I have this brown hair algae growth all over my live rocks and the sand also turned brown. We just got some turbo snails and hermit crabs so they will take care of it. Is their anything I can do to stop the growth of this algae and get good coralline algae? I have a 48" power compact light along with a build in filter in the back of the tank and a small protein skimmer (need to up grade). Thank you; any help will work, new at the reef setups and willing to learn
brown hair algae?
- Thread starter freshbutsalty
- Start date
I'm sort of new myself I've only been doing reefs for a couple of years. I'd suspect that it's your water if it has phosphates in it that will trigger an algae bloom. I don't know if you have anything in your tanks or not but, I'd cut back on my photo period and that should controle your algae problem. The coraline algae doesn't need as much light as the other sorts also it would appreciate good calcium levels in your tank water.
welcome to Aquaria Central.
Hope this helps
Chris
welcome to Aquaria Central.
Hope this helps
Chris
thanks for your help the tank has only been up for a couple weeks. So in a couple more weeks do a water change with ro water. maybe that will help
Reducing the light will help for the moment. As Maxilaria said, the coralline doesn't need that much light, so it's fine to reduce the light while your tank is cycling and equilibrating.
The snails and hermits will help too.
The snails and hermits will help too.
i have had the same problem after being lazy and using tap water for a water change.i have heard to cut the lights back a few hours or in drastic situations cut lights off for a couple days.is this dangerous?right now im only cutting them back a couple hours and im going to use distilled water for my water changes.
Nano,
It shouldn't be but that would really depend on what you have in your tank and how often you do it. Corals and stuff like that shouldn't be to bothered by a day or two of recduced light. The only problem is enough light depravation to kill the algae bloom would probably kill a lot of corals symbiotic algae to.
hth
chris
It shouldn't be but that would really depend on what you have in your tank and how often you do it. Corals and stuff like that shouldn't be to bothered by a day or two of recduced light. The only problem is enough light depravation to kill the algae bloom would probably kill a lot of corals symbiotic algae to.
hth
chris
hmm. very good point i overlooked.i broke out the toothbrush manually removed most of it. then i did a water change with distilled water.added some more blue legs and saturday im going to pick up a mithrax(wish my zoo's luck).thx chris