Cali Kid Corals

The great Algae debate

beaupierce

beaupierce

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Hey Guys,
wanted all your guys opinion on this one......

Starting a couple of weeks ago I started to noticing a patches of hair algae growing over some of my rocks in my tank..
Well... fast forward a 3 weeks of being gone on vacation and BAM! It is everywhere.
It has taken over 2 of my better Zoa colonies, knocked out 4 SPS pieces, and I lost a frogspawn head.

So, I panicked like very good reefer would do and checked all parameters.Everything seems in pretty good order. Nitrate was at 50, a bi high I know, but my tank has always been this way. Other than that PH was 7.9, low but I measured the water after 8 hrs of the lights off.

Anyone have any ideas as to what to do??

Oh ya, I cut the light cycle duration in half for a week. started a bag of phosban, changed Ro/DI filters and did a 20 gal water change.
I know this may seem like a rookie mistake, but it has me fooled.

Any advice/help would be great so I stop losing all my pieces!


Cheers from the hopeless.... :-
 
skim wet...is your skimmer undersized? find out where your source of PO4 is. Are you feeding too much? whats the TDS reading on your top off water?
 
Well the nitrates could easily be the issue. I register "zero" nitrates, that doesn't mean that I'm producing zero, it just means the algae that is present in my tank is consuming nitrates at the same rate as my tank produces them. If you have an excess (as it shows here) your algae will grow to the point where it will make your nitrates read zero, but again that doesn't mean you have no production :D

More frequent water changes perhaps? Do you siphon the crap/garbage that's on the bottom when you water change? (I would suggest doing this rather than just pulling water out). From your description of time line though, might be a bit of "new tank syndrome", and as such the worst thing you can do is over-react.
 
So,
as far the water changes are, I usually stir up the sand a bit with my "scooper" and try to release all the air bubbles and make the sand nice and pretty white again....

My TDS reading was hi, so i changed all my RO/DI filters... maybe it was running to nutrient rich and that caused a outbreak???

Also, the nitrate levels are still at 0 so maybe my grazing fields, as they are looking now could be absorbing all of them..

My feeding schedule is I feed 1x every other day, 3 "cubes" for about 10 fish.... too much? Too little??


What is "skimming wet"?? My skimmer as it is right now barely even produces skimmate.... and yes I have the air intake almost to the top and i create a nice foam head, yet very little skimmate..any ideas how to correct this...
??

Thanks in advance...
B
 
So, your skimmer is creating foam but it's not bubbling up over into the collection cup? Can you lower the collection cup or raise the water level? That would make it skim more "wet."

I believe that if your skimmer isn't working properly then those organic compounds which it would otherwise skim are getting broken down into ammonia, converted to nitrate, and then algae is feasting on that.

You could also grow some macroalgae to help soak up some of those overly abundant nutrients. When I added some chaeto it grew like mad for a bit until it reached an equilibrium with the available nutrients.
 
skimming "wet" is producing a watery skimmate...more like the green tea colored vs the black tar looking stuff...i just got over a hair algae prob by a few water changes and skimming wet. When i purchased my skimmer from KM associates, Ed had informed me that if i skim wet it could pull out some forms of PO4 which would aid in ridding the tank of the nasty hair algae. Try to adjust your skimmer to atleast pull some skimmate out. what kind of skimmer is it? Is it "sized" properly for your tank?

Also, i would leave the sand bed alone. As said above by Eileen, stirring it up can be disturbing some biological filtration processes...the bubbles you see are actually created by denitrifying anerobic bacteria. The gas produced is the final process of the whole nitrogen cycle. By stirring up your sandbed, you are allowing O2 enriched water to reach the bottom most levels of your sandbed...

Make sure you have adequate flow to avoid and detritus from building up on the sandbed...this will keep all the fish crap suspended in the water column, acting as food for corals as well as allowing the skimmer to do its job more efficiently...

like Mike said...it could also be "new tank syndrome"..i went 2 years without a trace of HA...then BAM...it hit my whole tank hard and i had to handle a couple things differently....manual removal only caused it to spread in my tank...after heavy skimming and weekly 20% water changes (for about 6 weeks) all the hair algae seemed to have dissapeared..

HTH
 
Thanks guys for your advice.....
my skimmer is the Euroreef CS 100... I was told that this is fine for the size of thank i have (140)
I'll try to move a few things aund and get it skimming more "wet" and see if that helps. Until then I will be doing a bunch of water changes it looks like....

thanks again
Beau
 
I used to have hair algae issues which completely went away by having a dark our peroid during the middle of the day, but all of your peramerters should be reading correctly 1st
 
When this tank was set up, did you go through a hair algae period as the tank was going through it inital phases? I set up one tank where this didn't happen until later after the tank was over a year old, then it decided to go through its hair algae phase. Caught me completely off guard and I already had some corals growing in the tank.

Now my tanks are skimmerless, but one thing I never do is stir the sand bed. I don't even give it funny looks. Never.

Feed any fish less than you have been, do regular water changes but not too much at a time like maybe 10% 3 times/week, have patience and clean your skimmer as directed. Hair algae is a good sign of a disturbed reef environment as in "new tank syndrome", disturbed sand bed.

When I did run a skimmer one thing I would do was skim wet & extend my light period to help the algae grow and so exhaust the nutrients in the tank & add more flow.
 
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