Losing battle with hair algae, thinking of throwing in the towel.

[peterat33rpm]

As the title says, I am losing a battle with hair algae badly. ~9 month old 32 gallon AIO system currently stocked with a firefish, a bengai, a blenny, and two clowns. Cuc includes a strawberry conch, a rock boring urchin, maybe 10 hermits, and I don’t really know how many snails of various kinds are left because I’ve found several dead over the last few weeks. Cleaner shrimp and an emerald crab both randomly died out of nowhere in the last 2 weeks.

I had dinos which I got rid of but I think I swung way far in the other direction because this brown hair algae has exploded (see pictures). Nitrates and phos measure like 0 at home, measured 6 and 0.02 at the LFS last week. Every week I do a big deep clean scrubbing the rocks and glass and get it to look ok but it lasts like a day before coming back.

I treated with reflux twice maybe 2-3 months ago, and then again a week ago because I thought I underdosed it. All that happened is my torch which was like my favorite thing about the tank died. So I’m basically looking for advice for taking one last go at this before I throw in the towel, which even that would be a hassle trying to rehome the animals.

I’m thinking of taking all the rock out and bathing them in peroxide vs just getting new rock altogether to try to do a hard reset. Would I have a mini- cycle if I did either of these options? Or would the sand and filter media be enough?

Alternatively, getting a big cleaner crew package from reef cleaners (like 30 crabs, I have an ICP test coming in the mail that i would do first to try to prevent all the inverts just dying off.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Some questions for you please: How much do you feed and how often? What do you have for filtration on the tank, is there a skimmer? How often do you change filter pads or socks if you use them? Do you use rodi water? How often you change the water? What do you have for flow in the tank? Why no turbo snails or other algae grazing snails?

 

[peterat33rpm]

Sorry yea should have included more but was in a rush.

- I feed light, like a quarter of a cube of marine cuisine a day.
- I have upgrade the stock return pump to a sicce syncra 1.5
- no skimmer :-( I could add one to the back chamber but would take some rearranging
- I have filter sponge in 4 of the 6 media basket chambers that I clean out in tank water every water change. Should I change to floss?
- RODI water from the grocery store.
- 5 gallon water changes usually every 2 weeks. Been maybe every 10 days lately while trying to deal with this
- hygger nano wave maker on one side of the tank and another voyager (can’t remember if nano or the next one up) power head on the other. Flow is probably only average overall. Toying with getting the jebao mp10 knockoffs but I want to decide for sure I’m gonna stick with it before spending more money
- I had one big turbo that died, and then I have a handful of trochus and nessarius. LFS didn’t have small turbos last time I went

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

You have 5 fish you feed and they pee and poop. That is the nutrient import into rhe water, your filtration (nutrient export) is not matching the import. You have very little nutrient export in your set up, and changing the pad only every 2 weeks means that whatever is in the pad is being held and rotting for 2 weeks.

Water changes are your only nutrient export and you don’t do enough of them, while you have this algae problem you should do weekly water changes, even 10 gallons weekly if you can manage.

A skimmer would help you. Remove the filter pads altogether or else clean them every 3 days. Activated carbon will also bind dissolved organics so that will help. Get a handful of big turbo snails. Try increasing the flow that always helps. Just a few things I would do, hope others can help. Good luck.

 

[peterat33rpm]

Ok that all makes sense, I hadn’t thought of the filter pads just holding onto crap. Would you recommend just changing to floss? Or if I wash the pads does it matter what water I clean them in (salt, RO, tap)?

 

[Tamberav]

Use floss and forget the pads. Change the floss frequently.

Weekly water changes to suck out debris or dying/excess algae.

 

[ben townsend]

Have you tested your grocery store water? I had crazy algae issues and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Finally as a last resort I forked up enough money to buy a nice RO filter. After 2 water changes with the 0 TDS water my algae problem was gone. There wasn’t anything wrong with the store water ph and nitrate wise but something was in there that was feeding that algae… something you could try

 

[rtparty]

Export is NOT your issue. You have very low residual nutrients in the water column. Your N and P tests confirm this. The algae, slime, and whatever else is mixed in there is not bottoming out your nutrients.

Algae comes from a lack of predation aka not enough herbivores. Get more snails in there and less crabs! Hermit crabs are pointless and just end up eating your snails for their shells.

Look into dosing ammonia and phosphate. Randy has great guides and instructions on both. The slimes and dinos are winning the real estate war because they are much better suited to super low nutrient levels. Bump them up and you will watch the dinos and slimes go away as natural predators (pods and other organisms) start to take over.

STOP using Reeflux. It isn't helping anything and just delaying the maturation of your system. The corals show a VERY clear picture of starvation. They need more ammonia and phosphate.

Here is my 250 shortly before teardown. You can find the build thread in my signature.

 

[Tamberav]

Is your urchin eating it? Never had a rock boring one but my tuxedo eats gha like a beast.

 

[FUNGI]

Sea hare.

 

[CHSUB]

Every week I do a big deep clean scrubbing the rocks and glass and get it to look ok but it lasts like a day before coming back

I would do this with a toothbrush and blow with a turkey baster, but how well are you doing this? When I had algae problems I would spend an hour or more scrubbing hard, so much so that even my glued rocks would move. Imo, you are not scrubbing hard enough and manually removing enough algae.

