Update! Hair Algae; Situation Improving

[georgeortiz]

Well,
I went ahead and picked up a phosphate pad and read your thread too late regarding the carbon GaryP :( But, I will check into the new phosphate removal methods you mentioned and will start doing a 5% water change every week. I picked up a small 6 gallon trash can to match my other trash can under the enclosure. One will be for makeup RO/DI water and the other will be for mixing my make up water for water changes. I am trying to make my maintenance as neat as I can. I remember the days of doing 25% water changes every month and dragging a large trashcan around for my FO setup. That Sucked! I have an additional question. I have been using phytoplex to spot feed my corals could It be possible I am overfeeding and this is a contributing factor? I am only feeding this to my corals every few days during the lights off cycle.

[brewercm]

My phytoplex only ever seemed to make my glass algae up more for scraping but didn't appear to make the hair algae worst.

[matt]

George;

A couple of things pop out to me in this thread:

1. 5% water changes are not enough. I would do several 25%-40% changes initially. Changing 5% of the water leaves 95% of the pollutants in your aquarium. Once your algae is under control, you can do smaller changes. When you do large water changes, make sure that the calcium, dkh, ph, and salinity of your new water matches what's in the tank.

2. Surprisigly few animals will eat this stuff; rather than add a large fish, I'd suggest a lettuce nudibranch and/or more snails. These will increase you bioload a lot less than a new tang.

3. Phytoplex is not eaten by stony corals, and in general is not a highly thought of food. You might check out some the articles Eric Borneman wrote for reefkeeping magazine on feeding corals. A better source of phytoplankton would be DTs live phytoplankton.

4. The only phosphate removal product I'd recommend is rowaphos. It's very expensive and a little inconvenient to use; you really need a small canister that you can put the stuff in and circulate water slowly through. I used a small canister I made and pushed water up through the rowaphos with a maxijet. The old aluminum-based stuff is not thought to be appropriate for reef use. Gary's asessment of this is exactly the same that I've read other places.

5. You can easily get zero readings on a phosphate kit and still have a bad algae problem, as Gary said earlier in the thread. This is because the algae consumes the phosphate as soon as it's available, leaving nothing for the test kit. The presence of nusiance algae is a positive test for phosphates. Eventually, if you keep siphoning out the algae, the caulerpa will maintain low levels of phosphates IF it has sufficient light and water flow to grow well.

6. 7 months is still a new tank, and it's pretty typical to get algae outbreaks at this time; maybe nutrients and animal wastes have built up to the point where you get an outbreak, but the system has not developed a "balance" capable of processing the waste at the same rate as it has accumulated. You have to be patient, do lots of water changes and manual removal, and eventually it will go away. Good luck! You've gotten lots of good advice from several people on this thread, IMO.

[georgeortiz]

Matt,
Thanks for the advice. This is the type of input we will miss from you. Good Luck and keep in touch!

[GaryP]

There are two type of phosphate, ortho and meta. Hobbyist test kits only detect ortho.

The test for meta involves boiling samples in sulfuric acid as I recall. Not something that is highly recommended on the hobbyist level. Meta phosphate is the organic phosphates I mentioned in my earlier post on carbon.

I said earlier that phosguard is silicate based. That is incorrect as Matt pointed out. IT IS aluminum based. I had a case of mental gas when I typed that. What am I going to do without Matt around to keep me straight. I guess Larry is going to have to do double duty.

Here is a good article on comparative tests of both types. I should warn you, it's is pretty heavy on analytical chemistry. The good thing is that they ran the tests on laboratory type instruments, not hobbyist test kits, so the results should be more accurate and sensitive than what we are capable of.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...004/review.htm

Gary

[fishhawk]

I dunno, I have a 110 that just exploded with hair algae. (Newish tank) 3 emerald crabs and one lawn mower blenny with an attitude did in in almost 6 days... That blenny is amazing with a face only a mother or a reefer with hair algae could love...

[georgeortiz]

I would just like to thank all you members who responded to my thread.

After acting like a nervous hen I put some of tips I recieved into play and my hair algae is retreating.

Even though it was an old method I used a phosphate pad in the sump.
I also ran carbon for 2 days and I am again running another batch of carbon for another two days.

Today I will be doing a 25% water change on the system. This should really help me out.

In the future I will be using phosoban as a preventitive and do a 5-10 gallon water change weekly. I have not decided this will have to be trial and error.

Again thanks to all you guys who added thier two cents. This is what I really like about the MAAST organization. Reefer addicts helping each other out.

[clowntrigger]

You may want to consider adding a protein skimmer to your system. We have found that with ample skimming, hair algae simply melts away. As with the others out there, I would suggest at least a 25% water change every month with RO water. The fewer phosphates you introduce to your system, the less likely you are to have algae issues, RO water is very important.

Does the tank sit in direct sunlight? This could be contributing to your problems as well. When the tank is not in direct sunlight, you atleast have the ability to control your photo-period, and could reduce heat issues.

In the mean time, I would suggest "harvesting" the hair algae you do have - just pull out what you can.

Just my 2 cents...