Hair algae, help!!!

Question
Ok I have a 72gal with a 30 gal sump, 100 lbs of sand and 85 lbs of live rock and 35 lbs of "lace" rock. I also have a protein scimmer and a UV filter. My posphates was up a tiny but so I put a bag of phosfree for marine tanks in the sump and I have extreamely high flow. I have a seahare and a lawnmower blenny to try to fix it and I have even tryed using a brush on the rock to get rid of it but it is some really strong stuff!!!! It doesnt come off! what do I do now? Its taking over my tank very not nice. Thankyou in advance! Kristy

Answer
Hi Kristy. Have you checked your water for ammonia, nitrite or nitrate lately. These three are food sources for the algae and need to be checked regularly when having a problem with any algae. The only problem is that if you have an extremely large amount of algae growing in your tank, it may be utilizing all the wastes as food and your reading may be low. However that doesn't mean that your levels are not elevated before they are used by the algae if that makes any sense. Another water parameter to check is your alkalinity. A high alkalinity will promote calcification and encourages the rapid growth of coralline algae. Carolline algae uses much of the same nutrients as your hair algae do and will compete with them for those nutrients. High alkalinity combined with calcium dosing promotes the precipitation of phosphate and therefore helps to limit algae growth. Other factors you may want to look at are, your lighting; is it of the right spectrum are your bulbs in need of being replaced, Water flow; strong water flow helps to control algae from attaching to the surfaces in your tank and will also help keep debris from building up and decaying, your water supply; are you using only reverse osmosis or distilled water for your partials and for topping off, how old is your tank; a newly set up aquarium will go through several stages of algal blooms before it is fully stabilized, is your tank new, and trace minerals; are you dosing too frequently with any of your trace elements? In most cases algae blooms can be corrected if the proper steps are taken to fix the water quality problem, and it is a water quality problem. Although your water may be testing perfect across the boards it only means that after the algae utilizes the phosphate, ammonia, nitrite and/or nitrate in your tank does it test good. You have to take into consideration that if you didn't have allot of algae in your tank taking up these products, your water would be testing allot higher for them. With that said keeping up on your maintenance is imperative in fixing an algae bloom. This means changing or rinsing any filter media regularly, doing more frequent partial water changes using only reverse osmosis or distilled water, cutting back a little on feeding and making sure your protein skimmer is working efficiently. The use of hermit crabs, snails and other herbivores will help as well. There is no quick fix and it can take several weeks to several months to change the biology of your tank. There is no way to clear it up overnite and any product claiming it will is only going to mask the problem but not get to the root of it. With allot of patience and doing more maintenance you can see this turned around but it will take time. You may want to also look into getting a denitrifying filter to help you with this problem as well.