Part2 Dosing sugar for Hair Algae

[vinny]

I think I needed to start a second thread on this I think the other thread was getting to long i'm not sure if anybody was following anymore. I had plenty of pm's on this and I tried to keep up with the post. What i've done was purchased a Phosban reactor and finally started running it on top of dosing sugar, but i've also been weening of the sugar down to 1 tsp. I'm also siphoning as much hair aglae as I can it looks like that it's starting to let go. The red leg hermits are great help with controlling the algae :)and with no thanks to the mexican turbos their just falling on their backs and becoming lunch:(. I'll take a pic. when the lights come on today. I would like to hear from some of you of that has been fighting this problem how are you doing or dealing with it are you still dosing sugar?

[chew*]

Wasn't dosing but I was thinking of trying it for a while to bring the nitrates down to 10ppm from 30ppm, more or less if i can get them down I want to see if they will stay down once I stop dosing sugar or if they climb again.

As far as algae the phosban reactor did the trick, coupled with a 3 day lights off regime that was implemented against some cyano that just wouldn't give up. I however have almost no algae on my glass anymore but i do have a newcomer which i believe to be some type of macro algae. I'll have to take a pic.

I also started a fuge but 3 weeks and no noticable differance in nitrates.

I'm curious how much sugar i should use in a 12g also.

Be carefull with the phosphate reactor however, I lost 2 corals but can't pinpoint what caused it. I made to many changes to place the blame on one particular thing.

[Reefried]

I had been fighting with cyano for about two months, it was all over the sand bed (completely covered) and it actually started to climb rock and started to cover that too. So I finnaly decided to rid it from my system. I first bought two mods for my mj's and added another power head, this made my flow VERY turbulant (sp) and theres not a dead spot anywhere. It did take a few days to position them right to avoid sand storms. Then I bought a phosphate reactor and a mini-jet 404 to run it, I filled it with 130 grams of phosban and got the flow to about 75gall per hour, and within one week all cyano was GONE, there were a few pieces left over that I just removed myself, but I couldn't be happier, phos is now undetectable. And as far as how long I plan to use it: I'm going to run it all the time, for as long as I own a reef tank I'll have a phos reactor hooked up to it. It was only $40 about $55 with the pump, media, and shipping. Well worth it.


Hey chew does sugar lower nitrates?

[chew*]

It's supposed to lower nitrates and phosphates.

[vinny]

I had Cyano start to grow the same time my Hair Aglae came I was very lucky all I did was siphon it off a few times from my sand bed and never came back.
Chew for a 12g. I would buy a small measuring spoon set and measurer out about 1/8 of a tsp. of sugar no more and see what happens.

[vinny]

some shot's I promised and more to come.

[Salty Dog]

Vinny,

Did you notice any decrease in Nitrates, or were you at 0 already?

Eric

[vinny]

pic.s #2

[vinny]

Hi Eric, yes I was at zero no prob. there.

[stingythingy45]

Did you ever cloud the water?
Just curious as I had a 10 gallon that had 3 small pieces of LR in it.
The tank was filled with pods and HA also some small stems of xenia.
I didn't really plan on keeping it up very long and decided to use it for experimenting.......buwuahahahahah.
Anyways,I dosed a teaspoon of sugar every 3 days.The HA laughed at that.
Then suddenly one day the tank looked cloudy.All the pods were dead and the HA looked a little less green.Anyways,I broke down the tank and took the rock and layed it on the steps outside.Three days later after a cold rain I checked out the rock.Low and behold,on the bottom was still green HA.
I'm convinced that if I would have put that in SW it would have survived.....tough stuff to say the least.

