Is this Green Hair Algae?

[ZR2]

Does anyone know if this is green hair algae, it’s a darker green? A couple months ago I had a lighter green hair algae and I added astrea snails which mowed down the algae fast. Now I have been battling this darker looking algae that I cannot get rid of. I pull it off the rocks and it keeps coming back. It’s even growing on the astrea snails. I do weekly water changes and I alternate between flake food and mysis shrimp. Could it be my light? I have a fluval evo 13.5 with the stock light. It seems like too much white led in my opinion. I was looking at the AI Prime but was not looking to spend $200 on a light.

[Natereef]

Thats is green hair algae. You probably have too much nutrients, cant really tell without testing. Are you using rodi water for your salt mix? ALso I see you dont have any corals yet? You can just use  GFO or Rowaphos if thats available in your area to suck out all the phosphates, but somethings probably causing it in the first place which is excess nutrients. How often do you feed also? I dont think its the light, algae wont just magically grow because the light is whiter. You can also black out your tank (dont turn on the lights) for a few days to help the algae die off.

[ZR2]

11 minutes ago, Natereef said:

Thats is green hair algae. You probably have too much nutrients, cant really tell without testing. Are you using rodi water for your salt mix? ALso I see you dont have any corals yet? You can just use  GFO or Rowaphos if thats available in your area to suck out all the phosphates, but somethings probably causing it in the first place which is excess nutrients. How often do you feed also? I dont think its the light, algae wont just magically grow because the light is whiter. You can also black out your tank (dont turn on the lights) for a few days to help the algae die off.

I am guessing it’s a phosphate issue but usually nothing shows on the test because the algae is probably consuming it too quickly. I use nutri seawater and I dilute it with distilled water. I have tested both for phosphates and nothing registered so I don’t think it’s the water I am using. I feed the fish once a day. I have a royal gramma, a OC Clown, a hermit crab, and a strawberry crab, and quite a few snails. I only have 3 mushrooms in the tank, you can only see one in the pictures. I had a Duncan in there that was doing great and suddenly died and I lost interest in the corals after that. 

[Natereef]

1 minute ago, ZR2 said:

I am guessing it’s a phosphate issue but usually nothing shows on the test because the algae is probably consuming it too quickly. I use nutri seawater and I dilute it with distilled water. I have tested both for phosphates and nothing registered so I don’t think it’s the water I am using. I feed the fish once a day. I have a royal gramma, a OC Clown, a hermit crab, and a strawberry crab, and quite a few snails. I only have 3 mushrooms in the tank, you can only see one in the pictures. I had a Duncan in there that was doing great and suddenly died and I lost interest in the corals after that. 

 

Oh if you have mushrooms in there sucking out all the phophates would probably piss them off. I had the same problem when I first started with my jbj 12 gallon way way back.  A combination of every other day water change about 5 gallons every other day , doing tank blackouts and controlling my feeding amount helped me clear that out. Also dont get discouraged on corals, get the easier ones, mushrooms are beautiful and a great way to start easymode reefing in my opinion.

[Natereef]

I also did fluconazole treatment along with the blackout, I ofcourse stopped my water changes and removed carbon while doing the fluconazole treatment.

[ZR2]

3 minutes ago, Natereef said:

 

Oh if you have mushrooms in there sucking out all the phophates would probably piss them off. I had the same problem when I first started with my jbj 12 gallon way way back.  A combination of every other day water change about 5 gallons every other day , doing tank blackouts and controlling my feeding amount helped me clear that out. Also dont get discouraged on corals, get the easier ones, mushrooms are beautiful and a great way to start easymode reefing in my opinion.

Wow your tank looks good, I wish mine looked like that. I can’t seem to get any purple coralline algae either. Don’t those phosphate treatments require protein skimmers or diffusers? I was try to avoid having all that equipment.  

[Natereef]

1 minute ago, ZR2 said:

Wow your tank looks good, I wish mine looked like that. I can’t seem to get any purple coralline algae either. Don’t those phosphate treatments require protein skimmers or diffusers? I was try to avoid having all that equipment.  

 

In terms of fluconazole treatment you dont need additional equipment, but I would only suggest that if doing more often water changes, along with blackout and limiting your feeding wont work. For using gfo I dont have additional equipment for that either, I just put it in a filter/ media bag in the filter chamber. I was very careful on the amount as you dont want 0 phosphates because corals need them too to survive.

