Hair algae

Me and my husband is have a really bad hair algae out brake in our tank.. right now we are running a phosphate filter pad in our canister filter. We put it in about 2 days ago. We have been battling this for about 3 weeks now.. All our levels checked out to be fine. We have been doing weekly water changes and we reset the lights so they are only on for about 7 hours a day now.. Our tank is about 6 months old.. We have a turbo, a lot of BL hermit crabs, as well as some RL hermit crabs. I miss looking at the coralline algae on the rocks.. Help??

 

WOW, thats alot.... your best bet is it rip out as much as you can by hand, then grab a sea hair. that should do it for the hair algea, then you have to figure out what caused this and deal with it.

 

You prob wont test any phosphates because that algae is consuming it so it isnt present as far as the test is concerned. However i can promise you that there are phosphates present otherwise the algae wouldn't be growing to that extent. Which test kit are you using for phosphate?
I would can the phosphate pad and switch to using RowaPhos in a fluidized bed reactor or in a filter bag in your current filter.
Are you using RO/DI water? For now adding any more livestock to eat the algae is just gonna do more damage than it will help your situation. Manual removal and upgrades in your filtration will be the best route to take.

 

Do you know you have a phosphate problem for sure, if so I would suggest using a product called phosbuster, it works very well. I would cut out the lights all togeather for a few days, its not going to hurt anything you have.

Next I would get one or two more mexican turbos, they work wonders on it, also keep up with the waterchanges.

 

We use marine lab by red sea to test our water. We are using RO water as well. I am pretty sure that the way it got started was when my husband said he liked a little green algae so he decided to top off the tank with the tap water one time and thats when it all started..I was really upset when he told me this.. Our tap water is full of minerals, we found that out after the first month of having our tank set up.. Thank you for your response...

 

Tearing it out and keeping the lights off for a few days works great for the short term, but it doesn't solve the problem (but hey, at least it'll give you some time to fix it ;D). I'll have to remember the bit about the mexican turbos - I should invest in those for my small hair algae problem . I've got my phosphate reactor going atm, and am also setting up a refugium where I'll have a 24/7 light source on some macros to help out with it. Since I'm a noob to refugiums, what kind of light do I need for it? I've seen a lot of pictures with one of those reptile heat lamp fixtures clamped to the top - what kind of bulb is it though?

 

i tore it out by hand got an old toothbrush and scrubbed the rest off in clean water and then replaced rock or whatever it was growing on and i finnally beat it. And yes keep lights on minimal time during the process

 

Regugiums are a great way to keep pesky algaes in line.You can use any normal halogen lamp but the stronger the light and the more red-orange side of the spectrum it is the better. The point is to grow the algae out of sight in the refugium. If your refugium is pretty and not caked in algae it isnt doing its job

 

Are you feeding frozen food??

 

Hehe, for sure. I just finished siliconing it, and I'll be buying LS/some macros after I get buy plumbing for it. I just need to figure out how I want the overflow to be, but I am thinking the DIY pvc overflow is what I'll end up doing (just need to see if I can mod it to work with vynil tubing where it hooks around my tank, since I am working with very limited space - using the RSM). What'll also be nice is having a place to throw inverts/fish that aren't getting along with everyone else