Green Hair algae.... with a twist

[dually]

Well instead of the normal questions I thought I would do a search, I have a 150 reef with about 150 lbs of sugar sand and live rock a couple of corals and two fish. I will try to post a pic when I have time. Here is the situation, the tank has been setup for three years and for the past six months I have had the worst case of green hair algae i have ever seen. so I thought I would just let you all know what I am doing. I added about 12 mexican hermits and 10 snails. I am not sure what kind they are but, they have a bright orange mantle and are eating like mad. I changed the bulbs in my vhos and turned off the metal halides. I got new filters and a new membrane for the ro filter. I have started cleaning the mechanical filter every day and also every day I clean out as much hair algae I can. I also added a foxface. All this is happend during this week I let the tank go and now I am paying the price. I will post updates on this in the future If I can get this fixed...... I also would like to add that there is a ton of information on this site. and just wanted to say thank you.

 

[Anonymous]

By any chance, do you test you topoff and water change for TDS and A/N/N? How about the water parameter and the amount of fishes and feeding?

 

[wade1]

What K value are the metal halides as well... seems to be that the lower the K value, themore algae growth is likely to occur initially in tanks.

Wade

 

[dually]

I can't test for tds but a/n/n and phosphates are all very close to zero. I have one medium size purple tang and a flame angel. i feed a small amount of osi flake food. Just a pinch once a day and the halides are 10,000 k. the update for today are the halides are still off and I am removing as much of that green stuff as I can, last night I got about 2 lbs of the **** out!!!!! I am making a fresh batch of salt water. The snails are the best thing scince sliced bread. They are the ones with the bright orange mantles. They are cleaning like mad. The tank is looking better already. I hope it keeps on this trend.