green hair algae

So I came home from work yesterday to find that, all of a sudden, there is green hair algae all over many of my live rocks. I got over the diatom stage about 1-2 wks ago, and started stocking my tank lightly (1 damsel, 2 clowns, some leather coral). My clean-up crew (12 astrea snails, 10 hermits, 1 emerald crab) does not seem to be gobbling it up. What can I do about this? I am reluctant to shut off my lights, since I don't want to affect the coral. BTW, my measurements as of last night: Temp 80 degrees, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 5, Phosphate 0.2, PH 8.2, salinity 1.025.

 

Is this a new tank? Mexican Turbo's will clean it up.

Hair is generally excess nutrients in the water. But can also be due to excessive photo periods, you could cut your period back rather than turn it off.

Most common solutions start with cutting back the light, feeding less and water changes. Phosphates and nitrates are generally the culprets. Unfortunately, when testing you get decent results - but the reality *could be* that the excess nutrients are in the tank but being consumed by the algae at an equal rate.

I suggest pulling as much out as you can, cutting back the light, doing a water change and running fresh carbon and a phosphate sponge. Then test again. Good luck !!

 

Mexican turbos will eat it if they ever go to it--I put 5 Large ones in to eat my hair algae and they all went inside the rocks--they never come out where the algae is!!!

 

po4 at 0.2 wont be helping you, it would be higher if you did not have the GHA consuming it

photoperiod could be looked at, are you running your lights excessive amounts of time

but if thats not the case, if it where my tank, I would get some Phosphate remover into the filter system as that can starve out the GHA - I can vouch for Rhowphos and Phosguard , both have proved effective are removing PO4 for me

Steve

 

Currently I have a phosban reactor in my sump with mostly carbon, but a bit of phos-lock. I ordered a second phosban reactor so I can run carbon and phosban (or equivalent) in separate reactors. Do you recommend I also add a nitrate sponge, or is the carbon good enough for that? By the way, my current photoperiod is 8:00 AM-7:00 PM of T5 (2x55W 10000K, 2x55W actinic), 12:00PM-5:00 PM of PC (4x65W). Is this excessive?

 

I cut my light period down an hour on my timers and left it that way. That pretty much took care of it for me.


Your clean up crew seems real light for a 90g. As a reference, I have almost 200 snails (6 species) in my 55g and a dozen hermits.

I would contact John at ReefCleaners.org | Clean Up Crews and Macro Algae - Home to see about getting a more diverse clean up crew.

But I would shorten my light period first (also).