Hair algae thoughts...

[tjm80]

First, the vitals:
75 gallon tank, drilled with a 20 gallon sump (had cheato in the sump)
Approx. 80-90 lbs live rock and about a 3 inch sandbed.
RO/DI water currently reading 1 TDS
Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate all read at zero.
All other parameters meet the specs for natural seawater (dkh, pH, etc.)
Protein skimmer rated for a 150 gallon tank.
Lights are 4x54 T5HO
Clean up crew consists of various hermits and snails (love reefcleaners.org!). I got 3 turbo snails that seem uninterested in moving but won't let me move them.

My tank had a bad outbreak of hair algae about 3 months ago. I knew my bulbs were old so I replaced them. The algae seemed better after a few weeks then all of a sudden something happened to the tank. My corals started dying and all my fish died except my sixline wrasse, royal gramma, and yellow watchman goby. I put some carbon in the sump to I have a 2 year old who learned how to open the tank doors and get in the sump, so it's possible he did something to it, but unlikely. It seems like the tank crashed to me.

Anyhow, I got discouraged with it and haven't done much except water changes (10 gallons weekly) and occasionally plucking the hair algae off the rocks.

I've done all the textbook things: water changes, reduced lighting, increased skimming, reduced (nearly eliminated) feeding and the hair algae will not go away. Changing the circulation up does nothing. It's growing all over my powerheads as well.....

I'm considering taking the majority of the rock out of the tank and "baking" it for a month or so in a 32 gallon Brute. Would this kill off the algae and basically let me restart my tank, or would this be a terrible idea?

 

[Sniperhank]

Scrub it in distilled water with a scrub brush.

 

[bavass]

Nitrates is 0 because the algae is using it up before you can test it. Have you tested phosphates? I would start running GFO in a reactor. No matter what the nitrate and phosphate test kits read treat the tank as if they were high. A great book on algae !

 

[tjm80]

Scrub it in distilled water with a scrub brush.

That would destroy the BB though.

 

[Crystal A]

If you don't have any corals left consider a black out period. After my cycle process my tank looked like the rainforest I turned the lights off for 3 days and then slowly turned them back on 3hrs a day to start. Worked for me.

 

[Jabibi]

What work for me was dosing kalk into the tank. You might want to try that too

 

[Schism]

That would destroy the BB though.

Yes and no. Use tank water from a water change and scrub off the algae, ive done this many times and really helps cut back the growth if you run gfo also and do your regular removal when you see it growing.

It will go away. Sometimes it can seem like an endless battle but it will get better and before you know it your problem will be gone, you just really have to keep up on fighting it.

 

[bavass]

When i had green hair and when i had cyano. I started running BRS gfo in a reactor slowly increased amount till i was at double amount for my tank i also changed the gfo out every 2 weeks along with changing out my ROX.08 carbon. You have to be careful not to strip tank of nutrients to fast. When i had the green algae i took a rock or two out every week and cleaned the algae off in a 5g bucket from a water change.