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A little help with a clients tank (1 Viewer)

C

condiman

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2008
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147
Location
central wi
Just to give you all a little history about the setup it was setup a year ago by another company (will not name who) Here is the setup

Tank 220 perfecto with dual corner overflows
Sump MegaFlow Sump Filter model four with bioballs(removed bioballs when I took over the aquarium)
Skimmer Coralife Super Skimmer
Lighting 4 x 96 watt pc coralife (new bulbs as of a month ago)
Live rock not sure on how many pounds but most of whats in the aquarium is tonga brance and a few larger chunks of LR I would guess about 90 lbs of that and maybe 60 lbs of tonga
phosphate reactor

Lighting schedule actintics on at 10am and off at 7pm and 10k on at 12pm and off at 5pm


Anyways this client has two of these exact setups in his facility. One on the north side has no problems at all and the coraline growth is amazing and has no sign of any hair algae. But the tank on the south side has been battling hair algae for about two months. About 4 months ago someone had placed a handfull of birdseed in that aquarium. I got out what I beleive was most of it. I have never seen hair algae grow that fast. I go in every two weeks to do water changes with RO DI water and IO saltmix. The livestock in these tanks are minimal I would say maybe at most 50 inches of fish total. What I cant figure out is why just this tank is having issues with hair algae. The water specks are

Ph 8.2
Alk 9.5dkh
Calcium 420
Nitrate 2ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Phosphate .02

Any ideas will be helpful. I just did a 30 gallon water change and was thinking of going back Tuesday or Wednesday to do another waterchange.
 
Its going to take you dozens of water changes at 30 gallons to dilute whatever got in there. Can you do a series of 4 changes of 100 gallons? That will replace the majority of the water much quicker.
 
Thats what I was thinking but what stumps me is y do you think it could lead all back to the bird seed
 
Anything in the tank currently that eats hair algae? you might want to consider supplementing water changes with some HA munchers. (members here will differ about this but Im not a big fan of water changes)

Didnt see any refugium mentioned - you might want to consider that as an option.
 
Your water parameters seem good. I guess if it were me instaed of running over there and burning up all that salt water I would put my effort into physically removing it. Do one side of the tank at a time. Take out the live rock, scrub it with a firm bristle brush, and physically remove all you can. I would have a couple of buckets of rinse water and just set up a cleaning station and go to town until I got every bit off I could. Then put in a good clean up crew of snail, emerald crabs, and hermits. I think if you could get it under control, then do low lights and a clean up crew, you might be able to get it under control. If phospates and nitrates are low, I am not sure how much benefit you would get from massive water changes. Usually that works to remove phosphates and nitrates.
 
I should have spent more time writing. I'm not sure water changes are the answer and I don't know if a bunch of seeds would do that or not. But, if you do and you want to use water changes as an approach, my suggestion was to do large ones.
 
Thats basically what I did yesterday was physically removed about 90% of it. There is a fairly decent snail algae crew in there and I am working on getting a sea hare from one of my suppliers.
 
I was thinking of going and doing another removal attack on Tuesday or Wednesday along with another WC. With all the years I have been doing saltwater aquariums I am still surprized at times at the things that happen to someof my clients aquariums.
 
we've heard good things about a Foxface Lo
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make sure it doesnt have the black spot like this one,
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just passing on good info, i've never tried this fish since i have only a 20 gallon.
 
Per Fahz at the last speaker's event: The Foxface Lo with the spot is not near the algae eater that the un-spotted one is. Reportedly, the un-spotted one will eat most nuisence algaes down to nothing, so they do not grow back. Additionally, the un-spotted is a timid fish, and will not harass the other livestock in the tank. It does have poisonous spines, so other fish steer clear of it as well.
Good luck!
 
Goldpony75 said:
Does the tank with hair algae get any natural sunlight throughout the day?
Click to expand...

would that matter? I ask becoz in the old location my tank got about 4 hours direct sun & I didnt have any nuisance algae, at the same time I also had a fuge with lights on 24x7. Also there are threads on RC where folks use sunlight (solatubes & skylights) with little or no algae issues.
 
Taklu said:
would that matter? I ask becoz in the old location my tank got about 4 hours direct sun & I didnt have any nuisance algae, at the same time I also had a fuge with lights on 24x7. Also there are threads on RC where folks use sunlight (solatubes & skylights) with little or no algae issues.
Click to expand...

I think he's referring to the light spectrum cast by natural sunlight. Lower Kelvin ratings (5000-6500) are favored by those algaes. If you have low nutrients it doesn't matter as much.
 
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