Nuisance Algaes

[ReefLady]

Ouch Boomer - that's not a cheap one. Maybe Santa will bring it.

[NaH2O]

Here is a great thread on >>Hair Algae<<

Along with a great post by Curtswearing:

I want to talk about a couple of things here. I know everyone reading this thread knows that I don't like to provide links to other places for background info but I "forced" myself to put up a couple of links. They are Phosphates:Algae's best friend and Nitrate in the reef aquarium. The algae is growing because there is food for it. The phosphates that have acccumulated over time are food for it and so are the nitrates.

A Turkey Baster costs very little. However, in reality, they are priceless!!! Get that detritus off your LR and into the water column so your skimmer can grab it or you can remove it with a waterchange.

I like a lot of the info on this thread. I think that taking the LR out of your tank and putting it in a bucket is a good idea. I would recommend that you do a waterchange but keep the old water in a separate bucket. Manually remove the hair algae and then rinse off the rocks with the old water.

Then, as soon as you have RO/DI water, make some saltwater with it and put your rock in the bucket with the brand new saltwater, a heater, and a powerhead. You won't believe the stuff that is going to come out of that rock. The bacterial action will spit a lot of detritus off of the surface of the rock but it will also come out of the pores of the rock. They call water the "universal solvent" which can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. Since you are now using pure water (RO/DI water), you can use this characteristic to your advantage. By putting the rock into a separate bucket with pure water, it will act as a magnet and "clean" out the rock for you. You might even need to do a waterchange on the bucket.

As mentioned earlier, most of the nitrates and phosphates disappeared when you pulled out the CC substrate. However, a lot of it is still there and that is what is fueling the hair algae growth. Some of it is on your LR in the form of detritus and some is in the bodies of the bacteria that is on your LR.

At one time, I had a lot of hair algae. I did a couple of water tests and I had zero nitrates and zero phosphates. That info conflicted completely with the links I provided. If I didn't have nitrates nor phosphates, then how could I have hair algae??? Boy was I confused. (BTW---I picked my avatar because I liked Bloom County but mostly because Portnoy looked confused).

As some of you know, my other hobby is Bonsai and landscaping. Because of my bonsai and gardening background, I soon realized that things were more complex than I originally imagined. All fertilizers have an NPK rating. (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium). All 3 of these components are utilized by your lawn and/or plants. These don't stay in the soil, they are absorbed by the plants. Frankly, I would be ticked off if I bought a fertilizer that stayed in the soil instead of being absorbed by the lawn.

By combining my reefing hobby with my bonsai hobby, complex chemistry issues finally made sense. Trying to determine how many nitrates (N) or phosphates (P) are in my tank by taking a small water sample makes as much sense as trying to determine if I should add fertilizer to my lawn by trapping a sample of air above my lawn. If you have hair algae and you tell me you don't have any nitrates nor phosphates, I'm gonna say, "yes you do---you just can't test for it because your "lawn" is absorbing it more quickly than you can test for it. My made up word for this is "masking". (I.e. You can't test for the NPK because it is being masked).

(Some of you might read my NPK anology and say, I can see the the N and the P, but where is the K? Well, it's there but iodine/iodide questions should be in a separate post and it shouldn't be in the "Just starting out" forum. It really is a New Frontiers forum issue).

Some of you might recognize the name Snapper. He was the lawnmower blenny I bought without doing any research. If I had done the research, I never would have purchased him as most lawnmower blennies eventually die of starvation in our tanks. I once had a hair algae problem and that's why I bought him . He went to town on my hair algae but as most of the people on this thread know.....I don't recommend that people buy one.

Here's why....GIGO. The computer programmers out there know what GIGO is. For everyone else, I'll let you know what it means. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Snapper used to eat all of the hair algae out of my tank which was awesome. However, he would go to the bathroom and then put all of the bad things right back into my tank (GIGO). No matter how harshly I said the word, "NO", and no matter how much I waved my arms around or pointed my finger at him, Snapper would still go to the bathroom in my tank. (WHAT A REBELLIOUS FISH!!!).

Lets convert this to gardening for a moment. Basically, I put down too much fertilizer. The lawn absorbed the fertilizer and was growing too fast. I was sick of mowing so I bought a goat. The goat was eating my grass but it was also putting out goat pellets. (Using chemical terms. NPK was added to the lawn, NPK was eaten by a goat, some of it was put into the tissues of the goat, but most of the NPK exited the goat and was put back on the lawn to dissolve and be used as fertilizer for more grass to grow). This wouldn't be a problem in real life because goats wander around. Obviously, enclosed systems complicate things. And that is the problem with reef tanks---they are enclosed systems.

Most of the things we add to our tanks stays there unless we remove them via skimming, waterchanges, mechanical filtration, or other forms of nutrient export like macroalgae harvesting, etc.

[Woodstock]

Here is a picture of my spot of cynobacteria. It's a dark red, carpet like growth that disappears at night only to reappear when the lights come back on.


You can see the small spot on the lower right....

[Brucey]

Nikki .... what a great post. Thanks for sharing matey

Brucey

PS, I also tried buying a goat and put him in my aquarium but he drowned ... That is what you meant by GIGO wasn't it, Goat in ..... Goat out ........

[Scooterman]

Boomer you sure do know so much for not having a tank of your own if I remember that correctly!
Awesome post thanks I needed that!

[philly]

I'm new to the site(just registered). Typed out a massive list of details for my set up and when i sent it said thread not recognised and dissappeared!

Anyway, shorter version as it nearly midnight in the UK.

I have had the tank running over 4 months with excellent nitrate levels etc. Using RO water with 15% water chages once a week from the early days.

Have a few fish in there now but since shortly after the live rock went in, there has been a mat of thick green Algae over everything. If a gap develops then usually a little bit of slime Algae (Red or black) usually fills the gap.

I spend an hour or so once a week pulling lumps of Algae off the rocks and gravel!

Is this normal or is there a solution?

Help

[Tarasco]

Sounds like you have a whole lot of excess nutrients. Do you have a protien skimmer?

Actually, I would start a new thread with your question. Not everyone reads the stickys.

And welcome to RS!

[mps9506]

Did you cure the live rock before adding it to your tank?
It may have had a lot of die off that fueled your current algae bloom.
I would remove the rock clean it out in some nice clean SW scrub off the algae swish it around to get all the detrius and stuff outta the rock. Get as much of the loose crud off and outta the rock as possible. Then put back in your tank.
You may want to consider running something like Rowaphos to help control excessive phosphates and silicates as well.

[corvettephreek]

when I first started my tank I had a brown kinda nasty looking crud all over my LR. 5 snails, 2 emerals crabs, 3 blue legged hermits, and a watchman goby later (and 2 weeks) everything was sparkling clean!!! (in addition to getting rid of 4 sloppy and piggy damsels).... now waiting for the new algae..... its fun watching algae grow...... *yawn*

[jonas]

should i be running carbon in my tank????

[Boomer]

Yup, 24/7

[Frankie]

Thanks for he reminder. Time to change out the reactors. Man, this thread go's back a few days!

[KimPossible]

me too...