Bad Hair Algae

[Matthew N]

I had that exact same problem, so I know what it feels like.

What seemed to be my problem was phosphate, I started to use RO water from the local grocery store and that helped alot, but at the same time it seemed to hurt coral growth which I thought was weird.

So I mixed half and half (well water and RO water) and that made a huge difference, I also increased my lighting to 120 Watts, because I noticed the hair algae was bleaching that was closer to the light, This seemed to clear all the hair algae out but the red slime started to grow like crazy.

I then bought another powerhead, and that seemed to take care of all the red slime.

Oh and I also started to pour tons of seachem's reef complete which raises calcium.

I live on the east coast so my make up water might be different then your's but I really hope this helps

Matthew

[likwid]

I am using pre-bottled RO water from a company called Arrowhead that is less than 5 ppm per bottle. I dont think the water is the cause of this. I would try a phosban reactor, but I dont think I have room in my tank for another ugly pump. I have an aquaclear 500 converted into a hang ob back refugium, and I run a bag of rowaphos, a phosphate sponge, and a bag of de-nitrate in there along with my macroalgae and live rock rubble.

I am almost ready to give up on saltwater.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by likwid

I am using pre-bottled RO water from a company called Arrowhead that is less than 5 ppm per bottle. I dont think the water is the cause of this. I would try a phosban reactor, but I dont think I have room in my tank for another ugly pump. I have an aquaclear 500 converted into a hang ob back refugium, and I run a bag of rowaphos, a phosphate sponge, and a bag of de-nitrate in there along with my macroalgae and live rock rubble.

I am almost ready to give up on saltwater.

Can't help without more info. Answer the questions I laid out for you in my last post.

Sometimes there ends up being for much waste breaking down in an aquarium that the rocks and sand become loaded with phosphates and nitrates. The only decent way of fixing that problem is to break the tank down, and "cook" the rocks in a dark bin for for several weeks doing waterchanges (using RO and salt obviously) every few days, until phosphates read 0. It may also be neccessary to replace the sandbed with new sand. Since your tank has been like this for a long time, I'm lead to believe this may be your problem.

If your phosphate and nitrate test kits are reading 0 that doesn't mean anything. You have so much hair algae that it is eating all the phos and nitrate out of the water so your test kits won't read it.

Get rid of the hair algae and the cyano will follow.

[TANGOMAN]

As mentioned, RO is good but the resins in DI will eliminate compounds which are suspended in a liquid form. Phosphates were mentioned, silicates are another pottential nutrient for the nucience algae. I've been there and replacing the DI resins made the difference. It's a small system which makes it very unstable! Change your Source water, try a different salt too. Keep it simple and stick to the basics. It's a crappy battle, I think we've all been there.