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I noticed i'm starting to get a hair algae problem. Tank has been running for 2 yrs. filter pad has been changed and did a 25% water change a little over a week ago. I tested for nitrates and they came out under 10 unless the algae is giving me false readings. I did however tho leave 1 65 watt actinic lamp on for around 8 hours and then turned on the daylight lamp and ran them both for additional 5 hours. I'm cutting down on the lighting right now. Planning on going for around 6 hours or so. I have about 6-8 blue leg hermits and a few zebra hermits. Should I get a lawn mower blenny or a emerald crab or should I invest in a protein skimmer? Any ideas for the long term solution to this? And forgot to mention this is a 40 gallon reef. I've never had this prob before but never had that much lighting on it either until about a month ago.


Thanks

Check for phosphates, if you have it, get a phosphate sponge. A real good algea cleaner is a algea eating sea slug, but they can be hard to find. The increase in lighting most likly is the cause, and should get better with an upgrade in your clean up crew.

Dan

What would make a good algae clean up crew? More blue leg hermits and snails? Or an emerald crab?

and also reading about the phosphate sponge. Do regular filter media cartridges w/ carbon create a lot of phosphates? Like media cartridges for penguin filters?

Last edited by jkalfsbeck at 04-Jan-2005 13:33

Hermits and emeralds will help clean up algea, but you may have to go in and manually remove most of it.

Phosphates come from tap water, so if your topping your tank off and mixing new SW with tap water, this could part of your problem. Filter media does not deal with phosphates.



Dan

I purchased a small emerald crab last night and purchase a poly filter for the time being until i can afford a protein skimmer next month. I also put my lights on a timer. Let me know if the times sound about right.

65 watt Actinic- 12 pm til 11 pm
65 Daylight- 2 pm til 10 pm
lunar- 11 pm til 12 pm

Hopefully this will control it a little bit more. let me know if all of this sounds like i'm heading in the right direction.

Those shoudl be OK, you only have 11 hours of light per day.



Dan

A sally lightfoot crab will eat hair algae. As for a phosphate sponge, I never had any luck with those. I found a carton of Coralife phosphate remover, put the reccomended amount in a bag, rinsed it and put it in the sump of my 55 gal reef. It works great for me, better than any of those sponges did anyway, and it will last quite a while! Just my $.02.