Dead hair algae

[ssick92]

Hey everyone,

I have had hair algae for about a month now. I know the cause, it is because when I filled up the tank, I used tap water. I immediately did a 50% water change once I had my RO/DI unit.

I understand there was phosphates in my tap water, which was feeding the algae. My nitrates never showed anything above 0, and I never tested for phosphates, as I knew it was the cause.

Anyway, now after running Kent Marine's phosphate sponge a couple times, all my hair algae is turning light brown/whitish and dying. My question is will this algae just deteriorate and disappear on its own, or will I still have to yank it off the rocks? I have a Starry Blenny, as well as some CUC members that eat some HA.

But ya, basically, will I need to manually remove the dead hair algae, or will it disappear on its own?

Thanks for your help!

[brandon429]

yes it will break down but it looks bad for a while as it decomposes, leaving parts of the tuft dying for even longer unless grazers can be trained on them

I say scrub it out and always keep the tank looking great.

the current advice is to remove the algae due to its nitrogen and phosphorous content but I disagree, its insignifigant. all the phosphorous and nitrogen locked in decaying hair algae/bryopsis tufts comes no where near what we feed on a daily basis, it makes no sense to care about miniscule amounts. But Id remove it for the bad look factor.

That being said I really wish someone would do a little test and pm me the results because I dont own any test kits.

take two sample cups of clean water that verifies zero on your phosphate test kit. treat one sample with a tuft of green hair algae and cover both samples. tell me in two weeks if the treated cup registers nitrate or phosphate compared to the control, we should make predictions ahead of time if it will, I say no. but even if it does, you've already compounded that amount of waste exponentially through bioload and feed input.