Algea has taken over my life

[berniekyle]

All I want to know is how to rid algea once and for all. I have a R/O system, a Uv light, a phosban reactor, due my water changes and still i cannot keep up with the algea. I have thought about adding a refugium but really dont have the space. I recently purchased a reef cleaner pack with little avail. Nothing seems to work. I have had my tank setup for about a year now and have been fighting a losing battle ever since. Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[griss]

[moved]

[MJAnderson]

What kind of algae is it? Have you changed your bulbs recently? What kind of fish and what's your cleaner pack?

[BLAZEHOK68]

algae magic. its a chemical i bought from the drs. website. it took 30 days to see any results, along with regular water changes, with ro/di water, all of my green hair algae dissapeared. my tank was completely cover with this crap too. also removing the algae by hand helped a lot.

[berniekyle]

My tank is a 90 gallon. I have a bubble tip, green and yellow pullop, yellow tang, lawnmower blenny, two yellow tail damsles, 3 green chromis, sand sifting star, sea cucumber, flame angle, cleaner shrimp, candy cane shrimp, morray eel, and 2 fish that I can not remember their names. My cleaner pack consisted of 50 snails and 50 crabs. I have alomost 100 pounds live rock plus 90 pounds live sand. I also have about 100 pounds of rock to make the tank look more full. My lights are 2 175 watt metal hallides and 3 110 watt vhos all of which were just replaced. I use protein skimming and know i am not over feeding tank. All of my water is from a r/o and due weekly water changes. All of my tests come back good except my nitrates which is higher than i would like but still well within limits. I also use 2 powerheads for water movement to supplement my wet/dry. The only supplements I use is iodine and snow ( a type of liquid food and trace elements) which i just started. The algea is hair algea and consumes everything. I would love to get into corals but cannot handle the extra calcium untill i get the algea under control. Also my bubble tip has been acting very strange. Has only opened up once in the last 2 weeks and looks deflated. The only good sign is that he is not roaming the tank. Could this be from the nitrates? I also had a tomato clown that died but that was my fault. When the bubble tip started acting funny i noticed the clown was stressing it out. I tried seperating the clown in a holder cell and it died.

[csb]

Algae problems are indicative of a fundamental problem with your tank that you need to get in control. You can add chemicals and other magic junk, but I wouldn't do that for 2 reasons. 1) There are usually unintended side-effects from such chemicals, 2) it doesn't actually fix the source of the problem.

In effect, your Algae is most likely conducting a useful function for your tank - nitrate export. Check your levels of Nitrates and Phosphates. You may find that Nitrates read 0, but that's because it's being consumed and balanced by your algae.

The trick will be to figure out where your nutrients are coming from. The most common cause in an established tank is over-feeding AND/OR detritus build-up in rocks and substrate.

What is your feeding regiment like? How much, how often, etc.

What are your nitrate and phosphate params?

Lighting - what type of lighting, and how old are the bulbs? What color temps?? (old PC bulbs will yellow over time and encourage algae growth)

How about flow? Got enough?

Cleaning habits - do you ever vacuum your substrate or blow detritus off your rocks?

These are just some areas to think about. If you don't mind people here in the forum evaluating your habits, then post it all and I'm sure you'll be able to fix the algae problem once and for-all!

On a similar note, I have a friend with a FOWLR tank and it's absolutely covered in thick dense green hair algae. He loves it, and brags about his "algae crop" all the time. He also feeds 50x heavier than he should, but for him, that's how he likes to run his tank!

Good luck

--csb

[csb]

Looks like you answered some of my questions as I was writing them! Good timing ...

What is your current nitrate reading?? (and all your params for that matter)

--csb

[ReefHoBo]

better ro/di system will do the job

[jvetter]

In no particular order of importance:

You may not be overfeeding, but your fish population is not helping your problem. I am not sure of the size of the moray eel (not the ideal reef community fish), but you should consider removing some of the larger fish to help with the nutrient loading.

Strong, random, turbulent water flow which sweeps out dirt and prevents dead spots is a must. You want something on the order of 20X the tank volume for internal water movement. 2 powerheads are probably not sufficient.

Consider either introducing other macroalgaes (chaeto, or caulerpa sp.) either in a refugium or directly in the tank. These algaes are much easier to harvest, and they will compete with the hair algae for nutrients.

