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[Astrivian]

Okay...remember in the tank maintenance podcast where i said i have a bryopsis dominated tank? well i am not kidding. The hair algae is out of control! It is covering everything, even coralline algae. I need some ideas on how to control this crap. First let me give you a rundown:

• Tank size: 100 gallons.
• Sump/fuge: 75 gallons
• Salinity: 35 ppt
• pH: 8.2
• Temp: 80 to 82 (depends on outside temp)
• nitrate, nitrite, ammonia: All zero, not that i would be able to detect any nitrate with so much algae anyhow.
• KH: 10
• CA: 320
• Lighting: 2 38-watt T5 bulbs 10,000K
• Deep sand bed.
• Coralife Super skimmer (rated for 220 gallons).
• Two ocellaris clownfish (about 1.5 inches long each)
• Two sea urchins (Caribbean hitchhikers)
• I had 10 hermits.
• Flow: two Maxijet 1200s, Quietone 750 return pump.
• Cycle: Tank and dsb have been up and running since May 07.

The food i use (flakes) does not contain any nitrate or phosphates and i only feed a very very small pinch twice a day. The fish eat just about every flake, although a few float over the overflow into the sump.

I use, and have always used, RO/DI water. I also use IO Reef Crystals salt mix and have been trying to get my calcium levels up.

In the sump, there is a huge (basketball size) ball of chaetomorpha algae and even some ogo. There is a Light of America light pointing directly into the sump water on top of the algae. It is on 20 hours a day.

The lights up top are on for 10 hours, and i have tried turning them off for several days, to no avail.

I know the two key nutrients must be coming from somewhere, but where?

Here are some plans i have for this crap:

• Purchase: 3 fire shrimp, 2 emerald mithrax crabs, 24 blue legged hermits, 24 scarlet hermits, 15 cerith snails, 12 margarita snails, 15 nerites.
• Rearrange the structure of the sump so that all of the tank water (instead of just half) flows over the dsb before the skimmer.
• Add 50 pounds of base rock, or cheap live rock, to the sump.
• Remove all of the live rock from the display and scrub it down. I know this is not a great idea but i cannot remove the algae via siphoning. While this is appart, i will give the sand bed in the display (not the dsb) a good cleaning with the siphon to take out any dead animals.

Any ideas or suggestions? This hair algae issue is like none i have ever seen. The dumb stuff has stopped all of my progress to this point. I cannot add coral until i add more lights and i cant add more lights because the algae will just take over the tank.