algae and algae eaters

[reddragonette]

i am realy new to the hoby, i have had my tank set up for two months now and have found enjoyable sucess. i have had an orange ricordia for a week and it is already showing signs of spliting. my problem and question is about algae, i have a problem and dont want to dose for it. Being new i dont know what i need, i just know what i dont want. i dont want a yellow tang. i like the looks and price of a mimic lemon peel tang but dont know how good of an algae eater they are. i have brown algae, micro algae and hair algae and all are taking over my tank. my plan right now for management is to get the lemon peel tang, four emerald crabs, blue tuxedo urchin, and pincusion urchin. i currently have a slough of bumble bee, cerrith, astrea, and nasera snails, one turbo snail and five hermits. i was wondering what people thought of my propsed management plan and see what others suggested. my problem has gotten so bad that my zoas arent oppening because they are being bothered by the algae. thanks for the help.

[Sisterlimonpot]

Being that it is a new tank I would assume that the algae is diatoms. However what are your phosphate and nitrate readings? That is what fuels algae so if you keep that down you won't have problems with algae.

[Sisterlimonpot]

To Reef Central

[reddragonette]

my nitrates are zero but i imagine that my phosphates are high, i just have no way of testing that right now untill i can buy a kit. i know i have some diatom algae but not much, and unless diatom is green also and in different forms then it is strictly diatom. i tried to figure out how to post pics but it was to no avail. so ill have to descrive the algae best i can. i do have brown diatom, but the other algae's are green. one grows in light green like grass and covers just my live rock like grass or carpet and changes to dark green and will come off my rock if i toothbrush is like sod would come off a lawn, every now and then there will be clear bubbles in it but they ususaly wont stay for long( i have no micro bubbles coming out of my return) the other algae that is the most problematic is like a fern branch algae that grows in clumps like 2-4 in a clump and will stick to sand like it is rooted but will and has also grow on live rock and gets almost 4-5" long. i try to get it out but its to tedeous and seems to grow back worse. ive cut back my lighting and my feeding. i have a six bulb t5 that i run for only about eight hours now and i turned up my skimmer so that it was collecting more, but i know these arent soloutions they're just preventers. if anyone wants for clarification i can email pictures of my problem or will take suggestions on converting files.

[zezeta]

If you need to post pictures use photobucket.com

All you need to do is to make an account and then post the HTML code for the pictures in your post.


I also am having a diatom outbreak (well thats what I guess it is since its brown and growing on my live rock and sand). My tank is only a week old that has live rock straight from someone elses tank and live sand. I'll be subscribing to this thread to see what people say.

[Sisterlimonpot]

photobucket is horrible due to all the pop-ups and advertising. Use photoshop.com

[muttley000]

You really need a phosphate test kit more than you need to add more livestock to the tank if you want to take care of this problem. More livestock = more fertilizer for the algae. Do you rinse your frozen foods (big source of phosphate) are you using RO water. Reducing nutrients and manual removal are best until you get something that outcompetes the nuisance algae.

[reddragonette]

here are some links to photoshop.com of the nuisance algae that i am having trouble with, untill i can figure out how to shrink my picture file size down to the required 50kb.

i have and use only RO water, recently i have been using frozen foods every day for feeding because i had two ocelaris that were not eating at all, the first died after a day but the other one held on for almost a month, but i never did find what he liked to eat cause it seemed he spit everything out.... so now i am interested in what mutley000 is specifically talking about when he says rinsing frozen foods cause the only way i can think of doing it is messy and you loose food. either way i'd appreciate clarification on how to do that.

im also interested in knowing more about what mutley000 is talking about that will "outcmopete the nuisance algae"

and lastly i am interested in any knowledge, experience, and opinion on what the best algae grazers are (aside from the yellow tang) im more interested in experience but will never turn down the other two. and was wondering if anyone knew how well an algae eater the mimic lemon peel tang is.... but please any suggestions to anything algae related besides chemical (algaefix not ok) (resin, pillows are ok) is what im looking for help in.

thanks for the help

http://www.photoshop.com/accounts/18...11e4d7d928e221

http://www.photoshop.com/accounts/18...6c3b7f49784135

http://www.photoshop.com/accounts/18...4f6ef08c972516

[reddragonette]

i just tried my own links and they didnt work for me, hopefully everyone else will have better luck, or better suggestions. sorry for the mess

[reddragonette]

k so i have tried some things to get my algae to go away or atleast stop growing, and so far i know what doesnt work so i figured i'd go ahead and post that.

so i have three bags of clearmax by fluval wich are said to absorb phosphates, well i must have to many or this stuff doesnt work, cause after two weeks ive never had more algae between water changes than i did this time.

any suggestions, so forth would greatly be appreciated

[ddinox64]

I acclimated a couple of platties. Not stop grazing by these two.

[Bonta]

Is it okay if I rinse my frozen mysis in my tanks water ?

[reddragonette]

Yeah it's fine you just don't want to put that water back in you tank because that is where the phosphates from the food will be. I don't fully understand how you rinse frozen foods... It would just make sence to me though that if you were rinsing it you would want to discard said rinse water otherwise it would defeat the purpose of the rinse and when you dumped everything in the tank you'd be dumping all the phosphates from the food with it. This all said without complete understanding. I imagine to rinse frozen foods you put a cube in a cup of water till it desolves, strain the food and discard the water getting rid of your potential phosphates. Someone please clarrify or confirm my theory either way please.

[goochesfish]

get a brine shrimp net which is a very fine net. Put the frozen cube/ food in and rinse with RO or tank water, allow to drain into sink and flip inside out into tank or use a turkey baster with clean tank water to feed. I flip the rinsed food into a paper cup and add tank water then squirt in only what can be quickly eaten using a baster. I've never used a whole cube.

