Does Poor Lighting Contribute To Hair Algae?

[CageUK]

The title pretty much says it all really.

My 24g D&D suffers crippling algae, not helped by my lack of attention lately due to work commitments, blah blah.

I've done all the stuff in the past, regular water changes, rowaphos etc and in fact my orca 450 gets the same treatment and is great.

The tank is situated in a hallway with no real direct sunlight. When I first got the tank it was suffering from extreme diatoms which I had eventually got rid of but has now been replaced by this hair algae.

A couple of months ago I completely stripped the tank down, scrubbed as much of the algae off of the live rock and tank sides as possible then put it all back together again. It was fine for a few days and I thought I'd finally cracked it but then it started coming back. Had I not been so busy I may have been able to tame it at that stage but I don't have to do that to my orca.

I'm now suspecting that the T5 50/50 lighting is shot (at least one of the bulbs has had it) and the poor quality light it's giving off is encouraging the algae growth. Do any of the techies out there know if this would be a valid conclusion?

I did buy a replacement bulb for it but it got smashed prior to fitting and haven't been able to get out to get another one yet. I'm also going to be selling the tank due to lack of time so don't want to spend large amounts of money on it as I simply will not get it back again.

I am doing a complete strip down (of the tank that is) today and want to keep it nice for the new owner when I sell it.

As a footnote, a lump of live rock I transferred from my orca at the time of the first strip down seems to have stayed relatively free from algae, so could this be a characteristic of the original live rock?

Hope you can help!

Cheers

 

[ben1987]

Do you use RO water?

 

[CageUK]

Do you use RO water?

Hi Ben

Yes I use RO and I'm aware of all the usual culprits contributing to algae growth. I have changed my RO source recently as a friend of mine has got himself an RO unit. I used to get it from my LFS but my friend doesn't charge me. His unit doesn't have a DI but my algae was present before the changeover so although it may not help, it is not the reason for the outbreak.
The tank only has a tomato clown, about 5 or 6 small blue knuckles, and a couple of narsarius snails. I had some turbos but only seen one lately. I also have a couple of xenia colonies, some brown shrooms, a small polyp frag and a colony of GSP. There are a couple of Aptasia that I need to deal with as well. I feed lightly every day but occasionally skipping a day. I leave the lights off for normally one day a week.

Nitrates are around 25ppm at the moment which I know is high but all of this is the same as my other tank which is doing gloriously! The other thing I've noticed as well while clearing it out is that I've had little or no development of coralline which I would have expected some by this time.

My husbandry is one of the things to blame with my lack of time for maintenance, but again the same is the case for the Orca. I usually get around to a water change every two to three weeks and change 25ltrs at a time.

So I've got to get my act in gear with the maintenance but was curious as to wether the lighting was contributory to my algae growth.

I might move a couple of my larger hermits from the orca to help with the clean up and maybe a turbo or two but as I say I'm going to put the tank up for sale so don't want to put too much into it and compromise my other tank.

Cheers

 

[Anguilla82]

i may be wrong but a mithrax crab may help as i think they eat hair algae.

 

[CageUK]

i may be wrong but a mithrax crab may help as i think they eat hair algae.

Yes I agree, in fact I did have a small emerald in there but he didn't last very long unfortunately. He wouldn't have made much of a dent in there though cos he was quite tiny.

I'm not so worried about about crew to get rid of the algae but trying to treat the cause itself. Tackling nitrates and phosphates is one thing but I just had this thought about the lighting. One of the T5's has definitely had it and is dark coloured on the end so that will need replacing...I just wondered if the shift of spectrum due to it's age was a contributory factor to the generation of the algae in the first place. I could then advise the prospective new owner of this (I would advise them to replace the lighting anyway).

Cheers