Please Lord not again

[damselindistress]

Afternoon reefers...

I upgraded my Fluval Evo to a 60 gallon long AIO back in August when we moved to a new house. I battled nutrients and algae (every kind) over the year that the Evo was running, mostly due to the fact I was new to reefing and made ALL of the rookie mistakes, some over and over (thick noodle ).

When I moved everything into the new tank I got rid of several pieces of the live rock because it still had hair algae in places. I kept the clean pieces and purchased additional live rock from my LFS (cycled Reef Rock). Tank never had a detectable cycle and once I got my lights/skimmer/pumps tweaked it’s been running smoothly....until yesterday when I was closely inspecting my frog spawn for new growth and spotted a tiny tuft of...gasp....hair algae. I could vomit at the thought of starting down this road again. I literally laid in bed staring at the ceiling until 3:15 am debating on whether to just throw in the towel or put on my big reefer panties and deal with it.

What are your experienced recommendations for nipping this in the bud guys?? My initial thoughts are to do no lights for the weekend, only one small feeding for the weekend and one hit of nopox which I have on hand from my previous algae battle last year. Thoughts?? Other suggestions??

Haven’t tested this weekend yet but I use Hannah checkers and my nitrates run a little high because I’m a heavy feeder (I know I know). I skim heavy though and do 8-9% water changes weekly to every 10 days. Also, I ditched my sandbed when I moved into the big tank because I thought it would be easier to keep a bare bottom clean of detritus.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Pincushion urchin.

 

[damselindistress]

Pincushion urchin.

Got one, had him since my old algae war - sat him on the tuft of algae twice last night and the little fricker just cruised right over it

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You hit it with a toothbrush?


I don’t see much wrong with that tank.

I didn’t see a lot of snails and cuc.

 

[tripdad]

Bomb it with Astrea and mexican turbo snails!

 

[damselindistress]

You hit it with a toothbrush?


I don’t see much wrong with that tank.

I didn’t see a lot of snails and cuc.

I thought about a toothbrush but was afraid that would make it spread - you think it would be okay to toothbrush it?

The hair algae is just left of the FS, actually touching the FS. Urchin is just taunting me by zooming around it pffttt

 

[Fin]

Wait until you do a water change to scrub and put your siphon tube by where you are scrubbing to pick up most of the debris. That will at least help keep it from spreading.

 

[falc]

My emerald grab seems to knock the hair algae out fairly quick. I had to banish him to my sump last week because he ate all the hair and bubble algae, got bored and using my toadstool coral for a jungle gym!! YMMV..

 

[cracker]

Miss Damsel, You tank is gorgeous ! Above advice is all good . You really have very little Ha in there so far. Load it with snails

 

[Jason boles]

I use a toothbrush very liberally on all my tank surfaces, and even on some corals. Just get sucked up with the current through the back filtration.

 

[damselindistress]

Miss Damsel, You tank is gorgeous ! Above advice is all good . You really have very little Ha in there so far. Load it with snails

Thank you so much! I got into reef-keeping while my son was away at college - it was initially something to focus my energies on other than drowning in empty-nest sorrows lol, but it has become such a labor of love and the feelings of joy, peace and accomplishment my little slice of the ocean brings me are more therapeutic than I could have ever imagined.