You mentioned a "wet/dry." Be aware that general consensus (originally stated by Sprung and Delbeek) is that aerobic biological filters specifically trickle filters and wet/dry filters in reef tanks are nutrient factories. Live rock contains tremendous surface area for aerobic nitrification (bacteria driven decompostion of waste products - same as what happens in a wet/dry), but the live rock also has anaerobic regions where the end-products of aerobic processes nitrates (an algae nutrient) are converted back to nitrogen gas. This is an over-simplified version of what is actually happening, but hopefully this gives you the idea. Are wet/dry filters bad for reef tanks? No one can probably say for sure, but you can definitely run a reef tank just as well if not better without one.

Xenia sp. soft coral grows really fast and uses dissolved organic compounds "nutrients". As it grows, you can cut it back with scissors and discard it effectively exporting nutrients from your tank.

There is a thread in the Advanced Topics forum on remote deep sand beds in a bucket. Read the first couple pages. This looks really promising.

I know your frustration. I maintained a 500 gal reef tank for a time with a horrible plague of hair algae. Every week the rocks were scrubbed with a toothbrush, and this was done while standing in the water (sometimes upside down) with a SCUBA regulator on a long airhose.

Your problem will not go away overnight, but it will get better.

[Kiel'thalin]

How are you running your lights? i.e. how long are you running the MH's with the VHO's and how long are the VHO's running without the MH's?

[Electrobes]

As many have stated here you have a source of funk that is feeding the algae, but may be untraceable because it is balanced out by your algae. When I had a monster case of HA in my own tank I had to do one thing that I hated and another thing I feared.. but it worked and did take a month before I could claim I won the war.

First 1: I took every single thing out and brushed the hell out of them (It took more than one toothbrush to get a good brushing). If your algae if tough like stiff HA you may need a stiffer and a more bristled brush. This took me the entire day off plus made me aware that my source was my very old and used sand bed. It was slow leaking phosphates and other funk. I almost directly after the month ripped out the sand bed and stuck in a brand spankin' new one... didn't have the problem since.

Secondly 2: This part was a bit chilling only because I did have coral in my tank. I ran a ton of carbon in one shot and changed it weekly... sometimes less. I have a 40Br and I used 2 cups min and sometimes had it at 3-4 cups. I did this for a month and my tank was completely starved of the diminishing nutrients in the water column. My corals looked like poo but after about 3 months or so came back (I know for the impatient ones this would have been too much, but the sight of no algae kept me waiting happily).

After the source was gone and eventually the HA with the other move I pulled, I have been happy ever since.

Here's a fairly recent pic:


Here's a couple of tools I used in the production:

[berniekyle]

First off I would like to thank everybody who has replied and used their time to help with my problem. Just to answer a couple quick questions i run my both sets of my lights together for about 10-12 hrs a day. My eel is only about 12 inches long and his diameter maybe 1 inch, and my nitrate reading as of today Aug 18th is between 10 and 20 on the low range side of the scale(probably closer to 20). Also, no more than two weeks ago i did a 40% water change, took some rocks completely out of tank, scrubbed others with toothbrush, and bleached some to kill algea. I scrubbed all my glass and vaccumed the sandbed. The tank was spotless for about 5 days and then I noticed the algea coming back. Now a week later and its back in full force.

[berniekyle]

I almost forgot........I feed my fish 2-3 times daily. Usually only twice and I use an injector to put the food in the tank so none gets sucked into the wet/dry. I put only enough food in at a time that it is all completely eaten. Then i give a little more till I see the fish arent as exicted about the food and thats when i stop for that feeding.

[Jay4Robin]

I hope this helps.http://www.melevsreef.com/gha.html

Using bleach on the live rock is not good. You killed good bacteria and that added fuel to the problem. The bacteria helps filter the water. Cut down on your feeding also. Stick to the basics. Get a TDS meter and make sure the R/O unit is good.
If you have a protein skimmer make sure its also working good.
with a tank your size and all of those critters and you plan on feeding alot you should consider to set up a refugium. JMO good luck

[CeeGee]

also if you are feeding frozen food you should rinse it in RO water to rid it of phosphate before feeding. Flake food is full of phosphate from what I understand. I rarely feed flake.