Black hairy mold in saltwater tank

Question
Hi, I have a hairy black stuff growing in my tank.  I removed all the decorations and cleaned them off and also scooped the black hairy stuff off the botton and cleaned the sides of tank.  I used a test strip for nitrate, etc. and it came out acceptable.  I also reduced the light timer to 9 hours on.  That was a week ago.  It came back.  What do I need to do?  Thanks.

Answer
Hi Kathie,

I doubt it is MOLD, but more likely algae... We will need some more info or a picture or two to id the specific type of algae...

We can get some info an dmake some guesses that may help in the meantime...

How old is your tank... (how long have you had it setup)

What type of filtration do you have?  What type of lighting do you have?  How often do you do WATER CHANGE and also, how often do you add fresh water... (fresh water is to replace the water that evaporates daily)

Where do you get this water from???

Algae break outs come from many possible sources, BUT, they all need LIGHT... you know light affects alage growth by your message to me... and as you know, turning hte lights back onto normal will probably just allow the alge to take root again and tray over and over..

Let me kno what fish and corals you have in your tank so i can figure out and reccopmend a safe time period for your lights to be off..  (in the tropics, they call those cloudy days)... heheheh


There are other things that contribute but first lets work on the questions and info we got so far....

Let me know that info and we can carry on from there...


(And ow, btw:  reefers arent big fans of 'fake decorations'.. they usually dont look natural/real, and they collect alage, and offer nothing as far as natural filtratratoion, that a real plant would give... so, after we get rid of the fake plants, (hint hint), we will try to find you real live plants / macro algae, (good algae), that you can place in your tank that wilkl both LOOK pretty, but will also clean your tank at the same time...


hope to hear from you soon


bill