Hair algea is not caused by just over feading. I would test for phosphate and nitrates. That would be a good start. Using tap water for your top off water that has phosphate in it will cause hair algea. Using cheap flake food will add phosphate to your tank. Yes reducing your light cycle will help get rid off the hair algea but you have not cured it you will just slow it down. You need to find out what is causing it.
every one is saying the right stuff. how is your make up water? i would look to the cause first and then fix that. make up water, photo period, phosphates,silicates (usually this is with diatoms though), detrius collecting in the sand bed, pockets of detrius in the rock work. the list could go on for ever...what you need to do is pin down the cause and then it should correct it self. happy reefing
Hair algea is not caused by just over feading. I would test for phosphate and nitrates. That would be a good start. Using tap water for your top off water that has phosphate in it will cause hair algea. Using cheap flake food will add phosphate to your tank. Yes reducing your light cycle will help get rid off the hair algea but you have not cured it you will just slow it down. You need to find out what is causing it.
oops i posted before reading this. this is the perfect answer to your question. treat the cause not the symptom.
If you are just testing for phosphates then you are doing the wrong thing. You can have a ton of algea and no phosphates on the test. Just because you are testing and not showing doesnt mean that you dont have them. It means that your algea is using up so much phosphate that it wont even read on the test. What you should do is get more grazers in the tank and cut back on feeding to 1 time every 2 days. Has something recently died in the tank?
with all respect that is treating a symptom when the cause is what is the problem. just adding algae eaters is a band aid when finding the true cause for the algae growth and correcting that is what will give you long term succsess.
i for one do not like to add a mess of crabs and snails to a tank....what works best for me is constant water quality managment and keeping a very clean tank...sump...equipment. in all my tanks i have about 1-2 snails and crabs for every 10-15 gallons of water. in a healthy system that is well balanced the old notion of 1-2 crabs and snails per gallon would mean that at some point those poor critters are going to starve. i have seen this happen time and time again in my systems. to each his own but i always test for phosphates even though it might not very accurate it is still a sign of a healthy system and you do get an idea of phosphate levels due to that fact that these tests react with both usable (by algae) and non-usable phosphate, known as organic and non organic phosphate.
check for pockets of detrius behind the rocks, in the rock work...i bet it is detrius build up IMHO.
I agree with you completely, but you cant just test phosphate and b ase everything off of that and the usuable by algea it is possible to not even show up because it is being taken out of the water so fast. If you are not running a protein skimmer you need to do so because it could be excess nutrients. Yes,check for the detrius and if you find alot get some detriavores, Everyone has a different way of keeping a tank as long as the tank is successful then your doing it the right way
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Originally Posted by RWalston
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