Please help, im just about to give up!

[campbelldavid80]

HI all im just about ready to rip my tank apart & give up! I have been battling alge from the start, my tank is covered in hair alge, the sand is a horrible brown colour with red slimy patches & ive just noticed some red bubble alge & Aiptasia! my setup in now 6 months old its a 180 ltr tank with 25kg live rock with a 2inch sand bed. i have 2x clowns, a false gramma & 8x turbo snails. im running two 3000 power heads, deltec mce 300 skimmer, external filter with live rock, bio balls, & carbon & a uv sterlizer. my lights are on for 6hrs a day, i feed every other day, 1 flake at a time! the bulbs are 3months old. i use ro water from my local fish store with tetra marine salt. i have just tested my water PH=8.0 AMMONIA=0 NITRITE=0 NITRATE=5 PHOSPHATE=0.25. WATER TEMP=79 degres SALINITY=1.022. i do a 10% water change every 2 weeks & vacum my sand bed. ive just had enough & dont no what to do??? Any suggestions will be much appreciated before i give up!!!!!

[fishroomlady]

Well, you know it's obviously excess nutrients and I'm thinking it's phosphates. Do you run any phosphate absorbing media? I'm also not good with metrics but does your tank have a good amount of live rock? You've already done a lot of the things to help with that already (shorter light duration, reduced feeding). what type of lighting do you use? Have you always run the UV?

[ponda]

im a noob. and im fighting algae myself . i felt the same way until just a few weeks ago.
im currently doing manual scrubbing of the rocks and doing h202 dips.
about to make a refuge in my biocube.
dont give up , just do the h202 and scrub. it will give u hope ^_^

[campbelldavid80]

Thanks for your reply I dont run any phosphate remover, do you think i should? if so do you suggest a good one & can use it in my external filter? i have 55lb of live rock in 40gal of water. as for the UV ive ran it for about 6 weeks now. lighting i have a 39w 1400k white marine & a 39w blue plus+.

[campbelldavid80]

Ive been doing manual scrubbing/removal but the hair alge just comes back after 3 days!!

[fishroomlady]

yes, I would recommend you run phosphate remover. When you say external filter, you mean like a HOB type? The UV is not helping I don't think, I may take that off-line. Are you using RO/DI water? That is critical in terms of where to start. If you are, I'd recommend seachem phosguard. I've used it for years and it really effective.

In the meantime, like said, you can manually scrub your rock - I use peroxide when taking off algae....just a couple of rocks at a time. You put peroxide right on it - not saturated, just use a qtip and apply to the area. Let it sit out for about 10 minutes, rinse off in saltwater and put back in the tank. You'll have to submerge any coral while doing this.

I wouldn't vacuum the entire sand bed every water change. You can vacuum sections. Do you have sand sifters in your CUC? You want nasarrius (sp) or a fighting conch or both to make sure your sand bed gets turned over.

In terms of the bubble algae, manual removal out of the water = you just pluck it off. The red is cyano and you can just rinse that off and manually remove from your tank.

It wouldn't hurt to have a fish that eats algae (blennies are good at this).

Aiptasia you can take care of when the rock is out of the water as you go. Just inject with lemon juice or some other method (you can find on this forum). Do these things over a period of days, and you can get a handle on it. Hang in there!

[Daimyo68]

Curious, is your tank getting direct sunlight from a window?

[mikeandnasreef]

David, what kind of water are you using for topping off your aquarium? A ro/di system is vital for a healthy saltwater system

[raybyrne67]

I moved my tank to a room that had very little ambient light and amazingly my algae problem was solved.

[Bpb]

Long term use of rodi water, appropriate feeding, and phosphate remover will help. No tank I've ever seen is truely algae free. Some algae is a good thing. It feeds cuc and micro life. Don't stress about it. Just manage it and it'll slow down in time.

[ponda]

take your rock out of the tank, put some 3% hydroperoxide on ur rock for 2 mins- then rinse it with salt water and place it back in the tank.. it will give u hope. trust me ^_^ IT WONT BE COME BACK IN 3 days.

[campbelldavid80]

thanks fishroomlady for yor reply. I have a canister filter & yes ive always used ro water. What is seachem phosguard & what dose it do? I dont have any sand sifters at the mo I will get some the weekend.

