Hair algae help???

[soekopup]

I need some help with this agale begfore I loose my mind an startr pilling out my hair please!!!! I have a 75 gal tank with a 20 gal refugium. The main has a 3inch sand bed and the refugium a two inch one. I am planning on adding more after santa brings me some. I have plenty of live rock and my water parameters are great except maybe for nitrate.
Ammon - 0
Nitrite - 0
Calcium - 450
Alk - 11dkh
saline 35 ppt
photo period 10 hrs
good skimmer
all water r/o
ph 8.0-8.2
nitrate- 5.5

I have excellent coral growth and expasion. hord and softs are doing great and have even began fraging some of them. I have decreaed my fish load to a yellow tang, marron clown, blue devil, cleaner wrasse and pygmy angel. I have a great invet pop of two sallies mix of hemitred and blue and about 40 trochus and turbos. Which by the way never even touch the stuff, JERKIES!!!! Santa just bought me an early stocking stuffer of new 10 ab halides. I thought the spectral shift of my olds were bad. I know the tank is healthy because of my coral and critter population is great, but this ?#$@%^ing algae is driving me nuts. I try to remove it and I swear it is back in an hour. it never goes away!!! I have tried macro algae but find that loose hair algae filaments cover them and choke them out, It has happened twice. I am at wits end

Can anyone please offer me some sugestion that will work in real time and let me see some actual results, natural if possible, Chemical if absolutely neccesary.

Thank you for your input. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad3.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad3.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ugh.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puke.gif

[soekopup]

sorry acouple of more things, I have two rio 2100 in the tank for circulation, feed a half to a quater of a froz emerald entree cube a day, and was also wondering about urchins, I have a model citizen pencil in the tank now who i love, he is great at helping to spread coraline and does seem to consume some algae. pincouschion or tuxedo good or bad?? Thanks
Rick

[Flatlander]

Rick, the best algae consumers for me, when fighting a turf algae war a few years ago, were urchins{not pencils}& deep water turbos.

Mine friends are having good success with Trochus snails, but I see you have some.

[Chuck S]

Rick,

I see one water parameter was left unchecked. It can be quite hard to check and get an true reading. PHOSPATE. This can drive algae growth to new levels. As Doug meantioned above with algae grazers Trochus snails and just plain black urchins are great. Also try the plain old blue-leg crabs. I would also do like a 25% water change to dilute the concentration of nitrate and or phosphate. If it is the same temperature, salinity, and PH then change it. I have done 25-50 percent water changes with no ill effects provided the water paramters in respects to these three parameters were kept the same. This is to avoid osmotic shock. Now I had a small 20 gallon tank that I had to replace almost all the water from a green water bloom. You can also try some of those phosphate removing pads.( I am not a big one on this method but several people have added that they work )

[Katspaw]

Not only Phosphates can cause hair algae. But Silcia in the water can as well. I had that problem when I first started out. Using an R/O system with HI/S removed this problem. I also noticed that all prepared foods for your tank contain some phosphates, so I make my own now and it seems to help. I would recommend checking your tap water, and your food.

Tracey

[Chuck S]

Silicates tend to fuel dinoflaggelates or the rust algae that covers everything like a dust over everything. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Just another algal stage we all go through with new tanks. I have yet to see a new tank that does not go through this one.

[Katspaw]

Yes, I had the dia-bloom that you are referring to, but afterwards an out break of hair algae. I took a vial of tap water to my LFS and had them test it. So more than likely you are right, I just remember the extremely high levels of Silicates in the water, along with a number of other things that are unwanted in our tanks. It is so much easier with a R/O unit to control water quality.


Tracey

[Chuck S]

Yes it is. Nitrates and Phosphates tend to fuel Algae and Silicates those damn things bring on the diatoms. Luckily most of us only have to deal with diatoms once as they are terrible to try and combat.