[A.m.P]

Please try to use flucanizole only as a final alternative to throwing out a dying tank and starting over. Antibiotics should not be used for off-label purposes, especially not those which will just release the medication back into groundwater or other locales potentially contributing to the impending antibiotic-resistance crisis facing modern medicine.

[ZR2]

1 hour ago, Natereef said:

 

In terms of fluconazole treatment you dont need additional equipment, but I would only suggest that if doing more often water changes, along with blackout and limiting your feeding wont work. For using gfo I dont have additional equipment for that either, I just put it in a filter/ media bag in the filter chamber. I was very careful on the amount as you dont want 0 phosphates because corals need them too to survive.

What bag would be best for gif and can you tell me the steps to do this safely? 

[Garf]

Ya, don't use flucanizole. It is just hair algae, proper maintenance and tank husbandry will take care of it. You gotta test for nutrients, something is off. Do you know where your clean up crew is at? Did a large hermit of snail or two kick the bucket? It looks to me that the rock/sand isn't capable of handling your bio load. You could look into adding some of the bio media (the larger balls or blocks like Brightwell makes) to supplement the rock. As for running other stuff like gfo, it can help you get a handle on things, but it can also be bad to run zero phosphate. You don't want to go from hair algae to dynos.  You will have to test and get the phosphate and nitrats at an acceptable level. 

 

How long is your light cycle? I'd run just the blues for morning, evening, and add the whites in the middle part of your lighting cycle. You don't have anything in there that needs the whites atm, so even if you are working, turn the blues on and leave it for the day. 

[ZR2]

48 minutes ago, Garf said:

Ya, don't use flucanizole. It is just hair algae, proper maintenance and tank husbandry will take care of it. You gotta test for nutrients, something is off. Do you know where your clean up crew is at? Did a large hermit of snail or two kick the bucket? It looks to me that the rock/sand isn't capable of handling your bio load. You could look into adding some of the bio media (the larger balls or blocks like Brightwell makes) to supplement the rock. As for running other stuff like gfo, it can help you get a handle on things, but it can also be bad to run zero phosphate. You don't want to go from hair algae to dynos.  You will have to test and get the phosphate and nitrats at an acceptable level. 

 

How long is your light cycle? I'd run just the blues for morning, evening, and add the whites in the middle part of your lighting cycle. You don't have anything in there that needs the whites atm, so even if you are working, turn the blues on and leave it for the day. 

Currently I am running the stock evo sponge with the white substrate rocks and then for carbon I am running the chem blue. I have seen the replacement tank chambers for evo a but they seem expensive. Trying to run the tank without spending a ton of money on it. My goal is to keep it simple. Usually I turn the lights on around 9am and then I turn them to blue around 8 pm. I have had all blue on for a few days but the mushrooms started to close so I turned the white lights back on. 

[A.m.P]

How often do you clean that sponge? You could just drop some phosguard and purigen in a bag and sit them in the back chamber, manually remove algae and dose .5-1ml of 3% peroxide (per 10gallon) for a few days (cleaning your sponge or tossing polyfill after a 10-20% water change). Phosguard won't likely bottom-out your phosphates, purigen will help keep you from having nitrate explosions, and clean that sponge twice a week, or replace it with polyfill and throw that out once or twice a week. Reduce your photoperiod to around 8 hours and try to run the whites for around 4 hours in the middle of that max imo (you don't really have many corals and what you do have isn't super-light demanding so you can probably do just one or two). 

Shorter-photoperiod will help with algae, corals rarely benefit from more than 8 hours anyway
H202 will liquefy most algae and combined with manual removal and waterchanges to rid the column of nutrients can really help clear things up
Sponges are nutrient-traps if you don't clean them frequently
Some chemical export will help you get things under control alongside waterchanges and using mechanical filtration to remove what you miss
Give it a go for a few weeks and see if your problems clear up, you should also probably scrub the rocks and agitate the sand bed a bit at a time to see if detritus or something else has built up in low-flow areas. You also just might need a bit more flow.

I'm usually extremely hesitant to post advice, but these are all things to try before doing something extreme like wasting antibiotics and contributing to developing global-crisis in doing so.

[Garf]

Ya, most people toss the sponge and media, I kept the charcoal and tossed it after a month. Those sponges never work well. 

