Now what...

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

So I started my first tank one month ago. I used the Red Sea Mature Pro Kit to cycle the tank. Red Sea kit shows NH3 0, NO2 0, NO3 5, dKH 9, Salfiert PO4 0

Protein skimmer running wet, dosing NOPOX but much lower than instructions to prevent bacteria blooms. I presume my 65 gallon display and 20 gallon sump is holding between 70 to 75 gallons of water. Which would mean I should be dosing about 6ml NOPOX given my current NO3 level but anything more than 1ml is an instant bacteria bloom.

I just added GFO to the media reactor today because the PO4 cant possibly be zero. Any suggestions on anything else I should be doing to beat this algae bloom back? As I watch my NO3 get lower I am just seeing more of the brown algae bloom but the green algae bloom is still kicking hard too.

I just did a ~20% wc on Saturday.

Its killing me seeing this tank look like this...

[CStrickland]

You don't have a problem. That's what a one month old tank is supposed to look like. Lay off the tank, quit buying stuff like nopox, maybe put some snails in to give you something to watch.

[kmbyrnes]

A one month old tank doesn't need dosing of anything but patience.
Over time your nice white rocks will change color, your water may go cloudy or green, and you might wake up one day to find you glass covered in tiny little bugs.
All of this is the normal part of a tank maturing. Embrace the changes in this little world you are bringing to life and learn about what each stage means in the development of the life support system of your eventual reef.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

About how long should I expect this process to take. My alkalinity is dropping faster than I would expect for a system with no coral, so I suspect you dont actually mean to not dose ANYTHING. I have learned that water seems to flow very differently in the sump and bubbles differently in the skimmer when dKH is in the 8s vs 9s. Mostly I am just worried the algae is going to get out of control from the stories I have read of people using Pukani. And from my lack of experience this very much seems out of control. The glass needs cleaned daily, the rock and sand bed are effectively covered...and since the reef mature pro kit came with and instructed how to dose nopox from day 1, I had little reason to think this would not be an effective way to prevent what I am seeing now.

[GimpyFin]

I agree with both cstrickland and kmbyrnes. New tanks will go through this and it may take a few months or so. Snails can help clean it up some of it too. IMO, I would just let things settle in a bit and don't get in a hurry chasing numbers with dosing, etc.

[Sk8r]

looks normal to me. White is death. Green is life. The fact it's about to be hair algae is par for the course, but the usual treatments will take care of that.

[OrQidz]

That's not even bad, don't worry. New tanks go through the uglies for a few months!

[Bpb]

New tank. Rocks and sand. Dose nothing. Quit with everything except rodi water, salt, flow, and water changes. Those other products (very much optional even in the long run) are for mature tanks where you are tweaking coral colors. Right now the tank is so new just let it all happen. A new tank needs to go through its algae cycles and the more products you use and efforts to fight it will only prolong it and worsen it. Just let it happen. It'll clear up in time. Over the next couple months focus more on your fish and invert wish list. Starting with more peaceful ones first. Once the hair algae is in full swing in a couple months, a pincushion urchin and some turbo snails will help control it until it passes as well. Otherwise just let it go. Algae is an UNAVOIDABLE process in the maturation of a tank while bacterial and copepod counts are building and stabilizing.


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[re76]

Did you cure the Pukani? If so how long? From what I have read they are pretty notorious for leaching phosphates.

I'm not an expert by any means, but if I was a betting man I would guess the rocks are slowly leaching PO4, which is not showing in your testing, because the algae is getting to it before your tests can.

I don't think there is a ton you can do at this point beyond just wait it out and hope the CUC does its job. GFO might help, but you might just end up burning through the GFO extremely quickly.

Would it help to physically remove any algae you can to get the nutrients out of the system? Maybe throw some macro algae in there to help with the nutrient export?

Anyone with more experience, feel free to shoot this message down, I am very much an amateur.

[jd371]

I'm a year into this and I've been there. In the first few months you'll see algae come and go. Not much to add that hasn't been said already, add a CUC and just wait it out.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

The rock cured for 2 months prior to setting up the dt. I will stop using the nopox and let it ride.the tank has 2 clowns and a small cuc. NO3 has fallen to under 5 in the last few days and i dropped the lighting period down to 10 hours. What do you all recommend as far as wc schedule? Ive been doing 10 to 15 gallons weekly thus far

[tommyboynj]

You probably don't even need to change that much water. I'm changing 10 gallons a week and iv got about 200 in total water. Keep in mind that when in set up my new tank I took 90lbs of mature rock from old tank so it was ready to handle the load. just keep an eye on your tank for big changes in nitrate and adjust accordingly. The less you fuss with a new tank the better. All that rock looks normal. For the age. Not bad at all.

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[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

Thank you for all of the feedback. You have changed my perspective and I am able to better appreciate what I am seeing happening in this tank. All of the videos and pictures of tanks had ingrained in me that green was bad. But I certainly dont want white either. Well I would like for my sand to be white again. Nitrate is still dropping, quite rapidly in fact and I am now around 3. Its time to invest in a more accurate NO3 test. I do wish that I could get a PO4 reading so I could get an idea of what the ratio of the two are. At any rate here is another pic of the tank.