A fluidized phosphate reactor works best and I use rowa phos.

algae bloom is normal at 2 months

[reddragonette]

thanks for the advice on the phos reactor. i was wondering what one you went with, how your set up is configured. im looking at the two little fishes 150 and everyone on marine depot raves over that rowa phos. i was also wondering what phos tester you recomended to know when your media is exhausted? or what your general rule of thumb was for changing it? my tank is going on three months now and grantid it probably is still in the middle of an algae blume but im afraid that in my rocks and sand. i have a bunch of algae that is no longer green so i am asuming its dead my problem now is getting it off the rocks cause its stuck pretty good i just dont want this to add to the phosphate problem. any suggestions there would be great, unfortunately i dont have the option of taking rock out and scrubing it causei have corals attached to some of it, anyways. thanks for the advice its been interesting watching the cycle process its just hard where i am at to get resources so it can be frustrating thinking your watching your expensive system go to pot.

btw, i like your lemon my tri would probably eat fish food to if he could get to it, in fact theres only one thing he wont eat but i cant remember what it is. theyre great dogs.

[iceman79]

turbo snails clean my tank very well they eat red/brown slime algae and my hair algae .. red slime remover works good to

[pammy]

I started getting some green hair algae after swapping out my T5 bulbs and my MH bulbs with new ones. I wanted to tackle the hair algae before it got out of control. Reddragonette, I see you mentioned getting a Blue Tuxedo Urchin. That's what I went with, to try to combat the hair algae and WOW, he mows it down. Granted, I have a mild case of GHA, and it's on the shorter side, but I had enough to get me concerned. He mows it clean down to the rock, and you should also know, he strips away the coralline with it. That didn't bother me as I know the coralline will come back, and I'd rather have algae free rock without coralline, than coralline covered rock that's also covered by algae. Phosphate test kits aren't great as you can get really low readings, but they're not true readings as a lot of phosphates are tied up in your algae. A Hannah meter would be much better, but they are expensive. So, I just assume I have phosphates. I do have the Two Little Fishies reactor, and it works great. At the time I started getting Green Hair Algae, I noticed that my nitrates were no longer zero. They were sitting between 5 and 10 for about 8 months or so, and rinsing my frozen food, not feeding more than the fish can eat in about 2 minutes, and cutting out all flake food, wasn't bringing down the nitrates. I ended up buying some Seachem DeNitrate, and have the Two Little Fishies reactor with the DeNitrate in the bottom 2/3rd's, and Phosban in the top third (I bought extra foam pads for the reactor, and have one pad between the two media's). The Denitrate brought my nitrates down from the 5/10 range to zero, in 10 days. I was thrilled. Nitrates have remained at zero for about 3 months now since I added the DeNitrate. I'm sure it would be better to have two reactors, one running the Phosphate remover, and one running the Denitrate, but I don't really have much room to add a second reactor, and it seems to be working just fine running both in one reactor. Both medias require a slow flow of water through them, so to me, I can't see why having two reactors daisy chained off one pump, would be much different than running both medias in one reactor. Good luck ! Pam

[reddragonette]

ive got the soloution. all of this information has been awesome and its good to get good answers, but nothing has worked better or faster or more efficiently than the soloution i found, but wouldnt recomend. i grew cyano bacteria. verry effective. no algae. so after i treat with red slime control, ill be putting in a tuxedo urchin, emerald crabs, possibly a lawnmower blennie and ill post the effects of both the the red slime controll, and the controll abilitie of the new tank mates for the algae. again thanks for all the input, hopefully this cyano growth is just new tank typical, thanks for reading this thread.

[Zestay]

Originally Posted by reddragonette

ive got the soloution. all of this information has been awesome and its good to get good answers, but nothing has worked better or faster or more efficiently than the soloution i found, but wouldnt recomend. i grew cyano bacteria. verry effective. no algae. so after i treat with red slime control, ill be putting in a tuxedo urchin, emerald crabs, possibly a lawnmower blennie and ill post the effects of both the the red slime controll, and the controll abilitie of the new tank mates for the algae. again thanks for all the input, hopefully this cyano growth is just new tank typical, thanks for reading this thread.

[reddragonette]

it has been a while since i updated and i have some good news, red slime control (not red slime remover) worked awesome! after five days the cyano bacteria was dead! i also found the source to the outbreak though. a few of my dogs tennis balls and a rawhide that he shared with other dogs and burried multiple times were hiding at the bottow of my sump where i couldn see them from the cabenet door, no doubt the source, that rawhide was rancid, courtesy of a friends kid. needless to say its gone, but as soon as it was began the revenge of the hair algae. I picked up a urchin, a diamond goby, a scooter blennie, two percula's, and about 10 more astrea snails and four emerald crabs(the best of the cleaner snails IMO) two days later. my Diamond goby went to town on my sand bed and cleared it of diatom and the tiny hair algae that had begun to grow in about two days wich didnt allow anything to progress, the urchin and the snails took care of the glass and the live rock, a week later i picked up a sea hare, a blue pincusion urchin, a mimic lemonpeel tang and a neon goby, all of these are great algae eaters and grazers, there is barely enough algae spore left to coat my glass in the morning its awesome, my work horse though is my diamond goby, he's about six inches long and sifts sand non stop. he also built a fort in the corner of my tank excavating under a large rock half burrying it, so he kinda made a mess but no doubt a welcome trade off, now everyone else is perfoming foreaging matenance. its awesome hopefully this helps someone else in the future, ill post any more updates or changes if there are any