Wanting a little hair algae?

[kdogg85]

Now before anyone crucifies me, just hear me out.

I had a decent spell with hair,turf, and cyano and have gotten it all killed of with my ats. Now the rock looks bare and boring. I had a few corals and ditched them for some cool inverts instead.

I would like to grow some hair back in the tank as a food for my tang, sea hare, and 3 cowries. Currently, I take about 1/3 of my weekly harvest and place it back in the tank and they absolutely go to town on it over a 2 day period. I have been doing this for the past 3 months and have had no ill effects, parameter or livestock healthwise.

I see it grow in the wild on my diving trips. And would like to recreate a little of that, has anyone with an ats tried to replicate this scenario with at least decent results. Kind of a sustainable food source if you will.

Tank is 125g with 29g sump. 1350gph return flow with 2 koralia 750 evo's.
ATS is 10x13(filtering area) with 4x26w cfl's and 1000gph flow. Feeding is 1 cube each squid, mysis, bloodworms, 1/4 nori or ulva everyday. Twice weekly is 2 cubes of hufa brine shrimp. All of my fish including the mandarin look like bowling balls with fins.

 

[Strawman]

Weekly harvest of what?

Grow a healthy batch chaeto and use that so u don't end up with an out of control algae bloom

 

[mr_X]

what would be the point of running an algae reducing component if you want algae in the dt? shut off the turf scrubber.

 

[Bige]

Weekly harvest of what?

He's running a turf algae scrubber.

I would turn it off. Like mr x said, this would allow it to grow back in the dt.

 

[kdogg85]

Shutting the scrubber off will make a heck of alot of trouble. what I'm asking, was/is there anyone who has tried this. Not much if any info on it out there.

Running a scrubber is a balancing act between the screen and the dt. I was thinking of underpowering it slightly and trying to walk the level of HA that I want. I don't want it overrun, but a few good patches here and there would look neat, to me anyways.

that's my idea and wondered if anyone had tried it and had some rough baseline data to go off of.

Strawman, the chaeto ball I had became overgrown with red turf and cyano within a month. And after 2 months of the ATS, it died off. I am not bashing it because a lot of folks use it with success along with skimmers. It's something that has worked for years and am not against it by any means. The ATS worked better for me.