You have 5 fish you feed and they pee and poop. That is the nutrient import into rhe water, your filtration (nutrient export) is not matching the import. You have very little nutrient export in your set up, and changing the pad only every 2 weeks means that whatever is in the pad is being held and rotting for 2 weeks.

Water changes are your only nutrient export and you don’t do enough of them, while you have this algae problem you should do weekly water changes, even 10 gallons weekly if you can manage.

A skimmer would help you. Remove the filter pads altogether or else clean them every 3 days. Activated carbon will also bind dissolved organics so that will help. Get a handful of big turbo snails. Try increasing the flow that always helps. Just a few things I would do, hope others can help. Good luck.

This is good advice to follow. Don’t overthink think this, your tank is dirty.

 

[Marinus]

I have heard a tuxedo urchin might help

 

[peterat33rpm]

Is your urchin eating it? Never had a rock boring one but my tuxedo eats gha like a beast.

Not as much as I had hoped, if at all :-(

Have you tested your grocery store water? I had crazy algae issues and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Finally as a last resort I forked up enough money to buy a nice RO filter. After 2 water changes with the 0 TDS water my algae problem was gone. There wasn’t anything wrong with the store water ph and nitrate wise but something was in there that was feeding that algae… something you could try

I haven’t, but it is something I’ve thought of as a possible source so I just bought a cheap tds meter on amazon, arriving Sunday. Which RO filter did you get? I should probably just bite that bullet.

.

Look into dosing ammonia and phosphate. Randy has great guides and instructions on both.

I have phos in hand, but I assumed dosing it would just feed the algae since thats winning the competition for resources war right now?

So my plan right now -
- ICP test and barring any metal or something thats killing my inverts, get a reef cleaner package full of snails
- test store water for TDS and if >0 get an RO filter
- switch to filter floss
- add carbon
- weekly water changes with manual removal

 

[peterat33rpm]

I would do this with a toothbrush and blow with a turkey baster, but how well are you doing this? When I had algae problems I would spend an hour or more scrubbing hard, so much so that even my glued rocks would move. Imo, you are not scrubbing hard enough and manually removing enough algae.

This is good advice to follow. Don’t overthink think this, your tank is dirty.

I usually spend between 1-2 hours when doing a deep clean/water change first siphoning out the big strands and then going at the rock with a toothbrush :-/

 

[CHSUB]

So my plan right now -
- ICP test and barring any metal or something thats killing my inverts, get a reef cleaner package full of snails
- test store water for TDS and if >0 get an RO filter
- switch to filter floss
- add carbon
- weekly water changes with manual removal

This is an excellent plan. I would only add that changing the floss twice weekly would be necessary.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

all the advice given here is right on. Just give it a few more months. i am at about 9 months too and dealing with hair algae. It will improve. Don’t quit before the year mark or year and a half. It will be worth it

 

[JanVL]

As the title says, I am losing a battle with hair algae badly. ~9 month old 32 gallon AIO system currently stocked with a firefish, a bengai, a blenny, and two clowns. Cuc includes a strawberry conch, a rock boring urchin, maybe 10 hermits, and I don’t really know how many snails of various kinds are left because I’ve found several dead over the last few weeks. Cleaner shrimp and an emerald crab both randomly died out of nowhere in the last 2 weeks.

I had dinos which I got rid of but I think I swung way far in the other direction because this brown hair algae has exploded (see pictures). Nitrates and phos measure like 0 at home, measured 6 and 0.02 at the LFS last week. Every week I do a big deep clean scrubbing the rocks and glass and get it to look ok but it lasts like a day before coming back.

I treated with reflux twice maybe 2-3 months ago, and then again a week ago because I thought I underdosed it. All that happened is my torch which was like my favorite thing about the tank died. So I’m basically looking for advice for taking one last go at this before I throw in the towel, which even that would be a hassle trying to rehome the animals.

I’m thinking of taking all the rock out and bathing them in peroxide vs just getting new rock altogether to try to do a hard reset. Would I have a mini- cycle if I did either of these options? Or would the sand and filter media be enough?

Alternatively, getting a big cleaner crew package from reef cleaners (like 30 crabs, I have an ICP test coming in the mail that i would do first to try to prevent all the inverts just dying off.

Any advice is appreciated.

have you tried Kent Marine Tech M? I've been gone a while...is it even mfr'd anymore? It works great with water changes. takes some work and consistency, but it works. Reduce feedings too. Old reefer here

 

[CHSUB]

all the advice given here is right on. Just give it a few more months. i am at about 9 months too and dealing with hair algae. It will improve. Don’t quit before the year mark or year and a half. It will be worth it

Yes to this….

To the OP: your best defense against algae is WC, manual removal, CUC, and low inorganic nutrients. I too am at about 10 months on my 33 gallon tank and have had battles with algae. I have been doing this a long time so I know how to deal with algae and most of the advice here is spot on. Here are two pictures of my tank from July and this week. If you look closely at July you can see hair algae and some other crud. Now no algae but my routine has not changed.

 

[peterat33rpm]

That looks great! Ok this is a super dumb question probably, but will taking out the four filter pads I have currently and replacing them with floss have any negative effects as far as losing some nitrifying bacteria? I have floss on hand ready to go. I assume I just rip a wad of it out and stuff it in the chambers, and then replace every 3 days?

 

[bobnicaragua]

You are clear to changeout your filter pads.