Algae hairs ending up in display (Freshwater setup)?

[chriswf]

It's hard to search for this specific topic, at least I can't find anything.

My hairs clump up beneath the screen, and sometimes fall off.
There's a BUNCH of long hair algae that grows on top of the water right at the base of my screen. It's VERY LOOSELY connected to other hairs lol.



(behind that white pipe, is a massive clump of algae, it accumulates here FAST)

I have that pipe in my refug to help redirect current, and so far the algae hairs are LESS LIKELY to fall off because the drain is now at the OTHER end of the refug away from the screen.

It can naturally come off, and find it's way into my display.

I have the gutted refug scrubber - so my scrubber pours directly into my display tank - no pump.

Pre-filter ideas to catch the algae before it hits the display tank?

[SantaMonica]

Try cleaning the more, or less, each time.

[Floyd R Turbo]

I have a few of my FW customers that say they have issue with detachment, it apparently is more prevalent with FW scrubbers. One asked if my units could be rigged to have a filter sock under the drain. You may consider this, if you can.

[chriswf]

Yeah, it's messy on Mondays when I clean my screen.

I gotta turn my pump off, wait for the water to drain out of the scrubber tank/refug - remove the screen, clean the screene, then chase algae around my scubber tank/refug with a net.
Insert screen back in
Turn on pump
Chase algae again quickly before it goes to the drain.

I added some screens near my outlet where it drains into my tank. I'll have to heavily monitor the screen.

Hopefully, my algae will get thick enough to the point where this won't be happening later.

[walleyefisher]

The filter sock works great, but what I've also found is that by reducing my light/dark ratio I am growing a much thicker algae that isnt stringy. Basically I went from having the scrubber on 24hrs a day to on/off in 30min intervals. I no longer grow the really long stringy stuff but I'm not 100% sure of the effectiveness. I will be doing a few rounds of tests to validate. I think I'm going to keep increasing the light cycle until I get stringy again then reduce a little.