Refugium hair algae ?

[Carl C]

My fuge was doing great.. WAS !
I had a mongo Cheato ball growing enormously

There was weird ugly (algae?) (sort of a colorless hair algae) growing on sides and bottom of fuge

Someone said to trim the chaeto; it then started to shrink ; it stopped rotating and lost its vibrant color

So I tossed it ; and scraped the weird wall and bottom algae off I did however leave it on 2 walls

Then got new chaeto . It looked great for a week then started getting covered in that weird algae ...

Suggestions ?

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

Seems like the hair algae out competed the chaeto and starved it out . I would remove the hair algae and restart the chaeto. Phos, nitrate , and iron is needed for chaeto growth I believe. What’s your parameters ?

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

Hair algae will always out compete a macro algea for nutrients. Remove all you can. Shut your fuge lighting off for 3 days and do blackout. Then scrape and remove Any left. Restart fuge with lower lighting schedule like maybe 6 hours. Macro algae is more tolerant to lack of nutrition and lack of lighting compared to algae’s. Pods and inverts in your fuge are a great way of keeping this from happening later as they will live in the macro and feed off the algae.

 

[Carl C]

Thanks Tuan and Darth ! Sound advice !! Will do