Hair algae, bryposis, what is this?

[grouper therapy]

mysterybox;812483 wrote: we disagree, but not totally............you are correct, and your advice is solid, however, if you continue to remove phates and trates at a high rate though the methods that I suggested, the HA will eventually starve.....

which is the source of the problem.

removing the HA will most certainly help! You can siphon off a bunch with the end of a hose during a water change, too!

As long as the removal high rate is greater than the introduction rate. I've seen systems that use GFO ,Carbon And did water changes that could still grow Macro algae in the refugium.

 

[dylpik27]

I worked at an aquarium store for 3 years and have found it to help when appropriate (aged or cheap bulbs). It sounds like it's not really an issue here (only 6-7 months at 7 hrs/day). I guess I wanted to point out that most aquarium issues are caused by multiple little problems adding up to a big problem - fixing a few may or may not fix the entire problem.

 

[ralph atl]

dylpik27;812855 wrote: I worked at an aquarium store for 3 years and have found it to help when appropriate (aged or cheap bulbs). It sounds like it's not really an issue here (only 6-7 months at 7 hrs/day). I guess I wanted to point out that most aquarium issues are caused by multiple little problems adding up to a big problem - fixing a few may or may not fix the entire problem.

it's actually simple:
too much trates & phates.

the tricky part is getting both low enough as trates will generally stay in water column & sand, but live rock & sand can "absorb" phates where it take a huge amount of GFO (and such) to remove enough where phates aren't leaching out anymore.....So a multiple nutrient export method is best, and look at what & how much you are adding into tank, i.e., highest nutritional value versus nutrients.