I have brown hair like algae growing on my crushed coral. My water param. are good and my fish and corals are doing well. The floor of my tank just keeps growing patches of brown algae. Any ideas on I can do to rid of it. I get alittle on the glass but nothing like what is growing on the floor of the tank. I have a hang on fuge that has it’s lights on 24 hrs some light from it shines into my tank. Any help her will be much appreciated.
Did you check your phosphates? Nitrates? What are all of your levels of the test that you did? If its hair algea a nudibranch will eat it. Premium aquatics in newark has them sometimes.
I used to have a hair algae problem and it takes a while to fight even when your doing things compeltly right. What kind of water are you using for topoff? How often do you do water changes? Those 2 can really fight hair algae if done right and often enough.
fish-welcome to Drc
1st post…
Well as always tell us a little about you tank. We love pictures and don’t worry we have all been there. Heck some are still managing a hair problem (me). You said “brown hair like algae”; can we get a better description? Does it look like short grass that’s brown, a slime red brown mass, or a combo of both. Whatever it is it is feeding off nutrients in the sand bed. Probably why you don’t have it on the glass. If its grass like you can harvest it like cheato. While this wont solve the problem it will remove the nutrients. Of course (someone is going to chime it) it wont remove the problem as it will grow back but it will export some nutrients.
If you can post a decent picture or be a little more descriptive it might be easier to identify. Also what type of test you have completed and what is your source water. If you don’t have a test kit or use Ro water just tell it like it is; it will be easier to get you directed towards a solution.
Chance are your phosphates are high and something simple like GFO and lights off for 48 hours might cause it to go away.
Without knowing specifics like age of tank, water source, bio-load etc. I am going to guess it’s a new tank and experiencing a diatom bloom.
When using crushed coral as a base it needs to be vacumed out regularly when doing water changes or you will always have an algae issue there as it will trap nutrients and feed algae.
If it’s a brown fuzzy algae it’s probably diatoms and is a typical problem with new tanks. Less feeding, reduced lighting, and more flow will help it go away faster.
Thanks guys. All great stuff. The tank is four months old. I use rainsoft treated water. I do not have any nitrates. I will check the phoshates. I am new to salt water. Everthing else in the Tank is doing well so far.
yeah at 4 months I am going to assume diatoms. normal occurence, I think everyone gets them. Sometimes sooner sometimes later.
What do you have as far as livestock in the tank?
What size tank? Lighting? etc. We’re nosy around here, we like details. lOl
Hey Greg, im glad to see you jump on so soon.
these guys pretty much hit everything on th head. nitrates, phosphates, and untreated tap water are the usual suspects.
i think AL gave you the best advice, you can pretty much get rid of any algea with some agressive water changes and by turning the lights out for several days.
longterm, there are a lot of routes to take to keep your parameters in line. the first thing you need to do, if your not doing it already, is regular water changes and regular testing of your water parameters.
some things you may want to consider down the road is an RODI unit if your water isnt up to par, building a refugium(very inexpensive way to control nitrates/phosphates), and possibly a phoshpate reactor(again, pretty cheap and efficitent).
shawn
For fish I have a hippo Tang, a percula clown and a algae blenny. I have a emerald green crab and sally light foot. Two turbo snails and three zebra hermit crabs, mushroom rock, flame oyster, zoas frags, and a condy anemone. 100 ponds of live rock, crushed coral and live sand mix.
I use a marineland 360-c and emperor 400, aqua clear 500 modified to a refugium, aqua clear 402 power head and a 700 gph water pump to move water. For lighting I have a Coral Life 36 inch deluxe lunar series. The tank is a 65 gallon Tall.
My only problem now is brown algae and lack of patience.
Brown algae is prolly silica in your water. I think Aquamedic made a silica remover, but I’d have to google it to be sure. Four months isn’t long, the diatoms will back off eventually. How do you like the rainsoft?
OK I realize it’s not part of your question but I just want to offer some advice/concern…and it has nothing to do with the tang (I’m sure someone else will mention the size of the aquarium required to keep a healthy adult tang).
The lights you mention are Power Compacts correct? Anemone’s do require strong lighting for best health. I’d be the last person to say you can’t keep a nem under PCs (I did it for quite a while), but it is not easy, make sure you spot feed every week or two with silversides or other meaty foods to compensate for the light. You may want t make sure you stack the rock work tall so the condy can get as high up in the tank as possible.
Also, make sure you watch parameters closely, anemones are very sensitive to water quality, most people say you can’t keep a nem in a tank that’s less then a year old. I really don’t agree, you just have to be careful. Especially because anemones can quickly contaminate and kill off an entire tank of they die.
Again, just my .02
BTW - welcome to the boards and the club.
Craig
i agree 100% with the anemone advice, however, condys seem to be the hardiest of all. ive seen them thrive in setups that would kill any other anemone. ive also seen them kept long term in poor setups. the downside of owning a condy is it will be VERY difficult to get any clown to host with it from what ive read.
[quote=“logans_daddy, post:12, topic:649”]
i agree 100% with the anemone advice, however, condys seem to be the hardiest of all. ive seen them thrive in setups that would kill any other anemone. ive also seen them kept long term in poor setups. the downside of owning a condy is it will be VERY difficult to get any clown to host with it from what ive read.[/quote]
I agree, Condy’s are very hardy. I got one bleached out pretty bad (not knowing any better at the time) put it under PCs and helped it thrive but spot feeding. I have a Perc and a Tomato clown - neither will even go near the condi let alone allow it to host.
I could be off track but you may also need more for your clean-up crew.
Just a thought.
OH and
:Welcome)
Just an update: Got the sump rolling last night. Decided to put 1/2 mud and 1/2 dsb in the center portion of the sump. There are 5lbs of each in there. I didn’t mix them together, just put them side by side in the same compartment. Next step is to throw some chaeto in there and hook up the light. I have the hood from my old 12g nano cube that I modded to fit 2 cfls (instead of the 1 it came with), do you think this will be fine for chaeto or should I look for a different bulb w/ different spectrum?
Thanks again guys!
Josh
some bulbs are probably better than others, but i think just about any light source should do. it doesnt seem picky. i think most people use the $10 clamp on socket/reflector from the box home stores with a high par halogen bulb, but i really thing just about anything should work.
We are trying to get some anemone pics to possibly use as a logo or post on the front page. If you have an anemone with or without a clown fish post it. We may use the best image in our new banner or logo. Even if you are not the best photographer, if people like it we can have someone with a really good camera go back and take the picture. Please, Only submit pictures you own.
Some examples:
Icy1155 photo by Al
Logans-Daddy photo by Logans-Daddy
I only have aiptasia’s do they count? :BEER
this is a neon green bta a while back. i dont know why it died may be unstable water. this is back when i filled the bucket tossed salt in and 2 min later i dumped it in. poor anemone. :-(" o well though when i move up to my 55 i do want to get a rbta. they look sweet.
this pic.bmp (432 KB)
I like Icy’s
Will need to be cleaned up a bit but it’s colorful, eye catching, and busy enog to attract attention, but not so busy as to hurt the eyes