Advice on hair algae with undetectable nutrients

[fluked]

I have been reading your story and it is nearly identical to mine. I’ve been having a same
Issue for 8 months now, maybe longer. I have Hanna testers. Always zero. I have a biopellet reactor and solid skimmer. I think my issue is I overdid my tank with live rock and didn’t get a big enough clean up crew. Im still trying to add my to my crew and I started dosing to get my nitrates and phosphates up because my coral was struggling. I just dosed reef flux 2 weeks ago. I saw some pull back but I feel like it is coming back. Im going to try reef flux again next week. The other thing is that my tank was getting some sunlight in the morning which im trying to limit and I think that is helping now

I'm now of the mindset that if you are having an algae issue, I wouldn't dose no2/po4, there is a bunch in the system if the algae can grow, dosing is probably just growing more algae.
I'm not sure if it made a difference, but I'm still dosing vibrant, so what i really did was a heavy vibrant + 1/2 fluc dose. But the vibrant never made a difference before, so the change that killed it for me was definitely fluc.

 

[fluked]

As already stated... Reduce feeding, pull algae by hand, increase your CUC (a long spine sea urchin will eat a lot of algae off your rocks).

Longspines are pretty rare where I am, but I don't really want an urchin in this tank as they decimate the coralline in my other tank.
I did a lot of hand removal. like hours at a time, it always grew back within days, and was so rooted in the rock I couldn't get it all out with a toothbrush. I increased my cuc by a lot over this time, all i really wanted was to get rid of the out of control outbreak, so i can get the tank manageable again, which it now is, so i'm really happy.

 

[Spieg]

Urchins wont usually eat coralline unless they are out of regular algae. They will eat it down to the rock (no roots to regrow from). Once the problem is resolved you can return it to the store for credit (or just feed it nori). Coralline will regrow pretty quickly so that shouldn't really be an issue.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Is tank at or near a window? Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
Reducing white light and pulling as much as you can is a starting point.
Adding cleaner snails such as astrea, tuerbo grazer, berite, cerith and trochus will help mow this down
To determine what you are contending with, please provide a couple of pics

 

[fluked]

Urchins wont usually eat coralline unless they are out of regular algae. They will eat it down to the rock (no roots to regrow from). Once the problem is resolved you can return it to the store for credit (or just feed it nori). Coralline will regrow pretty quickly so that shouldn't really be an issue.

I have my urchin in my 2nd tank, its covered in gha, but i dont mind as its free nutrient control, it will actively seek out any patch of coralline over gha, which actually suits me as i dont want to scrape corraline off the glass in that tank. But in my experience coralline is the prefered food.

 

[fluked]

Is tank at or near a window? Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
Reducing white light and pulling as much as you can is a starting point.
Adding cleaner snails such as astrea, tuerbo grazer, berite, cerith and trochus will help mow this down
To determine what you are contending with, please provide a couple of pics

I just want to point out, i believe i have beaten the gha for now.
the tank is near a window, but with the blinds how they are 24/7 it gets no direct sun light.
When battling it i was only running white lights at the lowest setting for 1 hour a day, im slowly increasing white lights and the gha still went away with the fluc dosage.
Using a 5 stage rodi from a good brand. fresh media, 0 tds out, 1-2 tds into the di stage.
Cuc is different as im in australia and have different availability. But i have a lot of stomat snails, probably 30 turbos, 7ish trochus, 3 gold ring cowries, 1 strombus, about 15 yellow leg hermits and 1 small tomini tang. the only one that actually did anything were the cowries, and the tang but they couldn't out compete the growth, i was by far the biggest cuc member removing it with an airline tube siphon.

But again, with all this, and vibrant for months i couldn't get any progress over the gha. 2 weeks with fluc and it was gone.
Ill reply to this with before/after photos

 

[fluked]

2 photos, before is blurry as i wasnt really taking photos back then as the tank looked bad.
The after photo was actually late last week, so its slightly better now but I'm really happy with the turnaround. Main thing is the rocks are clean so coralline can start to cover it better.

Ignore the skeleton at the front on the rock, but you can see the massive improvement here pretty well.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I just want to point out, i believe i have beaten the gha for now.
the tank is near a window, but with the blinds how they are 24/7 it gets no direct sun light.
When battling it i was only running white lights at the lowest setting for 1 hour a day, im slowly increasing white lights and the gha still went away with the fluc dosage.
Using a 5 stage rodi from a good brand. fresh media, 0 tds out, 1-2 tds into the di stage.
Cuc is different as im in australia and have different availability. But i have a lot of stomat snails, probably 30 turbos, 7ish trochus, 3 gold ring cowries, 1 strombus, about 15 yellow leg hermits and 1 small tomini tang. the only one that actually did anything were the cowries, and the tang but they couldn't out compete the growth, i was by far the biggest cuc member removing it with an airline tube siphon.

But again, with all this, and vibrant for months i couldn't get any progress over the gha. 2 weeks with fluc and it was gone.
Ill reply to this with before/after photos

They dont need direct sunlight. Indirect still offeers very strong UV rays and penetration- youd be surprised.

 

[fluked]

They dont need direct sunlight. Indirect still offeers very strong UV rays and penetration- youd be surprised.

I'll keep this in mind! However, the glass facing the window is by far the slowest for growing algae, and the rocks on that side were always the cleanest, so i assumed that wasn't the issue. If i get the algae coming back ill try closing blinds 24/7 for a while