Hair algae

[JBenton]

Hi all, I’m having a hair algae outbreak! Added a cuc of snails and 3 hermit crabs a few days ago. But my main concern is I think my lights might need to be adjusted I dropped the blues from 80% and whites from 35% to 20% as seen in the attached images. Does this look like an acceptable light schedule I’m running 3 NooPsyche k7 pro 3s at about 12in from surface of water on a 6 ft tank.

I had a ich outbreak so doing a fallow period so no fish to help out at the moment. Tank is fairly new to being set up so kinda figured I’d run into these issues. I’ve been scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush inside the tank and turning the walker up a little in hopes what comes dislodged will end up in the filters. But I’ll be honest I don’t know what I’m doing which is why I’m on here asking if there’s anything I can do with the lights to possible help slow it down. I did cut the light schedule back an hour so there’s 1 hour less of light each day.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. TIA

 

[JBenton]

Also my green and violet are set at 50% I don’t really know if those contribute to algae and also dropped the red from 20% to 10% if that helps

 

[vetteguy53081]

Also my green and violet are set at 50% I don’t really know if those contribute to algae and also dropped the red from 20% to 10% if that helps

Violet not so much but green most definitely. Reduce green to 5%. Pic too dark to see but place rock in a container of tank water and pull off as much as you can by hand and scrub the rest with a firm toothbrush and some 3% hydrogen peroxide.
Return to tank, reduce white light intensity and number of hours of white lighting and add some snails such as :
Astrea
cerith
turbo grazer
trochus

A Pencil urchin

8-10 Caribbean blue leg hermits

Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
What is your phosphate level?
Is tank at or near a window?

 

[strich]

It would be good to see the tank under white light as blue shows us nothing.
You should also post any details of your sump and water quality tests.

Changing what specific colors you use won't in reality change much. What's most important is the total amount of light. Reducing the total amount of light will slow it and all other algae life down, including corals. So it can help to turn things down but be careful not to starve your other life for light.

Whatever you do here, make the change slowly. Reducing hair algae takes some time!

Algae can bloom on occasion if you have a lot of nutrients going unused and not much else in the system competing for it. If you don't have any macroalgae or a very big CUC team to eat the hair algae then you will struggle to keep up. You just bought a CUC team a few days ago - I would let them do their thing for at least a week before considering other changes.

 

[JBenton]

Yeah I run a RODI unit 4 stage from well water. I need to get a phosphate test to check for that, still new to the saltwater side of this hobby so still in the early stages of getting the test kits needed. Tank doesn’t have any windows or doors near it that it can get any light from.

I did recently add three of the types mentioned above probably about 12 all together along with 3 scarlet red legged hermits asked for blue but it’s suggest these ones will try to find some of the blue legged ones as well.

 

[JBenton]

Here’s some pics under white light, I did take a toothbrush to the rocks knocking back a lot of the longer stuff and anything around the corals. Probably just spreading it around more and not helping my situation.

I’ll get some slack for this lol but I run two fx6s and a HOB skimmer, octo classic 2000 hob. Wanted a sump but already had the fx6s and no holes were drilled in this tank and I didn’t want to take a chance drilling it.

I made some very small changes to the light scheduled shown. But will change the green down a little more tommorow or in the next few days, after the corals I do have get use to this new schedule.

 

[strich]

Firstly, canister filters are great. Don't let anyone say otherwise.

Given how little life you have in your tank at the moment I'm tempted to say - don't stress about the hair algae. Do continue to keep it in check and build up the CUC team to do so, and you're welcome to continue to manually remove it. But I think until you get more life in there to out complete it for food, it's going to stick around.

Just to drive the point home - the hair algae is currently stopping your system from having too much nutrients and it's helping provide oxygen! It's doing good work so long as it's not dominating the whole tank.

Let it stick around for now and keep it in check. Focus your attention on getting those test kits and making sure the total health of the system is okay.

You could also consider buying some macroalgae - caulerpa comes in various nice looking plant species. It will help out compete the hair algae. Note that it too can grow out of proportion if left unchecked so it's just a question of which do you like the look of more hah.

 

[JBenton]

Firstly, canister filters are great. Don't let anyone say otherwise.

Given how little life you have in your tank at the moment I'm tempted to say - don't stress about the hair algae. Do continue to keep it in check and build up the CUC team to do so, and you're welcome to continue to manually remove it. But I think until you get more life in there to out complete it for food, it's going to stick around.

Just to drive the point home - the hair algae is currently stopping your system from having too much nutrients and it's helping provide oxygen! It's doing good work so long as it's not dominating the whole tank.

Let it stick around for now and keep it in check. Focus your attention on getting those test kits and making sure the total health of the system is okay.

You could also consider buying some macroalgae - caulerpa comes in various nice looking plant species. It will help out compete the hair algae. Note that it too can grow out of proportion if left unchecked so it's just a question of which do you like the look of more hah.

Appreciate it, I’ll check out the maceoalgae-caulerpa. Thanks again for the reply

 

[Lavey29]

I agree with the above posts. Hair algae is inevitable and just part of the tank maturing process. Typically last a few months. Reduce lights , diverse cleaner crew, manual removal with water changes. Raise magnesium to 1500 to help weaken the algae. Get a few nice pieces of real live wet ocean rock and Jumpstart your biome.