Algae and Fish Food

[likwid]

I had a huge algae problem with my old tank. I tried everything, phosphate remover, keeping the lights off for a few days to kill it, sea hares that wouldn't touch the stuff, switching water sources, switching food types, upgrading my skimmer, feeding only once a week, hair algae removal products, basting it with boiling water, etc.

Here is how I finally solved the problem:

I would take a small hose (like you get with an air pump) when I did a water change and squeeze the end of it on the hair algae, which would suck the algae up the hose and into my bucket. I kept doing this until the algae was fairly trimmed and then did small water changes everyday. Eventually it went away by doing this.

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by likwid

I would take a small hose (like you get with an air pump) when I did a water change and squeeze the end of it on the hair algae, which would suck the algae up the hose and into my bucket.

I think I will try that.

Did you get a handle on where your phosphate wascoming from?

[likwid]

Originally Posted by Oscar

I think I will try that.

Did you get a handle on where your phosphate wascoming from?

I used tap water for the first few months when I set the tank up, so my guess was that the live rock was leaching phosphates from those days.