Macroalgae Identification

I bought T5s in January and have been bombarded by derbesia ever since. Is there a connection or is it a coincidence? How can i clean it up?

sorry if I step on any toes here on the article. I also added T5s to my tank and saw a tremendous outbreak of derbesia. There was a number of factors that contributed to my outbreak. One was that I increased the light (50/50 lights to T5 lights) and kept it on the same amount of time as my old lights and that was to long. I found out more things grow under this better light, both good and bad. I changed to have the lights actinic (blue) lights on for 8 hours and the white lights on for 6. I also had a cheap 15 year old skimmer that was a pain to adjust the air intake. It was out of adjustment more than it was working. I paid more attention to this until I just now put in a larger better skimmer hoping to get rid of the nitrates that this stuff loves to live in. I also found that my wife was feeding the fish in the morning and I was feeding them at night. This added to the increased nitrates. Stopped doing that and now we feed every other day sometimes every 3 days and just enough that the food doesn't hit the bottom very much, what does gets consumed by crabs. That leads me to another thing. I increased my clean up crew and found my lettuce nudibranch in the over flow. I put him back in the tank on the algae and he started eating it right away. I also vacuum this up during most every water change. I just pick it off the rock easily with the cyphon right beside it and suck it up the hose. My derbasia has gone down to almost nothing, I don't think one will ever get rid of all of it. I think the biggest thing that helped so far in stopping what is there from growing is the light schedule and the feeding schedule. I am betting on the new skimmer and getting rid of my bio ball sump getting rid of the rest of what the clean up crew and my tang isn't eating. Sorry if this wasn't the place to do this but thought it may help.

The #1 thing you can do to avoid algae outbreaks is to consistent small water changes. You don't have to make a huge change every month. Depending on the size of your tank, just do a weekly 5 gallon water change. This can make a world of distance. Also, you can cut back on the time that your lights are on per day. However, I cannot stress enough the importance of regular, small water changes. Once you get algae it tends to get worse before it gets better.

Its funny that you mention the T5's. A friend of mine has it really bad now but it started showing up when he got his T5's about a year ago. What scares me is I just bought T5s yesterday.

Boy, did I just learn a load of useful things from you folks! I too ,run T-5's 2 Actinic and 2 day light.I was feeding way too much also, I was doing it when I got home from work, my wife fed them in the mornings and my son did it when he got home from school. I agree on the water changes. I do 5 gal. a week. I changed one more light from day light to Actinic, so I have three Actinic and one daylight. I also reset my timers to 8hrs for blue and 6 for daylight. I did a reorder on a new clean up crew ,so they should be here by weeks end. Yesterday I took most of the LR out and scrubbed it with a soft brush in tank water. Man, was it filthy! I added another circulation pump and repositioned the one I had, changed out my filter media. I just put in a bag of Chemipure two months ago and it was loaded up already, so I cleaned my filter and put in a new bag of Chemipure. What a difference a day and night make. I already see positive changes, like hair algei going away. It will take time, but I am sure happy I started to read this forum.I look forward to learning more in the future! Happy new year.

Somebody mention about algae control, to add up more, once algae become a problem, it cannot be reverse by simply eliminating factors.Dumping some chemicals gives an attempt to kill or eradicate algae from closed aquatic system and it definitely a cause for faster succession.But basically ALGAE are part of a healthy environment and an important supplemental food source for some species living in the water.