Reddish green algae growth

[jambon]

This picture may show the algae growth which I am having a hard time to get rid of. I do regular water changes of 10 % weekly and do not feed too much. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

[seabass]

There could be cyano covering some of it, so that could be making it more difficult to see what you have going on.  It looks like you have some common hair algae, and some tougher turf algae (with some cyano in the mix).

 

I'd like you to monitor your nutrient levels.  You should be aware of whether they are high or low, and it they are going up or down.  Nutrients are important to all photosynthetic life, so starving algae of nutrients means starving corals of nutrients too.  However, excessive levels could be making things harder to keep under control.  I'd like to see phosphate around 0.05 ppm and nitrate around 5 ppm.

 

I like to keep the ratio of nitrate to phosphate at about 10:1.  You might even have to dose nutrients if one or both are too low.

 

The percentage of water changes isn't usually all that important.  What you should be doing is blowing detritus off of the rocks and removing it from your sand bed.  This is primarily what will dictate how much water you will change out.  You can change more out to help control nutrient levels, if they are too high.

 

The algae should be manually removed where possible.  And your cleanup crew of herbivores should help control what you can't get to.  Ideally, you'd never let it get to this point, but I can sympathize with your predicament.

 

Some of that turf algae could be hard to get rid of.  It might take more than typical removal and herbivores to get it under control.  These methods can sometimes be fairly drastic, and even desperate.  Some could be harmful to your corals, or even the other beneficial life in your tank.  So I'd like you to concentrate removing the detritus and algae, while adding more herbivores.

 

The cyano could be due to organic waste (detritus and dissolved organics) in your system.  More flow can sometimes help keep detritus in suspension longer, so your filtration can remove more of it.  It can also help disperse it so that it can be food for your corals. What does collect, can be blown off bare rock with a turkey baster.  And dissolved organics can be removed with activated carbon and/or a protein skimmer.

[Snow_Phoenix]

I have turf algae in my 60G. I've discovered that my purple rock urchin does scrape the rocks until it's white once it plows through an algae patch - but the issue with adding urchins to tanks (especially smaller ones) is that they can starve out pretty quickly once all the algae is gone, and you'll have to manually supplement their diet with nori. I've tried adding banded trochus snails - but they seem to be a hit-or-miss at times when it comes to turf algae. But I suppose beefing up your CUC in any way couldn't hurt. 🤷‍♀️

 

Manual removal is the best option, as Seabass has suggested. Try to baste the rocks often and tweeze out as many of the algae patches as possible. The shorter strands will be tougher to remove, but you can focus on eradicating one patch at a time so that you don't exhaust yourself. 

 

 

[jambon]

Thank you for the replies... I do vacuum the gravel bed and vacuum off as much of the hair during a water change.its amazing how much I can get off this way.

   I also suspect maybe the rock.. which is full of small caves that my blenny enjoys hiding in also harbours a bit or even a lot of detritus. I think I will remove a lot of my gravel and will invest in another wave maker.