[vinny]

Did you ever cloud the water?
Just curious as I had a 10 gallon that had 3 small pieces of LR in it.
The tank was filled with pods and HA also some small stems of xenia.
I didn't really plan on keeping it up very long and decided to use it for experimenting.......buwuahahahahah.
Anyways,I dosed a teaspoon of sugar every 3 days.The HA laughed at that.
Then suddenly one day the tank looked cloudy.All the pods were dead and the HA looked a little less green.Anyways,I broke down the tank and took the rock and layed it on the steps outside.Three days later after a cold rain I checked out the rock.Low and behold,on the bottom was still green HA.
I'm convinced that if I would have put that in SW it would have survived.....tough stuff to say the least.

This isn't something that will happen overnight it will take some time, how much time i'm not sure of. I think 1 tsp. of sugar every 3 days is a little much for a 10gl. I would have gone with an 1/8 of a tsp. for a week if not longer on a 10gl. and maybe increase from there. My total volume of water is 150gl. and I was using 2tsp. everyother day and it's still green but slowly going away.

[mgreefer]

As we all know bacteria uses carbon sources as an energy source. By adding sugar or vodka it will cause the de-nitrification bacteria to bloom gobbling up nitrates and converting it to Nitrogen gas. So it is possible that the de-nitrification bacteria bloom will consume most of the nitrates starving the hair algae. But please be aware that this will also cause all kinds of bacterial strains (good and bad bacteria) living in our tanks to bloom.

So think of the consequences for a second when all of a sudden there is a bad bacterial bloom with massive large scale attacks, while a healthy coral or fish may be able to fight the initial large scale attacks, so if you keep adding sugar or vodka, sooner or later the fish or coral will not be as healthy as they once where and will eventually be infected and maybe die.

Maybe dosing sugar or Vodka for a very short period of time to quickly reduce high levels of nitrates and possibly starve algae can be good idea, but I wouldn’t do it for an extended period of time.

Just my 2 cents.

[elaminator]

What about getting an aggressive hair algae eating tang? I am having the same problem in my 180g right now, my lmb just couldnt keep up!

[vinny]

What about getting an aggressive hair algae eating tang? I am having the same problem in my 180g right now, my lmb just couldnt keep up!

If you can get one give it a shot but at the same time try cutting back on feeding, try to use DI water and water changes once a week. Also don't forget the bulbs how old are they do they need changing are you cleaning out your sponges, filter socks and carbon. Good luck

[me2003]

You can automatically dose your system by putting in an
acropora like the green slimmer. Its daily output of mucus is full
of carbohydrates. There is some research in how this is
used on an actual reef. Below is a the name of paper and a link to an
abstract describing this in detail.


Mucus trap in coral reefs: formation and temporal
evolution of particle aggregates caused by coral mucus
Markus Huettel
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6978/abs/nature02344.html
"The mucus is a carbohydrate complex (Coffroth
1990), containing also lipids (Benson & Muscatin 1974,
Crossland et al. 1980) and proteins (Krupp 1985,
Vacelet & Thomassin 1991). Wild et al. (2005) reported
that the C/N ratios of freshly released mucus from
Acropora spp. ranged from 8 to 14, suggesting that the
mucus may be a potential food source."

[me2003]

"In the Great Barrier Reef, the dominant genus of hard corals, Acropora, exudes up to 4.8 litres of mucus per square metre of reef area per day."

I am not sure how to scale this down to a teaspoon per area of Acro.

[vinny]

Not a bad idea plus I've alway wanted a green slimer.;)

[dz6t]

"In the Great Barrier Reef, the dominant genus of hard corals, Acropora, exudes up to 4.8 litres of mucus per square metre of reef area per day."

I am not sure how to scale this down to a teaspoon per area of Acro.

so you are saying that keep green slimmer to reduce hair algae? I don't think it has the same effect of dosing suger. By the way, green slimmer only slim like mad when it is in stress.

[me2003]

"I don't think it has the same effect of dosing sugar."
The creation of mucus is used as a feeding response in many corals also.
It is not just stress. It does enhance the grow of bacteria so it should
have the same effect as adding sugar. I am not sure if adding a green
slimer would be enough. I think it is possible your corals are already adding
a large amount of carbohydrates to your system already. These are used
by bacteria as an energy source like sugar.