nuisance hair algae

[LAUGHLIN]

i am starting to get an overpopulation of green hair algae. i have red leg hermits and a lawnmower blenny and a lettuce nudi but it isnt going away what can i do to stop it

[LAUGHLIN]

i am starting to get an overpopulation of green hair algae. i have red leg hermits and a lawnmower blenny and a lettuce nudi but it isnt going away what can i do to stop it

all levels are in normal

[BrianE]

Do you have a refugium with good macro algae in it ? It is growing because it has food. If you don't have high phosphates, then maybe you are overfeeding your fish. Excess fish food will definitely aid in hair algae growth. I recently went thru a bout of it that took a while to get control of. I started with a phosban reactor to take out the phosphates needed by the algae, added crabs, then a nudi, I finally got it under control when I raised my magnesium levels up to 1400. It was around 1150 when my hair algae problem was at it's worst. I also added a sea hare that was chowing down on the hair algae njust before I raised my magnesium. Now I'm afraid he is going to die due to the lack of the nusance algae. I would think your magnesium levels should be normal, unless you drip kalk water. Hope some of this helps.

[Luke33]

Are you using RODI water or tap?

[LAUGHLIN]

I am using ro water and i dont use a refugium i run a canister and an over the back filter and protein skimmer

[SeanyG]

Something's out of wack. Even with red and yellow lights you shouldnt be growing this stuff. Place RO/DI water out side in the sun (in summer) with a bit of algae in it. The growth rates are very slow. Even with perfect light conditions algae needs some nutrients to grow. The biggest culprit is phosphate. Get that tested. Take it to a city water facitlity get it tested. Something is not right that you are not testing.

[LAUGHLIN]

I buy my water all at wal-mart through their ro unit in 5 gallons i will test and switch to another location to get my water till find out whats wrong.

[AHDOnline]

I had horrible luck with Kroger's RO water, it was harsh on my tanks. After I purchased my own unit its been fairly smooth sailing, I still have some algae but nothing more than my snails can clean up

[LAUGHLIN]

after reading recent post i went to kroger and bought new water just my luck come home to find post about kroger being bad-go figure just my luck. i live in the country and tap water is too hard and not enough pressure for an ro unit of my own so i will try my kroger for a while and see if this helps. thanks

[AHDOnline]

Yeah, its hard to say I got mine from southport/bluff kroger. I ended up spending over 300$ on the full RO setup with the booster pump. I was in a simliar situation with a well.

[Luke33]

You could use a booster pump on your rodi unit and not have any pressure probs.