algae

[paul b]

I keep reading so many posts about hair algae. Most people don't believe me but a tank with algae is usually much healthier than a tank with absolutely no algae. If my tank has no algae I worry and know something is wrong. It grows on all healthy reefs in the sea, that is why there are more herbifores than other fish. At night a healthy reef will be covered in urchins and slugs. That is why those animals are there.

(Diving at night is completely different from day time diving)

Some schools of tangs number in the thousands and they visit the same areas every day. At night urchins scrape the rocks so well that they wear away some of the rock, but algae is so tenactious that it re grows enough by the next day to again be mowed down.

Algae is viewed by many people as a disease or curse. If it were not for algae there would not be reefs, reef tanks or us.

Algae is the perfect water purifier much better than all the phosphate and nitrate removers we use in tanks. I personally never used any of those products, (sorry sponsors). If you dive you will see algae in all the nooks where tangs can't get to. At night baby urchins usually take care of that but if you go to a tropical tide pool right on the edge where the water meets the rock you will see it is covered in algae. Usually with Sally Lightfoot crabs all over it because they are one of the only tropical intertidal animals that are adapted to eat it.

When I dive in the daytime I am in awe at the number of surgeonfish and at night the horde of urchins that you have trouble seeing in the daytime.

I see that the first thing people do to eliminate algae is change the water, does that ever work? Not really. It actually will prolong the growth.

If you have a large bout with hair algae the water is very clean with no nitrates or phosphates because it is all tied up in the algae along with any iron, another essential algae nutrient. Why would you change such perfect water?

We as captive reef keepers can not rely on animals to eliminate algae because the nutrients will just be re cycled back to the water, we need to remove the nutrient laden algae not the pure water. You will notice that it only grows so much then stops. It never grows out of the tank and up the walls, thats because it exhausts the nutrients then stops growing instantly.

What happens next is that some of it dies, usually the algae that is in the darkest places where it is harder to live. The dying algae release their nutrients allowing more algae to grow.

Algae removes these nutrients very fast and changing the water will not help.

But there is things we can do because we don't want the stuff covering everything, just a short growth on some things is fine.

It can not live in a tank where it has absorbed all the available nutrients. Now the secret is as soon as the algae starts to die we suck it out. It will lose it's ability to "stick" to the rocks and it could be blown off with a canister or diatom filter then it must be removed. Some of it could be physically removed by hand with the help of a tooth brush.

After a few days it will be gone and you can change water, go out to dinner, watch "The Real Housewives of wherever" or do anything you like.

Of course this only works for a heavy infestation, a litle hair algae is no problem.

Now you should have some herbifores, slugs and urchins to keep it short. When the tank is in equilibrium the herbifores will keep it under control but they will not help at all with a tank full of hair algae and you are wasting your time using them.

Allowing or forcing it to grow someplace besides our reefs is the best long term solution because we get the benefit of having algae in our system but we don't see it.

A lighted refugium is really the answer.

[Highland Reefer]

You have written a nice synopsis for hair algae in the reef tank Paul.

[RicSG]

Awesome now i feel better about my tank.

[paul b]

Awesome now i feel better about my tank

 

You should always feel good about your tank. This is a hobby and if it does not make you feel good, it is time to do something else.

A hobby is supposed to make you happy, not stress you. There are plenty of other things that I am sure you can find to stress you.

 

I seriousely don't know why these rumors about hair algae (and ich) remain.

If we just think of where we see the most hair algae, a new tank, we will understand that water changes will not help. A new tank with all new water is most suseptable to a hair algae attack. There are no algae nutrients in a new tank but there are plenty of chemicals, chemicals that make algae flourish and get nice and green.

So if you have hair algae and you changed 100% of your water I think it would make it worse instead of better. Older systems hardly ever experience hair algae, why not? My tank has 40 years of nutrients built up with hardly any water changes, I have no hair algae, why not?

I also over feed due to the spawning fish and I have about 15 fish.

I bet if I changed all the water I would immediately get hair algae.

For some reason many people think that water changes will "cure" everything. New water is not the best thing all the time. As water ages it takes on some healthful benefits that we would like to keep so we have to balance water changes with common sense feeding to create a healthy system. Fish and corals do not like being in all new water and they let us know by looking lousy.

Just my opinion of course, and as you know, I am not the God of fish.

[OUsnakebyte]

It grows on all healthy reefs in the sea, that is why there are more herbifores than other fish. At night a healthy reef will be covered in urchins and slugs. That is why those animals are there.

(Diving at night is completely different from day time diving)

Some schools of tangs number in the thousands and they visit the same areas every day. At night urchins scrape the rocks so well that they wear away some of the rock, but algae is so tenactious that it re grows enough by the next day to again be mowed down.

Algae is viewed by many people as a disease or curse. If it were not for algae there would not be reefs, reef tanks or us.

Algae is the perfect water purifier much better than all the phosphate and nitrate removers we use in tanks. I personally never used any of those products, (sorry sponsors). If you dive you will see algae in all the nooks where tangs can't get to. At night baby urchins usually take care of that but if you go to a tropical tide pool right on the edge where the water meets the rock you will see it is covered in algae. Usually with Sally Lightfoot crabs all over it because they are one of the only tropical intertidal animals that are adapted to eat it.

