From Diatoms, to Green Algae, Suggestions

[Ryan Schroder]

Hello

So I finally had the pleasure of seeing the diatoms go away naturally. I was doing 20% weekly water changes (I have an RO machine) and the water quality looks good. I tested and:

Nitrate 6 ppm
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
PH 8.0
KH 9
Calcium 460

I am wondering why there is this new green hair algae. Its very light at this point.

I only have like 7 crabs and 7 snails in a 90 gallon, so I know I need more CUC, is that all I need? Is there some other reason I am having this problematic algae types instead of coraline.

FYI, I started the tank about 1.5 months ago

[seapug]

You are seeing the steps of algal succession. Just add more snails and hermits and keep doing what you are doing. You'll probably always have at least a small amount growing somewhere in the tank, which is beneficial.

[ScottL4619]

Nothing to worry about. My algae succession lasted over 6 months. I was using RO/DI water with 0 TDS, skimming like crazy, and changing out 10%-20% of the water weekly. I thought for sure something was wrong with my tank. It eventually worked itself out though. I slowly added snails (as many varieties as I could find at the LFS) and kept up my water chemistry and now pretty much all of the algae is gone. I have one spot in the tank with some cyano, but that is due to low flow in that spot I believe. I do think that it took me longer than most people to go through the algae stage, but I'm not sure why. Could have been because I used only live rock from my old 30 gallon tank and added it to 150 pounds of "used to be live" rock that was sitting dry for years.

The coralline algae most likely won't start to spread rapidly until you get your hair algae problem solved since they do compete somewhat for nutrients (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this one).

[AquaKnight]

I don't believe so, coraline is a calcurious (sp.?) algae, using up calcuim in the tank...

[seapug]

The nutrients that fuel hair algae are the same ones that discourage coralline algae, but a good coating of coralline algae on a surface can keep hair algae from developing on it.