Brown Hairy Algae

[Brunofamily]

We are having trouble with Brown Hairy Algae and also dark green algae. The brown hairy is on the bottom of the crushed coral substrate and the green is on the rocks.

We have used algicides, reduced the lighting to 6 hours, phosphate remover media, and Sea Hares (which we cannot keep alive for more than 2 weeks). We have lots of hermit crabs who don't seem to care about algae.

We have had our water checked and except for the occasional higher phosphates it's always perfect.

Any suggestions???? We're about ready to give up and take down our tank!

Nancy

[DerrickH]

Sounds like Dino

[Brunofamily]

Dino ???

[Timfish]

Can you post a picture(s) How old is your tank? The first 8 - 12 months a tank is running the olny thing I will do for unsightly algae is physical removal with a syphon and or toothbrush.

[jestep]

Pictures? Also, what's your fish load, water change schedule, lighting, and filtration?

PO4 is the obvious answer here. Are you using a Hanna or good quality kit for the PO4 and NO3? ATI are more or less useless when it comes to these two measurements.

Also, if you have dyno or aggressive algae, they will remove the PO4 very effectively so you get a false or zero reading on NO3 and PO4 tests. Assuming this isn't a very new tank, you must get NO3 and PO4 down to get rid of the aglae outbreaks. Seahares and even fish like a tang or foxface can fix the condition but not the cause.

[Brunofamily]

Will have to get pics when I get home.

Tank is a year old. 55 gal we do 10 gallon water changes weekly with RODI water. Running two Bio wheel filters and 3 powerheads.

4 shrimp

1 PJ Cardinal

2 Percula

1 Six Line Wrasse

Have been doing the syphon and brush bit, just comes back.

[+brian.srock]

Everyone has their own ways of attempting to tackle algae and these are the steps I used and after a month I saw a very noticable improvement but it did take 3 months to rid myself of everything.

I have a 55 gallon sump and a 47 gallon display tank with HOB overflow, 2 tunze pumps, LED lights. 2 Clowns and Watchman goby, Engineer Goby and several LPS and SPS corals.

First week Day 1

# Find where you can be hosting detritus.-- I found that my return pump filter was one of the main culprits. I also saw that my skimmer collection cup which I have plumbed to a gallon container had a lot of build up on it so everything got a toothbrush cleaning. You need to identify if there is something to cause the high phosphates if you can.

# 20% water change - Prior to removing the water I cleaned a couple rocks that I could easily reach with a toothbrush, cleaned the glass with the magnetic scrapper, and stirred up the sand bed and then used a siphon hose to pull as much as I could out prior to adding the new water.

# Start vodka dosing - This has to be done daily so to make my life easier I bought a set of test tubes and prelabeled each day's portion http://www.ebay.com/...=item51a3eba16d and a 1L bottle of 100 proof Stolichnaya vodka for $13 at specs.

Here is the info I used http://reefkeeping.c.../nftt/index.php and also from here http://www.melevsree...dka_dosing.html

and the chart here: http://reefkeeping.c...e3-100Proof.jpg

# Changed out all my filter media - I was originally only running carbon in a HOB and ended up getting a fluval 406 and put BRS Carbon/GFO/Polishing Pad

# Add emerald crabs and a dozen turbo snails

Day 3

# 20% water change - Did the same thing to everything as on day 1.

# Still vodka dosing on day 3

Day 7

# 20% water change - Did the same thing to everything as on day 1 and 3

# Still vodka dosing on day 7 up to .06 mL

# Cleaned out my return pump filter and skimmer collection cup after everything's settled.

Day 14

# 20% water change - Still stiring up the sand, cleaning the glass, and manually scrubbing prior to pulling the water out.

# Still vodka dosing on day 14 up to 1 mL

# Cleaned out my return pump filter and skimmer collection cup after everything's settled.

# Changed out all media filter

Day 21

# 20% water change - Still stiring up the sand, cleaning the glass, and manually scrubbing prior to pulling the water out.

# Still vodka dosing on day 21 up to 1.4 mL

# Cleaned out my return pump filter and skimmer collection cup after everything's settled.

End of 1st month

# 20% water change - Still stiring up the sand, cleaning the glass, and manually scrubbing prior to pulling the water out.

# Still vodka dosing on day 30 up to 1.8 mL

# Cleaned out my return pump filter and skimmer collection cup after everything's settled.

# Changed out all media filter

Every week after I would just clean my detritus prone areas and vodka dose then do a 10% water change the 2nd month

I got up to week 11 4mL of vodka then I had to start throttling it back since it was almost all gone.

