Hair Algae

[knuff27]

Hello,

I am fairly new to the hobby. I have a 60g that is 2 months old with 40 lbs. of live rock, external wet/dry with skimmer and am just beginning stocking. I presently have two clowns and various inverts. However, I have had a problem with hair algae for about one month. It is not on the live rock at all, the snails and crabs do a tremendous job cleaning it, but it is all over the sand. I remove it and about a week or so later it reappears. I do not know how to combat it. I used to top off with tap, but about two weeks ago switched to RO water. It has not seemed to help much. My lights are only on about 10 hrs/day, I do not overfeed, and my parameters are all good. Do I just wait it out, keep cleaning, and hope it eventually goes away? Please help.

[hcuellart]

If you used tap water to top off that certainly is the cause. Now that you are using RO but be sure to get also the DI in other word water that is RO/DI is the best to use. Also you are quite short on the live rock I would at least suggest another 40 pounds so you can establish a better biological filtration. What helps in algae control is macro algae. Try getting some Chaeto or some Caulerpa in your sump this really helps too.
HTH,
Homero

[melosu58]

You say you are not overfeeding but are you feeding every other day. If not you should. This also could be feeding the hair algea

[seaham358]

You need to test your water and see if you have nitrates or phosphates. ro/di is the best filtered water that we can use. Test your ro water for nitrate and po4 also. ro alone will not take them out.
If you test positive for either you need to try and reduce the nitrate and get the po4 totally out.

[seafan]

I used a po4 sponge that worked wonders, but it is very important that you replace it often (once a week worked for me) to keep it from leaching back into the system, and rinse the stuff before you put it in.