Lights out for a week or so.....

jbird0420

jbird0420

Member
Due to a severe green hair algae outbreak, looks like my only alternative is keeping my tank dark for a week or 2. It seems this might be the best solution, to cure my tank of this problem. I do have old bulbs that are gonna be replaced. My Ro/Di is pushing 25ppm, cause of a old membrane, which is on it's way all the other filters have been changed recently. I feed once a day, food is consumed in under 3 min. I tested my phosphates and it's reading 0. I did order Algae fix marine, to help kill of this algae.
In thre mean time I plan on moving all my corals to my 55 qt tank for that 1-2 week period. I have a couple of questions about this adventure...
* Can my corals survive off just 8 hours of MH only for that period while the other tank is in darkness? If not I can move my Actinics over to the Qt tank as well...

* Since I do have some algae eaters in the algae infested tank, is it best to move them out to, or will they be ok in the darkness for that amount of time? My main concern would be my Lawnmower Blenny?

Thanks for the help!
 
vandy12069

vandy12069

Member
it was so bad i was pulling it out about 3 times a week and filling up the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. it was so bad it was taking over and starting to kill some corals
 
townsdp

townsdp

Member
well, hate to say it but that won't do anything. I have had a bad HA prob for 2 yrs now. done EVERYTHING. replaced lights, lowered light ro 3 hours, lmb, every invert including sea hares, phosban reactor, replaced ro/di filters and scrubbed rock every week. I recently left my lights off for 2 months. It took a month for the algae to start to die off but never died off completely. My fish wouldn't eat in the dark, so they were moved in with my corals in a small tank. I'm doin it better this time, but the lights off will help. But totally off, constant water changes, and scrub the rock each time. I think that should work. I only did 2 changes last time and scrubbed once and after a month of light light brown fuzz turned into long green hair. This time, I pulled rock, scrubbed and scrubbed them, put them in a sealed rubbermaid container with filters. I am soaking the powerheads, overflow, and skimmer in vinegar after scraping the glass, replacing the sand, and doin weekly water changes. I am acclimating a sea hare at this moment to eat it off the rock around my corals. Just taking out my rocks over a week ago and I've already seen some die off the dt. Also, I cut off all my leathers, zoos, shrooms, etc before turning out the light before. When the lights came back on, the stumps hadn't died and now I have twice as many corals.
 
jbird0420

jbird0420

Member
Wow! It seems from all these threads and posts I have seen. Some have had no problems with getting rid of hair algae. While others are going through hell and back, to defeat this.
I'm wondering if i should take some of this rock and put into my 225g FO and let the tangs and angels have at it?
 
jbird0420

jbird0420

Member
Here's a couple of pics.
As you can see, I have a algae problem in my 225g. No hair algae, but it does exist. I'm hoping by replacing the membrane in my RO/di unit, using Algae fix and cutting my lights back. That maybe, just maybe, there's hope!





 
vandy12069

vandy12069

Member
thats what mine looked like in my 125 but cutting back lights use ro water mabye try more flow in those certain areas should help
 
fattony

fattony

Member
I think the water at 25ppm is like the cause. Also, it appears that the algae is on your rock. This is a typical picture of Phosphate saturation in the rock. I recommend a cooking process to purge your rock. Townsdp basically did this. There are some decent threads on other forums out there on this process. I would just doa Google search for "cooking live rock" and you should see a few threads pop up on the exact process.
 
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