Hair Algae on sand
 

Hey guys,

I've been getting a bunch of green hair algae on my live sand lately. I stir up the top layer of the sand every couple days, but it always comes back the next day. I am using phosphate remover, and only feed every second day. It is a 10g tank with 72w lighting and a HOB skimmer. Currently there is only 2 hermits, 3 turbos, 3 astrea snails, various corals, and 1 clownfish.

Pull the hair algae out by hand. I find that if you keep that up, it won't grow back as much.

Its not long enough to pull by hand, they are just little strands a couple cm high.. they turn my sand from a white to a greenish color... Any other ideas

anyone?

If it's only on the sand it sounds like you have nutrients leaching out of your sand bed. How old is the sand bed? Is it shallow enough to syphon it? Sand beds hold a lot of crud that builds up over time, slowly decomposing and polluting your tank, at least that's what I found. IMO, JMO etc.

The sand bed has been live for about 5 months now. Its about an inch or so deep. I got it from an old established tank that was sitting dried up in a bucket for a long time, so no idea how long it was used for.

1" is OK to syphon. I syphon my sand bed into though filter sock one a month or so. I don't have to rush the job because all the water is going back into my sump, filtered of most of the crud. If you've never syphoned your sand bed before you might want to do it when you do a water change, there's likely to be some nasty stuff in there.

The best thing I did to clean up my sand bed was to establish an algae refugium. It out-competes the algae and diatoms that grow in your tank.

Could I just use a gravel vaccuum and clean the sand that way? If so, should I go all the way to the bottom or just the top half inch or so

Sorry, that's what I meant, use a gravel vacuum. I would go all the way to the bottom

BUMP... Still getting green algae on my sand surface. All I want is a nice white sand bed, how can I solve this? Phosphates are 0 and all other levels are fine.