[Natereef]

2 hours ago, ZR2 said:

What bag would be best for gif and can you tell me the steps to do this safely? 

If youre not familiar with GFO I would recommend reading up a bit more before using them. I buy a product called rowaphos because I like the nylon media bag it comes with, and I buy bulk GFO from amazon to refill it. Of course this is a patch up solution. Your first course of action should be water changes, limiting feeding first. There are a lot of helpful videos on youtube like this one. Also refer to other reefers recommendations as I am just one of a handful of people with recommendations in this forum.

 

[ZR2]

36 minutes ago, Natereef said:

If youre not familiar with GFO I would recommend reading up a bit more before using them. I buy a product called rowaphos because I like the nylon media bag it comes with, and I buy bulk GFO from amazon to refill it. Of course this is a patch up solution. Your first course of action should be water changes, limiting feeding first. There are a lot of helpful videos on youtube like this one. Also refer to other reefers recommendations as I am just one of a handful of people with recommendations in this forum.

 

Does anyone recommend a reactor that would be small and work well for a fluval evo? And how does the actual unit work? I have had my tank since January and have battles horrible green Cyano and I got through that. Now I need to get through this hair algae 

[Natereef]

13 minutes ago, ZR2 said:

Does anyone recommend a reactor that would be small and work well for a fluval evo? And how does the actual unit work? I have had my tank since January and have battles horrible green Cyano and I got through that. Now I need to get through this hair algae 

I just use a media bag to keep things very simple. I did buy a innovative marine mini max reactor but I took it offline and went back to media bag because its just another piece of equipment I dont want to maintain lol.

[ZR2]

4 minutes ago, Natereef said:

I just use a media bag to keep things very simple. I did buy a innovative marine mini max reactor but I took it offline and went back to media bag because its just another piece of equipment I dont want to maintain lol.

Ha sounds like me, I just want to keep it simple. How long do you leave the GFO in the bag before changing it? 

[Natereef]

32 minutes ago, ZR2 said:

Ha sounds like me, I just want to keep it simple. How long do you leave the GFO in the bag before changing it? 

Usually every two weeks. I use half the recommended dose plus I feed heavy. i test my water every week so I know when my phosphates start creeping up. 

[mcarroll]

Can't Fight Fire With Gasoline

If you are testing phosphates and getting zero, it's not a mirage caused by mushrooms or algae growing...or anything else.

 

There are no testable phosphates in the water.  Essentially this means none are available to any organism that is dependent on dissolved nutrients....including corals.

 

However, the water is not the only location for phosphates.

 

Your live rock and sand, being nice and bare aragonite, work just like GFO and adsorb phosphates from the water pretty aggressively. 

 

So as you feed and things poop and there's even a little extra phosphates in the water, it gets adsorbed onto the rocks and sand.

 

Algae spores are always circulating in the tank looking for a place to settle that has what they need:  space, light, nutrients and flow.

 

Your rock is a nice locale since it appears to have no natural covering (eg coraline algae), ample light, available phosphates and plenty of water flow.

 

Spores will settle.

 

Algae will grow.  Including some rootlets to make use of bound nutrients on the substrate.  

 

Then the algae begins to trap detritus as they grow out and obstruct water flow, capturing more nutrients.

 

The only thing you're starving out with things like Chemipure and other anti-nutrient strategies are the algae and other microorganisms that you actually want to grow and stabilize your reef.

 

Manual Removal

Stop trying so hard (or at all) to manage nutrients on the back end. 

 

"Cleanup" 

 

Cleanup is the cleanup crew's job.  The way you help them (as the #1 cleanup crew member) is by pulling out algae by hand that they can't or won't deal with.  Add more snails as needed...just not too many all at once. 

 

Also, improve what you're putting into the tank:  switch from dried to frozen foods, and if possible from frozen to live foods. 

 

Dry food has very high levels of nutrients compared to natural whole foods and it usually shows in the amount of algae it grows.

 

Once you stop starving out competitive algae like coraline that will take away real estate from pest algae and step up your real cleanup efforts, soon enough this algae won't be any work at all.

 

Right now it looks like one or two sessions of you manually removing the algae would be all it takes and your snails might then be able to keep up.  As long as you're keeping the tank stable, that should be all the more there is to it.  🙂

 

Here's the technique I'm talking about: