algae problem..Help Please.

a good clean up crew will help manage it after you manually remove most of it. then keeping up on water changes and maintaining your parameters. you need to make sure they are in check first though. have you done testing to see how the water is? how much/often do you feed? how old are you lights? do you have a fuge? what kind of skimmer? any info on the tank itself will be helpful.
 
hard to get rid of quickly without something drastic, but you should focus on what is causing it and at least undo that so the problem doesn't amplify. As Christian recommened, post your parameters, your water change procedures and list of critters in your tank (and what you feed them).

Emerald Crabs will eat the bubble algae is one option.
 
not sure how old the lights are. its a duel 150w MH with 2 65w pc lights
i have a ac500 made into a fuge and a sea clone 100 skimmer.
water perms
nitrate-0
nitrite-.5
ammonia-0
kh-280
ph-8.2
critters
2 emerald crabs
5 sarclet reef hermits
5 blue leg hermits
green brisle star
banded goby
2 peppermint shrimp
false perc clown
2 green chromis

feed them frozen brine shrimp twice a day. is that too much i dont put that much in at once.
 
Where are your phosphates at?

So is it half a cube every time you feed or how much? Frozen food has phosphates in it.. One thing that could help with that is putting the food in a net in a cup of water and let it sit for a bit then just take the net out and feed them what's in the net. Just throw that water out cause it'll have phosphates in it.

How long has the tank been up?
 
Turn lights off a few days to starve the algae, then cut back on your lights a little bit. I used a chem on mine and it was bad. If I can find a pic of what it looked like I will post it.

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I used that and added 5 mexican turbo snails, 5 blue legged hermits, 2 Emerald crabs, and 2 margarita snails. it was all gone in a week!!!


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Where do you get your top off and salt water? Have you ever checked the tds if the top off water?
 
Try to get a hold of one if you can. You prob have high phosphates. most food has phosphates in it. The only one I know of that doesnt is Rods food.

Are you using (RO)/di or tap water?
 
If you got the $, you should get a ro unit. Doesn't have to be anything fancy.... This one will work fine:
http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/75-gp-5-stage-ro-system-no-di.html
Filters for those kind are cheap since it doesn't use DI(I dnt use DI, just run 1 sediment and 2 carbon-no algae in any of my tanks and tds comes out at 1 sometimes 2).

But tap water shouldn't be used. Here's a lil paragraph why not. http://www.melevsreef.com/overview.htm
 
If you don't have the money on hand (like so many of us), you can buy water from a tested/trusted source like your local "water store". I've been lugging water from the Glacier machine outside my local supermarket for 2+ years now...
I realize at $12 a month, I could have bought an ro/di unit, but the money is never there.
A nice ro/di unit has been on my wish list for ages and I hope to buy one soon.
But I would certainly agree with dfwminis post and stop the tapwater asap.
The urchin you're picking up from me will certainly help with the hair algae, but doesn't eat bubble algae.
 
Noted about RO water. I have a banded"dragon" goby that i forgot to list but he has been doing work on the bubble algae. He tries to eat the hair algae but can't get it off the rocks. Kelly, I'm really looking forward to get him from you. This weekend I'm going to order a clean up crew. If I turn my lights off for a couple of days won't that negatively affect my corals. Also spent about 30 min pulling the algae off. Going to finish tonight after work
 
I would start a vodka (or biopellets) and bateria. That will help the hair algea quite a bit. The bubble algea will beed to be manually removed. but it get your water perameters right they shouldnt come back.
 
I have zoas, a condy nem, trachy, recordia, and some star polyps. You say put vodka in my fish tank to help the algae, that's crazy I would think it would hurt the fish. At least I'll know why they are swimming sideways
 
You'll be good with lights out for a few days. To dose vodka it's very little and slow. You need to have a good skimmer for dosing vodka...
 
at this point, you need to do a good water change using water that has RO water, and do so for the next couple weeks making sure you only use RO water from here on.

then, you need to get new light bulbs. if your bulbs are old, then they will support the algae growth. this goes for the bulb over your refugium too, as it ages the macro algae doesnt grow as well.

if you fix the water and the lights, add some clean up crew, and do a short lights out period, then you will be on the right path.
 
Thanks everyone. Going to leave the lights off for a couple of days. Where can I buy some MH? Will go buy about 5 gallons of RO water. Is it better to mix it myself or just buy salt water.
 
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