Hair Algae

[hardparts2]

I seem to have a hair algea problem and it wont go away. I have a 55 gallon tank with 440 watts of vho lighting a coralife super skimmer 125, 2 seio 620s and a rena xp3. I have tested my water several times with several kits.What I get from testing is

Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0
Phosphates 0
Ph 8.2
SG 1.026

I am doing water changes once or twice a week with 6 stage RO/DI water and cleaning the sand bed at the same time and I am feeding very little every other day, my lights are on about 12 hrs a day 10 hrs full lights 2 hrs aticnics only. I am also basting my live rock every other day. What else can I do? I have tried every thing Ican think of.

Here are some pics of the algae

http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/files/bubble_2_451.jpg
http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/files/clown_2_468.jpg
http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/files/blenny_170.jpg




Thanks Bob

[ryguy]

what kind of clean up crew do you have?

what kind of tests kits are you using?

[tecwzrd]

IME I haven’t seen any of my clean up crew eat this stuff to the point of getting rid of it. I’ve had minor patches of hair algae as well and like you 0 no3/po4 and feed every other day. It’s very hard to remove manually in the tank and the only thing that got rid of it for me was to take out the affected lr and scrub it off with a new tooth brush in a 5 gal bucket of sw after a pwc.

For any lr you can’t remove try to scrub as best as you can in the tank and siphon it out as much as possible.

Looks like you have enough flow between the two Seio pumps and canister also.

Luckily from what I’ve seen hair algae doesn’t spread too quickly if removed in an early stage. Only other thing you could do is reduce your lighting period which also feeds it.

[FishFrik]

I had hair algae problem before. I tackled it with an upgrade in my clean up crew. Worked great

[melosu58]

I have a UV in my tank which helps to kill algea spores that are free floating in the tank. I have not had algea in tank for several years. I know the UV is controversial to some but not to my algea free tank. They are not too expensive and alot of aquarist have them. It seems to work for me. I always suggest it to someone like yourself who has tried everything and your test results are OK. It will not do you any good to have bad water parameters that feed algea and have a UV.