Green hair algae

[earman88]

Over the past couple weeks, I've gotten a bad outbreak of green hair algae in my 10g. This stuff is getting 1-2 inches long at parts. The strange part is that it's only on my old live rock. The 2 new pieces that have only been in there 1 month, they hardly have any of the algae growing on them.

Anyways my parameters are alright, except for some trace ammonia which a water change hopefully brought down today. All my corals are looking great and showing fast growth. Water looks crystal clear.

To combat it, I'm leaving my lights off and pulling the algae off by hand. I'm going to toothbrush/siphon combo it every other day until it's gone.

Should I worry about phosphates? I don't want to pay too much for another phos-guard type product. I also thought about picking up 2-3 turbo snails.

 

[Bifferwine]

I think one turbo snail would be sufficient for a 10 gallon. If you do get more than one, be ready to take them back to the LFS before they starve, as they will probably go through the algae fast. They will not usually be able to eat really long strands of algae though -- they can't get a grip on the rock if it's too long. So trim it first and let them clean up the remnants.

I think with algae, you should just assume you have a nitrate and phosphate problem. It doesn't matter what test kits say -- if you have algae, your water parameters are out of whack.

 

[earman88]

Thanks Biff. I will pick up 1 turbo. The algae seems to have already begun to recede.