Too Much Algae?

JimDog2015 · Apr 19, 2016

Hello,
Algae just began to grow quite a bit over the past couple of weeks . My parameters are good, phosphates as well.

My question is how much algae is too much?

sureal00 · Apr 19, 2016

Algae is absorbing all the phosphates so your phos test will look fine.Check your water for phosphates,run gfo as well.Also try manually pulling the hair algae off.

jsker · Apr 19, 2016

How long are you running your lights.

cowboy · Apr 19, 2016

Make sure that you are not over feeding as well I have my fowlr tank covered in GHA intentionally to minimize my equipment since i dont have much room under the stand.

JimDog2015 · Apr 19, 2016

sureal00 said:
Algae is absorbing all the phosphates so your phos test will look fine.Check your water for phosphates,run gfo as well.Also try manually pulling the hair algae off.

What is GFO?

JimDog2015 · Apr 19, 2016

jsker said:
How long are you running your lights.

about 9 hrs

cowboy · Apr 19, 2016

Granulated ferric oxide, You can find in on BRS.

JimDog2015 · Apr 19, 2016

cowboy said:
Make sure that you are not over feeding as well I have my fowlr tank covered in GHA intentionally to minimize my equipment since i dont have much room under the stand.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

cowboy · Apr 19, 2016

So you foods are going to release Po4 and alot of it feeding the algae. Andbto answer your question how much algae is to much that really depends on you and the type of algae. Like i mentioned i run a fowlr (Fish only with live rock) and I placed GHA (Green hair algae) to remove the Po4 and No3 from the tank. Now GHA is not exactly pretty but the only way it should kill your coral is if ot grows over it and restrict light from the coral.
Now there is other algae that can be harmful to coral and fish by other means. Like bryopsis most livestock that injest it are going to die. So the best is to identify the the algae that is present and decide how much is to much.

jsker · Apr 20, 2016

I am having the same issues, I dialed back the lights to 12 hr and I might dial them back more. I am also going to bring in more cleaning crew

JimDog2015 · Apr 20, 2016

jsker said:
I am having the same issues, I dialed back the lights to 12 hr and I might dial them back more. I am also going to bring in more cleaning crew

I actually thought that increasing the light intensity and duration might kill off some of the stuff, but I'm guessing that would make matters worse.... So here is my plan:
> Add a Granulated Ferrous Oxide media filter to the system this week.
> 30% Water change with RO/DI Water
> Manually remove as much of the hair algae as I can.

> Pop a Cold Corona with lime and see what happens over the next few weeks.

jsker · Apr 20, 2016

Good Plan, I am running GFO, and I am doing 10% only water changes. Others have said on different threads, large water change are a temporary fix, I tend to agree. I was doing a bunch of water change and striped the tank of the BIO load and stress the fish, the fish start getting ich and dying. I just went on line with a new sump, and nitrates are still high. Started going old school and vacuuming my sand during water changes and my nitrates are starting to come down slowly. My Po4's are sitting at 2 instead of an 8 to 16 since I have been running GFO and keeping up on my maintenance.

My sand bed has not been vacuum yet with this tank. (tank is 15 months old) I upgrade my lights a little over a month ago and the lights are much strong then my old light. I would say these are the reason for my green hair issue.

I do like the beer idea though