[Bpb]

Your rocks will turn so many different colors over the next year it'll make your head spin and then you'll forget about it. It's just that now the green is SUPER obvious since they started bleach white


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[CStrickland]

Most of the phos is still bound in the calcium of the rock. As it leaches and the algae grabs it your best phos test will be your eyes. Just like you are getting a feel for the levels by how often you need to clean your glass, you'll note changes in growth rate, texture, and color. Once the algae is more established it will give and take from the water, that isnt a strong bond like the rock one. This will allow you to somewhat track the levels in the tank.

I only test phos to see if my gfo needs changing. One day I'll be like "man I just cleaned that glass how is it green already?" And then take a sample from the outflow of the reactor and sure enough, phos is creeping up.

Since you don't have coral, I wonder if it would help to dim the lights to just enough for the fish. That lack of carbon might slow the algae, giving the gfo an opportunity to catch the phos before the algae can, and leave less green slime for you to pull off the rocks. You could run that way for a couple weeks and it would semi-cook the rocks. Just spitballing

[Jenny_RS]

+1 on the dimming of the lights. My 5g was started last September and it went through it's stages of green algae, red slime, hair algae etc. Now I only have a little bit of green algae growing in some places and most of the time my turbo snail gets it. Now the only thing I have to deal with are rust flatworms. Sometimes you just have to ride it out. "New tank" syndrome I think they call it. I would try to find a piece of rock with coralline algae to help seed the tank as well, speed up the process

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

So what has my curiosity piqued, is why adding GFO this week has caused NO3 to drop? NO3 is not down to 2. I also have a white cloud in my tank, I am presuming the bacteria population has exploded? Was the high level of PO4 prohibiting the bacteria population from successfully consuming the available NO3? I need a new NO3 test kit since 2 is it's margin of error. I was planning to buy the Red Sea Algae Management Kit, any thoughts before I pull the trigger?

[Bpb]

I'm a big fan of the Red Sea NO3 test kit bit prefer Hanna for phosphate. The Red Sea NO3 is very high resolution and easy to use. I think your nitrate fell due to other reasons. A drop in PO4 from GFO doesn't typically cause anything with NO3 except maybe an increase. Bacteria need NO3:PO4 to be present in a 16:1 ratio or better to remove them. So if your PO4 drops to below that ratio, any nitrogen reduction is from other means.


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[CStrickland]

Yup. Correlation not causation. It's a function of your bacteria populations blooming and waning and canabalizing. Bear in mind when you're reading about the Red Sea zooxanthellae based nutrient control, that you don't really have any zooxanthellae yet. Isn't it just nopox and test kits?

[Cthehentz]

Time, if you rush things or make changes expecting things to happen within minute well it just isn't going to happen. Take a picture everyday and my end of the week you'll see changes.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

Originally Posted by CStrickland

Yup. Correlation not causation. It's a function of your bacteria populations blooming and waning and canabalizing. Bear in mind when you're reading about the Red Sea zooxanthellae based nutrient control, that you don't really have any zooxanthellae yet. Isn't it just nopox and test kits?

The Alge Control Kit is just NO3 and PO4 test kits. They obviously suggest that you should use NOPOX to control the levels. I have been somewhat skeptical to buy into their system as they seem to be the only ones suggesting a dKH of around 12 for coral growth, along with NO3 between 1 - 2.5 and PO4 around .08. For coral colors they seem to suggest closer to what others are with a dKH around 10, NO3 at .25 and PO4 about .03, and then they want you to dose their 4 colors and 2 coral foods.

I hadn't really planned on dosing NOPOX, or carbon dosing at all for that matter, but it came with their reef mature pro kit which I purchased to help cycle the tank. Once I realized what it was for, it seemed like a cheap way to maintain an ultra low nutrient system. its about $16 for a 500 ml bottle, and they recommend 1ml per 25 gallons to maintain low nutrient levels. What I didn't expect was that when I finally got NO3 close to 10 I would start seeing bacteria blooms everytime I dosed.

Its been a few days since I last dosed, and the water has become incredibly cloudy. I am assuming this too is bacteria blooming. The skimmer is pulling a nice dark green again and this is actually the first time since ive had this tank running that I have gone 3 days without having to empty the collection cup at least once a day. I am actually not looking forward to changing the filter sock tomorrow, because I know its going to throw the skimmer off.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

So it has been 4 days since I last dosed NOPOX and water is still cloudy as all get out. I did wake up yesterday to bugs all over the glass as km had stated. Today was the best the glass looked in the afternoon in quite some time, and I am happy with how everything is progressing, I just wish the water was clearer.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

I found the source of the cloudiness, it is remnants from the initial cloud when I first filled the tank. The muck from the sand was able to pass through the filter sock, and settle in every chamber of my sump. It seems that every so often my return pump is managing to suck some of it up out of the return chamber and send it into the DT. Looks like this weeks WC will happen in the sump.

[Flippers4pups]

It takes about a year for a reef tank to take off and become stable.

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

Performed a 10% wc today, first in two weeks. Received Red Sea Reef Foundation and Algae Control test kits. My readings are as follows:

SG: 35
NO3: 0
PO4: 0
Ca: 425
KH: 12
Mg: 1440

I am starting to see a small amount GHA which the CUC seems to be happy about and are trimming back quite rapidly.

The diatoms are becoming quite frustrating as the sand bed just does not seem to be improving at all. I am starting to believe that the two MP10s are not providing enough flow and I am considering throwing a gen 3 koralia on the back of the tank to provide a constant 20x water movement from front to back. For the moment I have the two MP10s in constant speed mode just a slight fraction less than full speed, but they sure get hot running that way.