Strange algae - please help

[Soundwave]

Hey everyone. I’ve been around a long time and have had many many tanks in my history. However, this is the first time I’ve come across this. Typically, starting a tank with fresh bleached rock goes through a diatom stage and then green patches develop and some hair algae and then things start to get pretty. This time, however, diatoms came and went and then the rock was fuzzy dark green from that point on. This is my wife’s tank. It’s about 8 months old and I’m at a loss as to what’s happening. Naturally, phosphates are at 0 but nitrates are around 20. Lighting is cut to 6 hours/day and adjusted to mostly blue (except for these photos) with that hipargero (spelling?) light that can be had on amazon. Light also adjusted so PAR is right at 100 on the sand bed. Inhabitants are one pajama cardinal and a decorator crab. One cerith snail along with two trochus snails and a blue leg hermit make up the clean up crew. One strange thing is that whenever I put a turbo or astrea snail in.... it munches on the rocks a bit and either dies or goes into some vegetative state where it doesn’t move for days. Relocating them to my frag tank wakes them back up. So... any clues as to what the heck this is?

 

[JKDMan]

Hey everyone. I’ve been around a long time and have had many many tanks in my history. However, this is the first time I’ve come across this. Typically, starting a tank with fresh bleached rock goes through a diatom stage and then green patches develop and some hair algae and then things start to get pretty. This time, however, diatoms came and went and then the rock was fuzzy dark green from that point on. This is my wife’s tank. It’s about 8 months old and I’m at a loss as to what’s happening. Naturally, phosphates are at 0 but nitrates are around 20. Lighting is cut to 6 hours/day and adjusted to mostly blue (except for these photos) with that hipargero (spelling?) light that can be had on amazon. Light also adjusted so PAR is right at 100 on the sand bed. Inhabitants are one pajama cardinal and a decorator crab. One cerith snail along with two trochus snails and a blue leg hermit make up the clean up crew. One strange thing is that whenever I put a turbo or astrea snail in.... it munches on the rocks a bit and either dies or goes into some vegetative state where it doesn’t move for days. Relocating them to my frag tank wakes them back up. So... any clues as to what the heck this is?

looks like some type of green hair algae

 

[John08007]

It's always so hard to identify algae in a picture, is it chrypphytes? Kinda looks like it except the color, yours looks greenish, chrypphytes is a goldish color.

 

[Pdash]

Is your magnesium abnormally high?

 

[vetteguy53081]

GHA
Are you using tap water? This may be a result of high phosphate.
Add clean up crew such as turbo-astrea-nassarius and trochus snails.
Liquid vibrant would also work. Reduce white light intensity a little

 

[Soundwave]

Mg is one thing I don’t currently have a test for. I’d never use tap water. I run on a well and have a softener and iron filter before my ro/di. Out of 3 saltwater tanks, this is the only one doing this. As stated, adding turbos and astreas are a no go because it seems they eat some and either die or go into some weird hibernation. Anyone heard of some kind of really short algae that’s toxic to snails? I might consider pulling the rock and replacing with some from the sump in my frag system if nothing else. Just wish I knew what this was.

 

[slayertx]

I had a similar situation and currently have a small patch of the stuff no animal in my tank will touch..(kole,hippo,mata,yellow tangs along with rabbit and angels) I had the weirdest thing where I couldn't keep a kole tang for a long time because they would try eating it and then die.. It looks like normal gha but I swear it's not. Only thing I could figure is it was leaching some mineral like maybe lyme from the man made rock it's on. Everything else is cool but man is that stuff hard to kill.

 

[TriggerFinger]

Pull a rock, scrub with a stiff brush, drop peroxide on the scrubbed areas and put it back in the tank. Could you try it on one rock before throwing it all away?