Here is my pathetic attempt to document my tank http://www.austinree...el/page__st__80 but you can see how bad my algae got.

I still clean out my return pump and skimmer collection cup weekly but I have not done a water change in a while and am still dosing 2mL of vodka via my test tubes daily.

Since I have been ramping down my vodka I did notice some algea in little areas. Definately nothing to be worried about so I am keeping the vodka the same but I recently added a reverse algea scrubber that took me less than 5 minutes to rig up and $10 so I can keep it confined to the sump and hopefully grow some pods with it as well.

The last piece of advise I can give you is stick with it and you can beat it!

[kingjames]

+1 on the stirring up your sand bed at least once a month, i had semi higher phospates in my 55 gallon and tryed every thing from vodka to phosphate removal media and water changes but nothing seemed to work, what i learned was that i had a deep sand bed that wasnt being over turned and the phosphates were leaking out from the bottom of the sand bed where the sand was so compact that there was no room for denitrification, start makeing stirrring up your sand bed a monthly deal , and also if you do not have enough flow, which if its a 55g long then its is hard to get a good flow everywhere without blowing everything away, but this is how i fixed my phospates, and it wont be an overnight thing

[Jimbo]

I found that my recent battle with a brown film on the rocks (most likely dinoflagellates), the offline skimmer was the cause. I got my protein skimmer running again with a new pump, and within a day I noticed a reduction in dino. Less than a week later, I can no longer find any trace.

My problem used to show up in the later parts of the day, late in the light cycle. So, coming home from work, I was able to see the difference immediately.

[Brunofamily]

Here's some pics of the brown and the green

[ckyuv]

i would go to the store and get chemi clean and that should do it. prob a good time to change your filter out as well

[+Mlaw]

The stuff on the sand looks a lot like cyano to me but may be diatoms or some combo. I couldn't tell from your previous posts if your tank has fully cycled. If so have you added something new to your tank recently?

The green stuff also looks like cyano, just of a different color. I've had that same green slime before. It slowly coats everything.

+1 on changing the filter.

[jestep]

Both are cyanobacteria. Definitely would use chemiclean to get it under control. There are no tank cleaners that will eat any reasonable amount. In my experience PO4 is the primary fuel for cyano in addition to too much or poor quality lighting such as old bulbs.

[+Mlaw]

Hate to disagree with jestep but there is something that will eat the green slime version of cyanobacteria. You don't want them but they eat the stuff out of it. Ilyanassarius Obsoleta snails. I have a tank that was absolutely covered in mats of green slime and they tore into it. They've been working at it for a few weeks now and it is getting to the point of being spotless. I did add Redcyano RX and some bacteria supplements and I'm sure those helped but the snails did most of the heavy lifting.

Downside is that they may be infected with flukes, will definitely die before their time and may eat beneficial inverts etc.

They probably won't eat the cyano if there are easier food sources at hand. (or foot as the case may be). They didn't have much choice in the tank I put them in.

[ckyuv]

if your goin to go chemical, chemi clean is the best way ive tried i havent tried the rx tho! if your goin invert, i used to have that problem and have found a conch to be a snail that eats it 24 hours a day!

[(Bio)³]

Both are cyanobacteria. Definitely would use chemiclean to get it under control. There are no tank cleaners that will eat any reasonable amount. In my experience PO4 is the primary fuel for cyano in addition to too much or poor quality lighting such as old bulbs.

Hate to disagree with jestep but there is something that will eat the green slime version of cyanobacteria. You don't want them but they eat the stuff out of it. Ilyanassarius Obsoleta snails. I have a tank that was absolutely covered in mats of green slime and they tore into it. They've been working at it for a few weeks now and it is getting to the point of being spotless. I did add Redcyano RX and some bacteria supplements and I'm sure those helped but the snails did most of the heavy lifting.

Downside is that they may be infected with flukes, will definitely die before their time and may eat beneficial inverts etc.

They probably won't eat the cyano if there are easier food sources at hand. (or foot as the case may be). They didn't have much choice in the tank I put them in.

Jestep is saying no reef safe cleaners.

If you want to have more than just snails in the tank the there is nothing that will safely eat it. If your going fowlr you could put snails in the a tusk or wrasse.

+1 for chemiclean!

[jestep]

Yeah, I was just referring to something I want in my tank. It could conceivable work using those, but I think most people won't want to go down that path if they do some research on Ilyanassa's. I do think it's interesting that you have what appears to be 2 completely separate breakouts.

[Timfish]

Looks like both are cyanobacteria to me also. If you use chemiclean I have had better results doing a large water change first and syphoning off as much of the cyano first then treating. make sure you do a folow up water change also.