Out of control Hair ALgae

[curtis_rachel]

We have a 55 gal tank (non-reef) that is overgrown with Hair Algae; we aren't able to put any algae eating fish in right now because of an outbreak of ich a few weeks ago -- we removed all of our fish, put them in a QT, and we're letting our display tank stay fish free for about 45 days to ensure all of the ich is gone from it.

BUT, how do we get rid of the hair algae? It's growing on everything -- rocks, class, filters. .. random shells in the sand bed. . . everything!!!!!

As far as tank set up, in case that's affecting anything, we have two filters, two powerheads, a uv sterilize, and about 40W of lighting.

Any advice?????

[brooke]

What are your water parameters? Need more info.

[Reefland]

Are we talking about those bio-filters? The algae is from excessive nutrients, bottom line. You must figure a way to export these nutrients through water exchanges, vegetable filtration, DSB, etc.

[inwall75]

Even if you could have herbivores, it doesn't really matter. They are great at covering up problems but truly don't "fix" the problem. As a rough average, only 10% of the phosphates are bound. Most animals have 2 holes and 90% of the 'nasties' come right back out the back-end. Like Reefland says, you have excessive nutrients in some way. There are a couple of great articles in RHO's issue here. http://www.reefland.com/rho/current.php

There are lots of cycles going on in our tanks. Obviously, the one most people concentrate on is the Nitrogen Cycle as it is quite important if you want your critters to live. However, in truth you are dealing with the Phosphate Cycle as well as the Sulphur Cycle among others.

It's merely an input/output thing. If you have that much algae, you have either too many inputs of P and/or too few outputs of P. What are your inputs of P? What are your outputs?

Common inputs are excessive feeding, tap water, etc. Common outputs are skimming, waterchanges, turkey basting, etc.