Hair Algae

[PuffnStuff]

My puffers have been at full marine (1.024) for a month now. I'm skimming, have live rock and use RO water and I seem to be infested with hair algae. What can I do to try and get rid of this algae? Will it die back after the tank has been at this SG for a little while?

[Myaj]

It never did for my little tank.

Hmm, you are using RO and still have it, huh. Any corals in there? If not, you could try manual removal and full blackout for a while. How much light are you using?

Are you using crushed coral for a substrate? I had horrible hair algae in a tank with crushed coral, when I moved everything to a newly setup 75 with no crushed coral (same live rock, etc), it went away.

I have been told that once you get coraline algae on the live rock, the hair algae can't grow on that and you just have to wait. My problem was the hair algae was spreading faster than the coraline!

[edmlfc1]

I was having a bad breakout of hair algea in my tank also. I got a lawnmower blenny and he keeps it down to a min. Of course this was before my tank went to hypo. I can't grow coraline in my tank because the puffers eat it faster than it grows. I would see teeth marks all over my lr. I was also using ro/di water and I have sand in the tank. If you get a blenny make sure you qt it before adding it to your tank.

Myaj, could it have something to do with it being a new tank. Well not a new tank but new as in full marine? Once I went to full marine that's when I started getting all the hair algea also.

[edmlfc1]

Found this: http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/algaec ... 070403.htm

After reading it again I remember someone telling me that I probally had high phosphates in my tank. I got a phosphate kit and I think it was a 1 when I tested it. I was using tapwater in the beginning (before full marine) then I switched to ro/di (after going full marine). I haven't tested my phosphates since then. Hope this helps.

[Myaj]

Well, this tank was set up over a year and full marine from the start. By the time I tore it down I was ripping out handfulls of hair algae, one right after the other, just to get it looking decent.

I know my water there had high phosphates, which is why I was using an RO filter and also a phosphate removing pad/filter media thing.. it helped a little...

[PuffnStuff]

My substrate is the gravel I added when the tank was FW/low end brackish. I'll test phosphates and nitrates. My light cycle is 9:30AM to 8:00PM. I just wonder if I'm feeding too often. I still feed every day and my puffers are now 3" and 3.5". I'm feeding mysis, bloodworms, snails and the occasional mussel. I thaw the frozen food and never add the liquid to the tank. I'm guessing nitrates will be high. I wasn't initially using RO when I went to full salt, just treated tap water. I only started using RO once I set up my reef tank, so maybe there are phosphates left in the system even though I've done several water changes with RO water. My reef tests 0 for phosphates so my RO is working properly.

[PuffnStuff]

Right now phosphate and nitrate read 0. I'm suspicious, the article Myaj posted said that the algae could lock up these nutrients and give a false 0. So what should I do, the algae is on my live rock, should I pull the rock out and scrub it, do a big WC and wait and see? Should I leave the lights off for a few days or just cut down the number of hours per day?

[PuffnStuff]

Just an update,

I have a 108W T5 on my puffer tank, one bulb actinic, one bulb 10000K. There are no corals in the tank, just some LR and a couple of chubby GSP's. Btw, can I put a lawnmower blennie in with my GSP's? Once the algae is gone I could move him to my reef tank if there were aggression issues.