Ahhhh!!! Algea!!!!!

[i<3fish]

I hate algea soo much!!!! It makes me want to just give up! My sand bed is pretty much covered in cyano (feeding 1 cube of mysis every other day. I have a Tek 4 bulb 48" fixture that I purchased recently. Also, my rocks are pretty much covered with hair algea. It is all over my glass, all over my beautiful rocks! I have been skimmer wet (someones advice) but it hasnt made a change. It is only getting worse! Phospates-0 also!!!

 

[slappy]

do you use ro water for topoffs?

 

[lbaskball]

Originally Posted by I<3Fish
I hate algea soo much!!!! It makes me want to just give up! My sand bed is pretty much covered in cyano (feeding 1 cube of mysis every other day. I have a Tek 4 bulb 48" fixture that I purchased recently. Also, my rocks are pretty much covered with hair algea. It is all over my glass, all over my beautiful rocks! I have been skimmer wet (someones advice) but it hasnt made a change. It is only getting worse! Phospates-0 also!!!
Get a bunch of snails, and put a powerhead inside the tank wher ethe cyano bacteria is...your water movement might be too slow. I notice dthat the more water turnover and movement of water there is, the less algae and also cut the lights down to 8hours.
If you got all that, it shoudlnt be hard to keep the algae down...
I dont use the "purified water"..i use regular tap water..but some places contain too much silicates and what not, so you might need to use a RO/DI thing..

 

[laddy]

Don't give up, we've all been there.....and will in the future as we upgrade/down grade tanks. I know how you feel. One question: how long are you running your lights for?

 

[winstew]

My Lettuce Nudibrach killed my hair algae.... well worth the 4.99 IMO

 

[i<3fish]

I am running my lights about 11 hours a day or so. I do use RO/DI water though. For top-off and water changes.

 

[ricor_craz]

how long is your setup? if it is recent, 6 months or less then it will slowly go away soon. cut the lights down to 6 hours, what kind of skimmer do you have, what is the ratio of water flow, should be around at least 8x, do 15% water change

 

[secter1]

I dont know what size your tank is but I had the same prob and last Sat I got 20 more snails, 20 hermits 2 emeralds and a LM Blenny......today I have a couple strands of hair algae left in my tank... In the 20 snails 4 of them were turbos and they did alot of damage. I would go get like 10 of them and once you have the algae under countrol get rid of 5 of them

 

[laddy]

I think its more of a photo period problem than anything. Unless you have some demanding SPS' in your tank I'd start by cutting the amount of time your lights are on by 20% the first week, then scaling it down until they're only on a few hours a day. I know its not real attractive to watch a dark tank during the day, but the algea will not survive if not given enough food, light or current--and it doesn't appear you're feeding the tank too much.