Hair algae is winning, HELP, now the refugium!

Personally, note the personally in this reply, I have had NO hair algae issues. I even purchased 3 heads of hammerhead coral that where infested with hair algae thinking it would kick off a bloom in my tank and I could try different things to kill it off when it started..

It's now 7 weeks after the purchase and all the hair algae is gone off the hammer heads. To go a step or two further, I even put one head into the 8g biocube and it's all gone as well.

With running the lights 24/7, your more or less gonna turn ur refuge into a "algae" refuge. While I personally would not do it, it might work for you and help with the issues your having.

GL girlie! I hope it works for you!!!!

-fritts

 

So no one else has any input on how I should continue with this madness???

 

My goal was to get the cheato going and the two crappy 40 watt bulbs I was using wasn't doing anything so I got this 23watt compact flourescent, rated at 90watts.

I have the same bulb in the other tank's refugium and it's not causing any problem at all, yet I also have no nuisance algae in that tank either.

Regarding the RO situation, I am going to order the RO/DI unit tonight. However today I picked up some RO water from the store and tested it, 0 nitrates and .5 phosphate. This tank was running for 9 months never with a problem, and the other tank for 4 months now and still no problems. I really believe it's the lighting I have (something is wrong with it even though it's not old).


What type of bulb do you recommend?

 

So what should I do???? (Aside from getting the RO/DI)

I've had the lights off in the DT for two weeks, before that I was running them about 4hrs a day.

 

For now I took that floodlight bulb out and replaced it with a 20 watt compact fluorescent regular house bulb, which is like a 75watt.

Should I continue to run it at night like I have been?

I'm losing my mind!!! And my tank!!!! !#%$@

 

You have several opinions in this thread already, what you might need now is some time to see what works.

You are using Cheato which loves strong lighting – so run the stronger lights you bought, but keep it at the reverse of your DT. Cheato also grows best when it can be permitted to tumble – I run my fuge at 10% of my DT per hour (that’s pretty darn slow, too slow for cheato to truly thrive – live yes, thrive no). I use a complete mix of macro algae’s as I am not afraid of anything going asexual. I assume you went cheato because you were concerned with your fuge going asexual – I still say to pull the macro algae from your DT tank and shove it in the fuge. After your problem is solved than you can pull it and toss it out.

Once you resolve your RO problem I suspect the algae will die off after a few water changes.

 

I think part of your problem is the K rating on that bulb. HD and Lowes have those spiral bulbs that have a K rating of 5100k and 6500k. Need to test for No3 and Po4. Your skimmer has the LHA b/c its getting hit by the bulb. You while need to direct the bulb to shine on the marcoalgae only. Luna

 

There have been several suggestions but they all differ that's why I was going for wide range of suggestions so I could go from there.

I use the cheato because my foxface ate all of the calupura and and almost all of the cheato when it was in the DT. It has been in my fuge for a couple months, there is none in the DT. I have been running the lights on opposite cycles with the DT's actinics. I can't wait to get the RO/DI filter next week! And I can't get the cheato to tumble due to my ghetto fuge setup which I'm hoping to resolve at some point.

The K rating is 1400 I think anyways, but I took it out and replaced it with a standard compact fluorescent house bulb, which I haven't been running due to missionsix's advice. The skimmer had (I cleaned well along with the fuge) diatoms not, GHA, but same difference in this case, it was because of the light. No3 tests at 0 and Po4 last I checked .5 but I also have so much damn algae to consume all of it.

So missionsix recommends that I leave all the lights off now until I get my RO/DI and start from there...

Thanks for your help everyone! I guess I need to wait for my new lights monday and the RO/DI thursday!