Stringy brown algae in tank
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PugsAndFish
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I had the same exact issue last week. Try checking your HOB filter or your sump for detritus. I had a ton of debris in my HOB so I discarded all of that junk. Plus I had white egg crate which someone suggested might be leaching phosphates. After getting rid of the detritus build up and egg crate, the algae seems to have gotten a bit better.
LMDAVE
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I had no idea that could even be a thing. I did just use white egg crate to build a shelf in my HOB about 3 weeks ago, and I do have a sudden spike in phosphate recently. That's either a huge coincidence or there is some truth to that.
About the hair brown algae, @Erica921, how long has your tank been active and have you tested nitrate and phosphate recently?
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bsn_rn_cen
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Welcome to reef2reef
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My Tank Thread
Welcome to R2R. I moved this over to the algae forum to get some additional help/suggestions.
How new is the tank?I only recently added corals to my tank and a few days after I saw algae on the sand which I thought my be diatoms but now the algae is very long and brown
Quite likely a alge bloom for for sure , lots of stuff in a new tank for it to feed on with no competition.
With luck, it’s a slimey diatom , or a brown slime algae. And yes , it could be a dino
eekHopefully your tests show measurable phosphates and not too high a nitrate.
I’d suggest siphoning it out when you do water changes.
Avoid coral foods and just feed the fish.
I like to add bottled bacteria like dr tims one and only and bio spira as well as fritz to help the bio filter and lower waht it may be feeding on.
With luck it passes with the ugly phase , if it continues you can do stuff like add a uv filter. A little gfo in bag in a high flow area you change weekly.
Def look at the new test nubers. You’ll not want a true zero on phosphates. I think we can assume a fair amount of nitrates.
PugsAndFish
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Hi guys
The algae has subsided a bit but still there. I've been feeding a bit more with reef roids, chili, LRS, and just TDO pellets.
It's frustrating but my corals are still closed. Acans, candy cane, and toadstool look great but zoas, hammer, frogspawn, and torch look miserable. Haven't seen zoas opened for a while.
I got to some more reading but could this actually be dinos? I was wondering how I was getting so much algae with never having detected phosphates (confirmed by LFS) and low nitrates. There was the possiblity that algae was utilizing to grow so I was getting low readings but I'm wondering if dinos might be the actual culprit with my readings being so low. Looking back, I did do some massive water changes too that could have stripped the water of nitrates and phosphates. My nitrates were actually very high when I first got my corals but they seemed to be ok. Over time, I did a lot of water changes just to get nitrates down (was like at the high end of testing kits could measure but I dropped it low).
Even if it is dinos, would that explain why corals are closed?
The algae has subsided a bit but still there. I've been feeding a bit more with reef roids, chili, LRS, and just TDO pellets.
It's frustrating but my corals are still closed. Acans, candy cane, and toadstool look great but zoas, hammer, frogspawn, and torch look miserable. Haven't seen zoas opened for a while.
I got to some more reading but could this actually be dinos? I was wondering how I was getting so much algae with never having detected phosphates (confirmed by LFS) and low nitrates. There was the possiblity that algae was utilizing to grow so I was getting low readings but I'm wondering if dinos might be the actual culprit with my readings being so low. Looking back, I did do some massive water changes too that could have stripped the water of nitrates and phosphates. My nitrates were actually very high when I first got my corals but they seemed to be ok. Over time, I did a lot of water changes just to get nitrates down (was like at the high end of testing kits could measure but I dropped it low).
Even if it is dinos, would that explain why corals are closed?
Could be yes. It’s goong to take a bit of time. Avoid foods with Aminos. Just feed the fish.
Run some carbon or chemi pure for toxins , blow the stuff off daily and change socks or floss every frew days.
If the lfs has a low range Po4 test , have them check it.
If it’s still zero, you could look at doing Po4. Then adding bacteria.
But it’ll still take time.
