At a loss with cyanobacteria and gha (please help)

[EvMiBo]

Alright, it's been a battle for me with this for a while now. Off and on now for almost 3 years. I've been in the hobby for almost 6 years, the first 2-3 years of the hobby came very easy to me and algae and/or cyanobacteria was virtually never a problem. I have moved twice in the past 3 years, once in 2010 and 2012. In early 2012 I was having success and had some time of no algae, then everything seemed to blow up again, and when I moved in 2012 it really got bad, I lost all my SPS , zoas and rics lived - all fish lived and squamosa clam also lived, CUC seemed to be okay as well. My maintenance since I started has changed but has always been pretty good. My aquarium is a 50g, 36"x18"x18".

- I do weekly water changes with 0 TDS ro/di water, I suck out as much cyano as possible but it never seems to be enough.
- have vodka dosed but have since stopped due to it not seeming to work (although it did seem to work for a period of time). Since stopping vodka I've gone back to chaeto in the fuge with mangroves.
- I change my t5 bulbs out about every about every 12 months. I used to run them at 11 hours, now I run them at 10 hours (with sunset/sunrise). It's a 36" ATI sunpower 6x39w.
- I skimmed for a while with a vertex IN100, then modded it with a different pump and now I skim with a SeaSide Aquatics CS-1. I skim "wet" and clean the collection cup and part of body once a week. I love the CS-1, it really does a great job.
- My most recent test kits (taken 7/22/13) were N03=0.25ppm, PO4=0.06ppm, Mg=1480ppm, alk=9.0dKH, Ca=475ppm, Salinity= 1.026 SG/35ppt all using redsea pro kits. I also use a refractometer for salinity.
- I switched to B-Ionic salt from reef crystals this year due to seeing brown residue on my buckets in the last two batches of reef crytals. The B-Ionic is very clear. From my memory there is some correlation between reef crytals residue and algae issues starting, although it is continuing so I'm not sure how much merit that has.
- I have tried 3 days lights out a couple times here and there with minimal results.
- I have run gfo for most of the time in this hobby, stopped for a while though, but now I've started running hc gfo 2 months ago, I change it out every 4 weeks, once I have a large amount I will be "recharging" it.
- I have a filter sock on the water coming into the sump, cleaned about once a week once it starts to clog.
- I feed once daily, sometimes twice, enough for everyone to get some food. I have 2 maroon clowns, one starry blenny, a richmond's wrasse, a blue-green chromis and a PJ cardinal for fish.
- The flow in my aquarium is plentiful, I run an MP40 at about 60-70% in my 50g.

The cyano and gha (underneath cyano) continues to grow. I have also started to recently get a red, bristle like algae in some areas, which doesn't come off easily (even with a toothbrush).

I think (and let me know what you think) that the "dry" rocks I received from BRS back in the beginning might have something to do with all of this... The first 1.5 years was flawless, no algae, then when I order a couple more dry rocks from BRS, one of them blew up with gha. Would it be possible that these dry rocks are leaching out phosphates? I'm currently lost, I think I'm going to get a small army of emerald crabs and an extra urchin for now.

If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them... I'm pretty much stumped other than potentially getting mostly new CURED rock.\

Edit*
I've added some pictures of the tank before everything started going down hill, and a couple of today.








Sorry, these next photos are very blue, they're taken with my cell phone...

[sam3113]

20 mexican turbo snails and 1 week. Algae gone.

[oquockyo]

I have been on the tech M diet and its working for me. After 2 weeks i see progress.

[EvMiBo]

Originally Posted by sam3113

20 mexican turbo snails and 1 week. Algae gone.

Yes but the issue seems to be something deeper. I'm trying to understand why it continues to grow.

Originally Posted by oquockyo

I have been on the tech M diet and its working for me. After 2 weeks i see progress.

can you please elaborate? I did a couple searches and haven't found anything on that product.

[Joel_155]

I would say ( no expert here ) that your rock is leaching PO4. Maybe try alternate means of nutrient exportation? I've been battling the PO4 since I set my tank up 18 months ago and I recently added an algae turf scrubber. Provides a natural place for GHA to grow where it can be removed from the system therefore reducing excess nutrients. Right now only running a skimmer and my ATS and all my GHA is going away. Your PO4 reading may be innacurate due to the amount of GHA and cyano in the system.

[EvMiBo]

Wow, I guess I haven't been keep up with the latest stuff. Those scrubbers look awesome. I'm going to give that a shot. Thanks!

[Joel_155]

Yeah its really cool and a very simple process. Make sure you build it outside of the tank so you can test the flow rating. There's a TON of good info in the advanced forum. Here's mine a few weeks ago.

[EvMiBo]

I just ordered 2 red (660nm wavelength) led flood lights. The same lights daytek is using, I plan on doing a setup similar to his.

Have you thought about getting your lights closer to the plastic mesh? On the ATS basics page it says about 4" is good and after that you don't want to get too far away.

Nonetheless, I really appreciate the suggestions.

