Algae Problems

[Mick Crawford]

I need some help, My tank a percula 90 with built in skimmer filters etc has recently started to suffer from being overrun with algae. The algae is like hair very fine, but dense in as much as there is a lot of it. It has infested the live rock and tank sides.

It seemed to start after I added calcium additives and coral food as suggested by my retailer.

The tank is about 6 months old with 30 kg of live rock, 2 yellow tang, 1 clown, 1 blue damsel and 2 pyjama cardinal. There are 2 dancing shrimp, 1 fire shrimp and 1 cleaner shrimp. I have about 25 cerith snails and I did have 6 turbo snails but these appear to have all died recently.

I have a leather coral and mushroom coral that is doing well, but bush coral (3 different types) are not looking well.

There is a considerable amount of coralline algae on the walls of the tank but this gets overrun with the algae.

My calcium levels were low and additives seemed to make no difference, I have done regular water changes about 10% per week using RO water
and recently I have noticed the salinity of the tank creeping up to about 1.28. Ammonia Nitrates and Nitrites are Nil, PH 8.4, alkalinity normal to high. The tank is lit with the aqau medic Halide lamp that came with the tank
I do not know what to do next can anyone give me some ideas

 

[bubbletip1]

Is your water source RO/DI or Tap? It Might be a phosphate problem. Test of it or try to run a phosphate reactor with a product like phosban to control it….

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Mick, and :welcome:

I would definately stop the coral feeding for now. I would also cut back on the amount of food you are feeding your fish.

The hair algea is a real pain in the butt. You should do some large water changes (25%) and take the rocks out and scrub them with a toothbrush until they are clean. Scrape all of the hair algea off the sides of your tank and off of any base rock that can't be taken out before you do the water change. That way you can siphon it off while your doing the water change.

You have to manually remove the hair algea and figure out how to stop it from coming back. To many nutients are in your water. You can increase skimming, increase water changes, and add a refugium with macro algea. You can decrease feeding of all type, decrease your bioload and decrease your photoperiod (that feeds algea too).

Louey

 

[moggyhill]

I also like to cook my rock if it gets overrun and run a phosphate remover.