it fixed all my diatoms and dino issues. So you look into that and have a chat with @brandon429 he helped me out a lot! how much do you feed and what? This is the start but hopefully, we can fix this and you can enjoy your tank again!

 

[redfin9]

Just did a water test to these are "real time"

Temp 82
No2 - 0
NO3 -0
PH . - 8.01
salinity 1.025

 

[AngryMike2016]

How about phosphates?

 

[High ICP]

How about phosphates?

Gonna be low

Algae is consuming it

 

[AngryMike2016]

True, good point.

 

[laverda]

Dipping your rock in RO water is not going to affect the hair algae at all and will harm benifical bacteria. The same goes for drying the rock for a short time. I think I would add some bacteria like microbacter 7 or something similar to prevent or minimize a likely cycle.
A quick rinse with hydrogen peroxide will kill the algae! Although it is not going to be good for the benifical bacteria, copepods or brittlestars. Probably no worse than you RO dip and drying. For that reason I would just do one or two of your worst rocks a day.
Killing the algae is the easy part! You need to eliminate the food source, which is nitrate and phosphate. The fact your getting zero nitrates is because the algae is consuming it all. If you kill all the algae with hydrogen peroxide you nitrates and phosphates will likely shoot up.
To perminatly get rid of the algae in your display the easiest and least expensive way is to grow it in an ATS. Look at my DIY thread for ideas on how to build an ATS for almost nothing. You could even build one into a HOB filter if you wanted.

 

[Orm Embar]

The 2 major principles that have worked for me (and that I recommend for you) - increase relative nutrient export, and patience.

If you have problem algae (hair algae, cyano), then you have excess nutrients coming from SOMEWHERE. Test kits can be misleading as problem algae consume what you would normally test for. Having said that, checking phosphates would be helpful as that potentially means a more phosphate-removing strategy compared with a general "reduce organics/nitrate/phosphate" strategy.

Randy has 2 articles that I would read, as they cover just about every option of helping with this:

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/nitrate-in-the-reef-aquarium.10/

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/phosphate-in-the-reef-aquarium.9/


How would I do it? Since I am 1) lazy and 2) cheap, I would go with macroalgae as a filter and have a bunch of snails. I use a refugium with a $30 dollar PAR38 grow bulb (any grow bulb that is reasonably intense and covers the refugium area should be ok), but an algae scrubber or algal turf scrubber would also work well (I think; I haven't used either but both are reputed to work well) if you don't have the space. Assuming that you're using chaeto, minimize food inputs (what the fish will eat in 30 seconds), keep the skimmer going, and see how the Chaeto does. As long as Chaeto is growing, you can harvest it for export and over time (probably weeks) and your problem algae should gradually go away.

While altering lighting and chemical algaecides can work short term, you have to address the underlying problem.

 

[SPR1968]

Assuming it is hair algae, as the picture isn’t very clear.....

We need your phosphate level, but it could well be very low and being used as a food source for the hair algae anyway.

If it were me, I would start running GFO in a reactor and take away possibly the food source, but you may need to change it frequently to start with as the excess phosphate is removed. The algae should slowly die back. I use rhowaphos personally and keep phosphate locked down very low with a target of 0.03ppm

You don’t really want Nitrate at 0, as you could encounter other issue like cyno bacteria etc., a good target is around 5-10ppm depending on your goals