Having a battle with green hair algae >:(

[mandyplo]

Battling an intense green hair algae problem... Each day is so much worse than the last.
It feels like this happened over night and got out of control. Not sure how it started, I am running RO/DI water and always have, I run dual canister carbon and GFO filtration, sump with protein skimmer and filter floss. 60+lbs live rock filtration (not base rock, live rock). Kessil A350W LEDs (2 of them). I do 25% water changes every 3 weeks and test regularly. Phosphates undetectable. 1.024 salinity.
Really don't know what to do! Some people have suggested acquiring a tang but that's not going to solve how the problem started in the first place...
I only have 3 fish and am not over feeding (pellets once sometimes twice a day).
I want to try putting some chaeto in the sump and seeing if it will out compete for nutrients... Any other suggestions I'm at a loss :(

[mrhasan]

Macro rock?

[tang daddy]

What you stated reads pretty good.... Although I have some questions.

What size tank?
How much gfo do you run?
What lights are you using and how old are the bulbs?
How much water is replaced every 3 weeks?
Which test kit are you testing with?

I find the phosphate is very hard to test, I used a Hanna and it came up as 0 but I still get algae growth on the back glass, in the sump and on a few pieces of older LR that leech... The rest of the rock and sand is clear.

There are usually a few factors to consider when you have algae problems.



One of the biggest factor is lights, if the bulbs are older the spectrum is shifted and you will grow algae well. I have old t5 bulbs and know this is adding to some algae growth. The next is nutrients, wether from your live rock being saturated with nitrates and feeding....
The third is the water Coloumn, if you're doing a 10g water change on a 65g every 3 weeks it's not enough.... Over time the nitrates will build causing more algae growth.

Also why run filter floss, and how often do you change it?
Filter floss can build nitrates fast, you should be replacing or rinsing it well every 2-3 days, if it were me I'd ditch it.
If you have detritus settled in the sump, remove your equiptment and siphon it out when you do a waterchange.

Sit back take a deep breath and visualize what is happening... The answer is to your problem is in your tank.

[reefwars]

Any really close up pics of this algae ?

[hillegom]

How long since you changed out the GFO?
I agree with everything said ^^^

Read this thread also
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=838841&posted=1#post838841

[Proteus]

Is the algae just on rock or everywhere.

IMO 2 feeding a day is to much. Also depending on amount of food.
What's your cleanup crew
I would either toss the floss or change it daily

Myself I would do some large frequent wc and clean rock. Increase cuc and feed a little less. Jmo

[kole]

I know how you feel. I have a 180 that went from being totally clean of algae to completely covered in GHA in a week or two. I've been battling it for 2 months now and have it reduced to 2 stubborn spots.

I used a variety of things to fight it. I did a lot of water changes and reduced feedings. I started GFO and purchased the Hanna phosphorus checker and changed the GFO anytime I seen an increase in the phosphate reading.

I also started to use lanthanum chloride dripped into my overflow which was filtered with a 5 micron sock. I did this once a week to reduce any phosphate so that I didn't have to change out the GFO so often.

I also have an algae scrubber running in my sump. It never really grew a lot of algae. What I did was I increased the flow to the scrubber by installing a new and larger pump. Then I turn of my tanks white LEDS for a day every week. That way I figure the scrubber was able to use the nutrients that it needed and not compete with the algae in the display. Well the growth on the scrubber increased and the algae in the display died.

There is no one way to fight this pain in the a** algae but it can be beaten with a variety of tank maintenance. Which one will work for you may not be the one that helped me but I seen the biggest difference when I turned off the display lights and let my algae scrubber flourish.

Good luck. I've kept tanks for many years and this was the first time that I've had to deal with GHA and I don't every wish to deal with it again.

[asylumdown]

I have a little saying - you can't have a problem with problem algae, unless you have a problem algae.

Have you added anything new to your system recently? new corals, new frags, new fish? A single spore that hitchhiked in 2 months ago could have been quietly building to critical mass before it exploded and you noticed it. People seem to think that 100% of every kind of algae can potentially be in their tanks at any one moment, but that's not really true. Just like an un-planted garden will never magically sprout a tomato plant even though the soil is probably just fine for one, it's very possible that this particular species of algae is a problem for no other reason than it was recently introduced. If that's the case, your water parameters don't need to have changed for it to cause an issue. Think of all the cases of invasive algaes destroying reefs in places like Hawaii - the water was always capable of growing it, it's the fact that it's a recently introduced invasive species with no predators that explains why it's out of control now.

Some people think this is a controversial idea, but if you don't have the ability to get a natural predator for it, and you don't want to completely starve your water while devoting hours to manual removal, I would consider something like AlgaeFix Marine (you'll have to order it on eBay as I'm pretty sure it's still not available in Canada), or Fauna Marin's Ultra Algae X. knowing what kind of algae it is for sure though will definitely help you trouble shoot how to fix it.

[donkey77]

how old is this tank