Kind of a Newbie

[nancy3549]

hello all. i've had my 29g biocube for over a year. it housed a tomato clown, 2 damsels, an engineer goby and a small sea hare. about a month ago, i added more live sand and just recently lended out my sea hare. my tank is now covered with what looks like cotton dust balls. i dont know what it is, so please if anyone can help me identify it and suggest solutions as to how to get rid of it, i'd greatly appreciate it. thanks in advance.
p.s. heres a photo of it.

 

[Cathic]

Green hair algae, most likely caused by bad water parameters, are you using tap water for your water supply?

 

[yote]

The Alabama guy is right.:D thats hair algae.
What are your waters parameters?

 

[Smitty]

Hello and welcome to the site...glad to have you. You're gonna need to switch over to purified/RO water and start doing water changes. Try pulling what you can off the rocks before doing the water change.

 

[Ogaawd]

Hi and Welcome Nancy, + to the above, can I ask how much sand you added? if it was more than a 1/4 inch its likely that you smothered the substrate and its released a load of nitrate to get even with you

 

[nancy3549]

thank you to everyone for responding so quickly. forgive my ignorance but i was just wondering how come i didnt have this problem before. i've always used tap water. my parameters all read fine. nitrate, nitrite and ammonia are all 0. my ph and dkh are both fine. sg is 1.023 and water temp is 79. calcium reading is also good. i do 15% water change once every 1-2 wks. im also using a red sea prism skimmer. again thanks.

 

[Cathic]

Raise the salinity closer to 1.025 or .026. The nudi probably ate most of the algae as it appeared, without it the algae was free to grow - astrea snails eat this stuff religiously if its not to long, id take the rock out that you can and then in a bucket of saltwater scrub it all and let the astreas keep it under control. You will however lose other things on the rock but it will help keep it under control for now.

 

[Bifferwine]

I'd bet that your sea hare has been keeping that algae under control up until now. Those guys are probably the best algae eaters you can get.

 

[cageburn]

thats a ton of hair algae! Break out the toothbrush with a hefty hefty water change! Keep the water changes consistent too that will help get rid of the algae. Hope you win the battle!

 

[nancy3549]

hair algae problem is all solved. got my seahare back and he cleaned up my tank in two days. all is well..... as far as hair algae.. lol. thanks to everyone who responded to my post.

 

[Ogaawd]

hair algae problem is all solved. got my seahare back and he cleaned up my tank in two days. all is well..... as far as hair algae.. lol. thanks to everyone who responded to my post.

Thats good "for now" your tank is still in algae mode and you need to address that, the seahare is just a tourniquet

 

[yote]

Ogaawd is right.You still need to figure out whats feeding the algae.