Hair Algae On My Sand Bed!

[eschaton]

My 55 gallon is cycled and has been coming along nicely. The diatom bloom has came and went. The hair algae is another story. It has never really took off on my rocks, with only a tuft here and there where there wasn't any coraline. Oddly, it seems to love my sand however, at times growing like a meadow. My astraea and nerites didn't touch it. A LFS suggested some turbos, and they did quite well when I initially plopped them in, but as soon as they found the rockwork they stopped going onto the sand, or venturing onto the back wall of the 1/3rd of the tank which is above the open sand bed.

Some of the longer bits aren't hard to remove, as they're stuck to larger shell fragments, and I can just lift entire filaments out of the tank. Out of lack of a better idea, I started stirring the sand a bit too, hoping to kill the algae which got buried, as well as bring up more of the oolitic sand which makes up the bottom part of my DSB (I figure the algae will be less able to hook onto this stuff.

Nitrate and Phosphate levels are zero or close to it, BTW.

I just noticed when scrubbing my powerhead (another place where the turbos don't go), that there are spots of coraline forming now. Should I just wait until the algae cycle takes its course, or continue to try and interfere manually?

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd continue to try and interfere manually tbh, just to make sure it doesn't become a complete eyesore.

One thing to ask/check, What is your input water source? And do you know it's TDS?

 

[eschaton]

One thing to ask/check, What is your input water source? And do you know it's TDS?

RO/DI system bought from Melevsreef. It's only been set up for a month or so, so I doubt the TDS are high unless something is seriously defective.

Oh, and some of the algae along the back wall has started to turn white instead of green and lush. Is this a sign it's dying back?

 

[SkiFletch]

Still important to check the TDS, although melev's units are good quality, sometimes even the good stuff can fail unexpectedly

Could be dieoff, or it could just be getting covered with detritus?

 

[littleme1969]

Get some blue leg hermits!! They just love hair algae and when they have done their job if you dont like them you can take them back to the shop or sell on. Ive have about 12 in a 25g and ive never had a hair alge problem, in fact nothing green survives in my tank for long..

 

[Musho3210]

ive had a few infrequent algae blooms, most of the time it is hair, ive had one cyano outbreak.

For all of them i didnt do anything, let the algae mature, end its life cycle, and they just went away on their own. Using some GFO seemed to speed it up a little bit as well. Ive now got a phosphate reactor (filled with GFO) and hopefully this will prevent another algae bloom from forming.