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Green Hair Algae


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Well my tank been running for almost a year now and the Green hair algae just keeps coming back, I had a Sea hare in my tank which helps tremedously but he has seemed to disapear. I also have a foxface to keep it down as well. I'm thinking I need to run some sort of Phosphate remover, I have a Red Sea Skimmer it's a 55 gallon with a canister filter I also run Carbon and Chemipure. I do about 10-15% changes weekly. I do not use RO water and have heard that even people who run RO still have algae problems. Any suggestions??? Also have Cyano but I treating with Red Slime control. I have Corals (Open Brain,Elegant,Leather Anenome,Crocea Clam,Frogspawn,SunCoral) so turning off lights is out of question. Any ideas for me????

Edited by Dominic
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The list is endless on what to change. What is in your canister filter? What kind of lighting are you using, how old are the bulbs? What are your water parameters? What do you have for a cleanup crew? How much flow do you have in your tank? What is your feeding schedule like? It's been my experience that when cyano shows up your water conditions are poor.

Few things to try:

Increase flow

Change to RO/DI

Change bulbs

Bigger Better Skimmer

Cut back on feeding

Run GFO either in the cannister or in a reactor.

Clean the canister out, depending on what's in it.

Set up a fuge with LR and macro algae.

These are just a few things to try, until we have more info on your setup, it's hard to pinpoint any one thing.

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Running a Rena XP2, Bulb is about 5 months old, Metal Halide,Calcium and KH is at appropriate levels, PH a little low around 8.1, acouple turbos,a nessarius, hermits, got a powersweep in tank also along with XP2, Feed once a day, I probly do feed more than I should, with mysis and brine. The skimmer I have is plenty large enough for this size tank I think plus it has a surface basket to help.

Edited by Dominic
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Running a Rena XP2, Bulb is about 5 months old, Metal Halide,Calcium and KH is at appropriate levels, PH a little low around 8.1, acouple turbos,a nessarius, hermits, got a powersweep in tank also along with XP2, Feed once a day, I probly do feed more than I should, with mysis and brine. The skimmer I have is plenty large enough for this size tank I think plus it has a surface basket to help.

I am coming to realize how important flow of water is to algae growth... Guess just think of a still water swamp compared to a fast moving stream

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I wonder if nice corals or plants live in those fast moving streams???

In the case of corals, yes.

When I had a 55gal I ran a powerhead 802 plus 3 maxijets on a wave timer. Increasing water flow may not cure your problem but it will definitely help.

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How much live rock/sand? I am a firm beleiver that nature does a much better job tan we can with any artificial means and that a good load of well established rock and sand along with a good clean-up crew can take care of almost anything.

It's not too likely the foxface will keep it under control as it doesn't seem to be the best tasting stuff, they seem to think of it as a food of last resort. A dwarf angel or two might help as well, but still probably not enough. I still occasionally get some hair algae growing in the tank I used to keep my seahorses in, and I transfer the rock with the algae to another tank that has a foxface and a couple of tangs, It might take them weeks to eat it all, but the same amount of caulerpa would be gone in a day. Maybe you'd like to intoduce some other types of macro algae to the tank to compete for the available resources, but again, the foxface would likely gobble them up faster than they could grow and quit eating the hair algae.

I found when I was keeping seahorses, that mysis shrimp were a really great source of nutrition for algae. So you might want to cut them down, I assume you're mostly useing them to feed the coral, so make sure you're target feeding and only as much as they will eat.

Good luck, let us know how you make out.

Bill

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Well I have about 70lbs of Live rock in 55 Gallon corner tank which is lots I think I hardly got any sand bed left for corals. I have cut back on feedings but then the fish start stealing from my corals, arrg. I just put some Phosphate remover in my canister to see if that helps especially with Cyano, also picked up a ladder glider to turn the sand. although he likes to dig holes under my corals to hide and disrupts them. I have a powersweep as well as XP2 to move the water around it's quite breezy in there.

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