[Joel_155]

Honestly I wanted to keep my ATS simple. I have a cube tank so room under the stand is somewhat limited. I basically put everything in there how I could fit it. I would love to go LED as they look really cool but to start I just used CFLs with clamp lamps. The ATS itself is just 1" Pvc made into a shape that I just put into the sump so it would keep the screen above the water level and direct the flow of water. I just used teflon tape to put it together in case I need to adjust anything. The slot itself is by far the most important part of this deal as it will effect how the water flows over the screen. If I remember correctly you want 35 gph per inch of slot pipe. Mine is just over a 1 cube screen so its 4 inches wide and 6 inches long. I found that a slot between 1/8 and 1/4 worked best.

[Joel_155]

Also its important to get an actual flow rating based on your setup. Just using head calcs won't work. I used a 5 gallon bucket with a line marking my start level ( pump submerged of course ) then added 3 gallons of water and timed how long it took to pump through the system. I'm running about 35-40 gph per inch of slot pipe which is supposed to be about right.

[Joel_155]

I know the picture doesn't show it really well but I scraped this on last Sunday and I've got more growth since then than the first two weeks it was up. I've read that they can take a month to six weeks to really get going.

[EvMiBo]

Very cool results so far. Yes, I understand that everyone has to do with works best for them. I read a lot on it last night and some today as well so with your help and the several other people using the scrubbers it has been very easy to learn what the heck is going on.

Have you noticed changes in your display tank yet? Obviously, that is primarily why we do this, right?!

[packman90]

Joel is right, I had the same problem with GHA as you do and I started with a home made scrubber and then switched to a store bought one and I am seeing the alage melt away and I am loving my tank again.

[BHD]

Hello

Fighting Hair Algae is a long and painful ordeal for a lot of people, myself included. But the good news is that it can be beaten and you can keep your tank algae free for quite awhile if you can keep up the maintenance routines. I ran my 75 gallons tank for many years without a single problem and I was lazy back then that I only change 15% of water once or twice a month. I didn't vacuum the sand bed nor did much maintenance with it. So one day, the hair algae appeared and took over my tank quickly. There are many different ways to kill it quickly but it would also have a lot of negative effects to your tank, especially sps.

My tank is full of sps so turn off the light isn't an option for me. But turning off the light will kill them but also harm your corals and then when you turn on the light, they will come back again. Chemical isn't an option either. I tried Hydrogen Peroxide but it also kill all the good bacteria in the tank and cause the tank to cycle again. Tried the Algae Scrubber but didn't work out so well because my water is so clean. It is clean because as soon as there is any nitrate or phosphate, the hair algae already consume all of them and didn't leave much for the Algae scrubber. Tried Chaeto also but didn't help much.

Here are some steps that I used to beat my algae problem:

1) remove all the sand.
2) add alot of flow that aim to the bottom of the tank to blow all the debris that settled near the rocks.
3) Dose my tank with Vinegar and run small amount of GFO but change them out every 2 weeks.
4) Use a Turkey baster to flow the debris off of the rocks and off of the hair algae. Don't let the debris to settle on the hair algae, they will be fuel the algae to grow even more.
5) Take out some rocks and leave a lot of open space for water to flow and place for you to vacuum debris that settle on the bottom.
6) Blow all the debris into a corner where you can vacuum them out during water change.
7) Let the debris settle in the sump and vacuum then out during water change.
8) Keep the sump clean and don't put any rocks or anything in there, Make sure the water flow through the sump very slow so debris can settle.
9) Manually take out algae if you are able to take them out. Clean your powerhead every week because algae will stuck to them. Good chance to take out some algae.
10) Buy some Turbo snails, Astrea Snail and Red Banded trochous snails. snails are very important because they eat the algae and convert it into snail poop and that can be vacuum out or skimmed out by your skimmer.
11) Make sure your rodi is clean and the bucket that contain the rodi is clean also and doesn't leak phosphate into your rodi.
12) Make sure you change 10-15% of water EVERY WEEK. Make sure you vacuum out the debris during water change. Because changing water without vacuum out the debris won't help you much at all.

The problem here is that your rocks absorbed alot of phosphate into it and now it is releasing it back into the water column. You can test you phosphate and it might say that it is very clean but that isn't true at all. It is clean because the hair algae already consume the phosphate. You have to keep doing this until all the phosphate in your rocks are released and then hair algae will slowly die away and stay away provided that you can keep your water clean.

Anyway, sorry for the long post but it took me about a year to beat them. Hopefully my experience would help you a bit in your battle against those hair algae. I didn't want to do it too fast because I was afraid that my sps would die.

[Joel_155]

BHD is right on the money. Basically one way or another you have to find a way to remove the excess nutrients. As to my display yes I'm noticing a difference. There is still some GHA in it however it is slowly dieing as I am removing its main source of nutrients via my ATS. A fuge does the same thing however if they aren't setup correctly they will add to the problem instead of helping it.

[Joel_155]

Now my problem is that since my water params are getting in line and everything is cleaning up my Xenia and GSP are starting to grow out of control and take over the tank. I need to keep them in check so my LPS will thrive.