Hair Algea Out Of Control

[MikeB]

i have a hair algea outbreak that is out of control.. doing 10 gallon water changes 2 to 3 times a week.running a dual chamber reactor with carbon and high cap gfo. peeling it off by hand. feeding once a day skipping every third day and newer t5 bulbs.

waiting on my new redsea test kit to arrive. I am using a seachem phosphate checker all top off water and water change water is testing fine

 

[MrHermit85]

what rock are you using? what are your perimeters? how old is your tank? Have you changed anything recently?

 

[theyangman]

How big is your tank?
How old is the GFO in the reactor?

Also what is your photo period?

 

[MikeB]

amonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 1.5 - 2 ph 8.0 phos. 0.15. tank is almost 2 years old. i have never had this happen before.. the only change is going from a single reactor to a dual reactor

 

[MikeB]

the tank is 75 gallon with a 30 gallon sump.. GFO is 3 weeks now

 

[Kyle1970]

Are you using rodi for mixing and for topping off? If your putting bad water in, you're fueling every time you do a water change.
Any sunlight hitting the tank?
Cleanup crew?
The only way I pull algae out is if it's with the suction of a hose while doing water change. No strays in the tank!
What kind of food ( frozen? Rinsing it).
I've gone as far as housing sea hares in old tanks.

 

[MikeB]

i have a 5 stage RODI all filtres are new changed 2 weeks ago and rinsed off for 5 minutes

 

[jeffopentax]

Yeah a sea hare will definitely take care of it. I had raging hair algae (talking 2-3" long!), and sea hare mowed it clean in about a week. It buys you time to figure out what's causing it before it gets completely out of hand (not to mention they're so ugly they're cool!).

They only have a lifespan of about a year, but you'll run out of gha long before that. Try to have a place for it to go once it's done its job.

 

[theyangman]

well how is your lighting? How old are the bulbs?

 

[MikeB]

The oldest bulb is six months. One is a month old

 

[MrHermit85]

+1 on rinsing frozen food! Made a huge difference when I started doing that. When I had my issue when my tank was getting older I also put a huge amount of charro into my sump which brought my Levels down....

 

[scubasteve]

try adding some prime to help neutralize things faster if phos reading is 0.15 with lots of gha thats just what its not managing to consume so your nitrate and phos are probably alot higher than readings are showing id cut feeding to every other day and only feed as much as they eat in a couple minutes and if levels are high it will exhaust your media faster directions are only guidlines everyone has to fine tune to their system.... some carbon brands are bad for leaching nitrates as well

 

[MikeB]

Thanks for your help everyonemail. After more research I am going to start the Kent marine magnesium supplement. Hopefully this will aid in irradicating the gha.
So discouraging

 

[scubasteve]

just think of it this way once you get rid of it next time it will be a piece of cake if you ever see it again