When I dive in the daytime I am in awe at the number of surgeonfish and at night the horde of urchins that you have trouble seeing in the daytime.

I see that the first thing people do to eliminate algae is change the water, does that ever work? Not really. It actually will prolong the growth.

If you have a large bout with hair algae the water is very clean with no nitrates or phosphates because it is all tied up in the algae along with any iron, another essential algae nutrient. Why would you change such perfect water?

We as captive reef keepers can not rely on animals to eliminate algae because the nutrients will just be re cycled back to the water, we need to remove the nutrient laden algae not the pure water. You will notice that it only grows so much then stops. It never grows out of the tank and up the walls, thats because it exhausts the nutrients then stops growing instantly.

What happens next is that some of it dies, usually the algae that is in the darkest places where it is harder to live. The dying algae release their nutrients allowing more algae to grow.

Algae removes these nutrients very fast and changing the water will not help.

But there is things we can do because we don't want the stuff covering everything, just a short growth on some things is fine.

It can not live in a tank where it has absorbed all the available nutrients. Now the secret is as soon as the algae starts to die we suck it out. It will lose it's ability to "stick" to the rocks and it could be blown off with a canister or diatom filter then it must be removed. Some of it could be physically removed by hand with the help of a tooth brush.

After a few days it will be gone and you can change water, go out to dinner, watch "The Real Housewives of wherever" or do anything you like.

Of course this only works for a heavy infestation, a litle hair algae is no problem.

Now you should have some herbifores, slugs and urchins to keep it short. When the tank is in equilibrium the herbifores will keep it under control but they will not help at all with a tank full of hair algae and you are wasting your time using them.

Allowing or forcing it to grow someplace besides our reefs is the best long term solution because we get the benefit of having algae in our system but we don't see it.

A lighted refugium is really the answer.

 

I do agree with you that I don't flip out if a little bit of filamentous algae pops up from time to time. But, I personally do what I can to eliminate it b/c I do not want it to reach plague proportions.

 

However, your assessment of "healthy reef" is indicative of the shifting baseline we see today. The majority of fish biomass should be locked up in "top predators living in a perpetual state of hunger while smaller reef fishes live in a perpetual state of fear." There was a study done between the Smithsonian and National Geographic a few years back, looking at this exact thing. Nearly upwards of 80% of fish biomass should be locked in top predators (sharks and groupers):

 

DeMartini EE, Friedlander AM, Sandin SA, Sala E (2008) Differences in fish-assemblage structure between fished and unfished atolls in the northern Line Islands, central Pacific. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 365:199-215

 

A healthy reef should have a healthy population of grazers mowing down the algae - absolutely. Primary productivity is what drives the world, in every ecosystem. However, on a truly healthy reef, the majority of this primary productivity *should* be happening within the coral tissue via zooxanthellae. An example of this is the Caribbean, where there are not many urchins left after their mass die-off in 1983. Algae has completely taken over these reefs (combined with years of overfishing).

 

 

In addition, there is a study from 2006:

 

Smith, J. E., Shaw, M., Edwards, R. A., Obura, D., Pantos, O., Sala, E., Sandin, S. A., Smriga, S., Hatay, M. and Rohwer, F. L. (2006), Indirect effects of algae on coral: algae-mediated, microbe-induced coral mortality. Ecology Letters, 9: 835–845.

 

In this study, the authors found that "algae can indirectly cause coral mortality by enhancing microbial activity via the release of dissolved compounds... Our results suggest that as human impacts increase and algae become more abundant on reefs a positive feedback loop may be created whereby compounds released by algae enhance microbial activity on live coral surfaces causing mortality of corals and further algal growth."

 

I was also assisting on a NOAA coral disease study two years ago throughout the Florida Keys, and the grad student on this trip was showing through her research that Dictyota sp. could be a vector of coral disease.

 

Now, will these microbes survive in a closed system such as ours? I cannot say. It also may very well depend on the types of corals you want to keep. The "sps" corals are typically (not always, I know) more difficult in their care requirements that other counterparts. So, limiting macroalgae in these aquariums might very well be key.

 

Furthermore, those of us who keep the "sps" dominated aquariums can attest to the headaches generated when various filamentous algae - usually bryopsis - invades the inner branches of the coral, resulting in more tissue loss, then sometimes leading to a "stn" or "rtn" situation. Is this similar to what happens in the study posted above? I have no idea; but it would be an awesome experiment...

 

Algae has always been around and will likely always be around. However, on the most pristine, healthiest reefs, it should be removed (via herbivory) nearly immediately and not persist until it reaches plague proportions.

 

 

If you dive you will see algae in all the nooks where tangs can't get to. At night baby urchins usually take care of that but if you go to a tropical tide pool right on the edge where the water meets the rock you will see it is covered in algae. Usually with Sally Lightfoot crabs all over it because they are one of the only tropical intertidal animals that are adapted to eat it.

 

And, in these rubble zones and tide pools, you don't get great coral assemblages, if any corals at all. Really, the only thing that grows really well here is algae. I think the only coral I have seen growing along the side of one of these pools is Siderastrea radians - and it wasn't big.

 

 

A lighted refugium is really the answer.

 

I whole-heartily agree that refugiums are a wonderful addition and excellent for nutrient export.

 

Cheers

Mike

Edited February 20, 2011 by OUsnakebyte

[paul b]

The majority of fish biomass should be locked up in "top predators living in a perpetual state of hunger while smaller reef fishes live in a perpetual state of fear.

 

This is definately true and the reefs in the Caribbean are in trouble because you see very few sharks compared to the South Pacific. I have many dives on most of the Caribbean Islands in the day and nighttime and you rarely if ever see pelagic sharks. You see a lot of nurse sharks but thats about it.

In the South Pacific islands like Bora Bora and the smaller Islands of Hawaii like Kawai there are sharks all over the place. Black tip sharks are very common and you have to watch you don't hit them when you jump off a boat. Lemon sharks are also very common and much bigger. The presence of these large animals attests to a healthy reef with little human intervention.

Unfortunately we can't have this equalibrium in our tanks, few of us have large anough tanks to put in black tip sharks.

I took this picture a few years ago in Bora Bora, you only see 2 black tip sharks in the photo but we were surrounded by about 20 of them. They are everywhere even in very shallow water. You can even see them from the beach.

 

We stopped once to feed some rays in shallow water and there were so many sharks that we had to keep throwing fish away from the boats so we could feed the rays.

A bird swooped down to get a fish we had thrown and just as the fish hit the water a bird grabbed it and a shark grabbed the bird and the fish.

You can tell it is the South Pacific by the moorish Idol at the bottom

 

Edited February 21, 2011 by paul b

[trockafella]

Paul -- In your opinion, how often would you recommend water changes, and what percentage of the tanks water (in a well established tank)..?

[paul b]

how often would you recommend water changes, and what percentage of the tanks water (in a well established tank)..?

 

 

I used to change water when my nitrates would rise but they don't do that any more so I change 20% of the water about every 2 months. My tank is different from yours and everyone elses tank but I do know that fish and corals do not like new water. Animals in all new water look horrible.

It seems to work in my tank and if I tested anything (but I don't) I would find all the parameters normal because the tank is in equilibrium. There is hardly any algae, but there is some. Tiny crustaceans are all over the place, the fish are spawning and the corals including the SPS are growing. A water change is not needed and may do more harm than good. Unless your corals are growing up the walls there should be enough trace elements present. Only algae sucks up trace elements that fast, not corals. The water is not polluted because my bacteria know what they are supposed to do. That is why my nitrates do not rise over 5. Even if I never changed water they would remain about 5. You need the correct bacteria for that.

I don't know if I answered your question but most people would say I don't change enough water. They will not have a reason for that but I am told that all the time.

[Reefoholic]

Amazing post everyone! I have learned so much just in all 5 minutes that I read thru this post. I used to get hair algae all the time right after my initial set-up and my bio-cycle was completed. I have upgraded my tank size three times since I first started but I never trashed all my water and started from new. I do agree with both of you that when bacteria builds up in water they know what to do. Hair algae slowly but surely disappeared in time. I do water changes every 2 weeks almost, and I clean the sand bed and sometimes the rocks too. I like it looking pristine and all clear.

In addition to the algae comments, I was wondering how do you manage the salinity of your tanks?

 

Thanks for this awesome post again!

[paul b]

Amazing post everyone! I have learned so much just in all 5 minutes that I read thru this post. I used to get hair algae all the time right after my initial set-up and my bio-cycle was completed. I have upgraded my tank size three times since I first started but I never trashed all my water and started from new. I do agree with both of you that when bacteria builds up in water they know what to do. Hair algae slowly but surely disappeared in time. I do water changes every 2 weeks almost, and I clean the sand bed and sometimes the rocks too. I like it looking pristine and all clear.

In addition to the algae comments, I was wondering how do you manage the salinity of your tanks?

 

Thanks for this awesome post again!

[paul b]

I don't manage the salinity of my tank, it kind of stays the same with just a little tweeking. It does get low in my tank because I remove water every day to hatch brine shrimp so every week or two I add some strong salt water. Yes I know I should not do this but I just add a little at a time over a day or two through my UG filter. I never had a problem. I also never had a refractometer because I don't feel the salinity is "that" critical.

I keep it close but it varies in places in the sea, sometimes greatly and I never found it to be a problem, but yes it is better of course to keep it steady. I do not mean to imply that it should vary by much.

I also don't want to imply that we should keep tanks full of hair algae. I also hate looking at the stuff, I am just saying it is natural, normal and not a disease.

I keep a lot of bottles in my tank and inside many of the bottles are full of algae. The fish and crabs can't get in there to eat it but the pods love it and there are hundreds of them in there.

[FearTheTerps]

I always wondered what the bottles were for, the beer can was a given, its just cool.