[campbelldavid80]

Daimyo68 no I dont gat any kind of sunlight on my tank

[campbelldavid80]

Mikeandnasreef I have always used ro water

[fishroomlady]

to get the absolute best water, you should use RO/DI water or distilled water. That will go a long way to help with algae. Phosguard is a product that helps reduce phosphates in your water which is what fuels your algae. If you're using a canister, you must clean it well at least weekly. You can run phosguard in a media bag in your canister. When I ran a canister, I put media bags of phosguard and carbon in there.

I know many people use GFO- another phosphate reducing agent - but that usually requires it be run in a reactor and since I've not used it, I'd be hesitant with advice but it does work.

I wouldn't suggest treating all of your rock at once with the peroxide. Just a couple of rocks at a time. You will see some stuff still on the rocks after you put it back in the tank, but that slowly goes away. It's actually pretty amazing really.

Definitely get some sand sifters - you may have too many turbos in there although it sounds like there is a lot of algae for them to eat.....8 may be too many to sustain long-term, you can perhaps trade in a couple for some small hermits and/or nassarius (sp) snails. Fighting conches are very cool and excellent sand sifters.

HTH! oh, and I may slowly take out the bioballs from your canister.....they really aren't needed since you have a good amount of live rock. I would just take out a few with each cleaning.

[danderso]

Definitely need to run phosphate remover. I much prefer to have my own RODI filter at home. I also have a TDS meter to check it with. I would at least invest in a meter so you can check the water you are using. The water coming out of my RO filter is usually 60-70 PPM TDS. After the DI its 0. Thats why we are suggesting RODI not just RO. At this point if you want to succeed you have to go through the process step by step to find the problem and it will take time.

[bromdad]

Be patient. Your phosphates are at least 10X what they should be. Your nitrates are somewhat high. Phosphate will be the limiting factor. You can go with a good phosphate remover. I prefer gfo granular ferric oxide) in a fluidized container as unlike phosguard, it does not leach phosphate back into the water and does not contain aluminum which can be quite toxic to some forms of sea life. It can also be replenished. Do feed less and continue to manually remove algae. Another great and less expensive alternative is to dose vodka. Look up vodka dosing in the online Reefkeeping Magazine. You will need a good skimmer and you must follow the instructiions precisely. It works well but will take longer.You will lick this problem.

[dppitone]

David you have a problem on the front end and back end with your water, and that is the likely cause of all the algae problems. The goal is to get phosphates below .10. In order to do that, do the following -

First, RO water is not sufficient. It needs to include filtering DI - also called RO/DI. I'm speculating, but based on your info, the top off and change water your adding is not properly filtered. The options to correct this are (1) to get a new RO/DI complete system, or (2) get the DI components and plumb them into your RO unit, which is probably easy - look for a video on youtube with instructions.

Second, on the backside you should at minimum put a sock/bag of phosphate absorbtion media in the HOB if you have room. Better though, add a hang on reactor the back of the tank right next to the filter. They cost around $42 shipped via Amazon.com.

And importantly, do the DI part first, and the phosphate media second - not the other way around.

Dave

[Dozer1one]

You said you just noticed red slimy bubble algae, that sounds like cyano to me , and it sounds like you have a perfect breeding ground for it, reading the stickies in this forum would probably help a great bit

[Sk8r]

We all go through it. If your rock happens to have a lot of phosphate (mine does), you just have to tough it out while it leaches out of the rock, until it's gone---but every batch of algae you yank and toss lowers the amount of phosphate. Don't get corals yet. Just keep cleaning your rocks---pull off what's there, flip the rock over to put the worst algae side down, and be patient. Fish and inverts will be fine with the algae. None of the things you name are a really big problem. Most tanks get a little cyano seasonally, and if bubble is starting to appear, that's actually a good thing: bubble often follows hair. Skim constantly; keep your skimmer tuned. Try GFO or NPX in a Phosban reactor. That helps. There are also phosphate removers you can buy and add. Make sure they're marine. In general, a white tank is a dead tank. A green one is on its way, but may need time to moderate into a pink and brown tank.

[Jezzlambert]

Been through the same issue....
I had an outbreak of hair algae and i was advised to buy a true Mexican turbo snail... Believe me when i say these snails are amazing! They munch through hair algae like theres no tommora!!! Tank was full of it and within a week it had ALL disappeared! And now he keeps all my rocks perfectly clean!
Sand bed algae... Your having a cyano algae outbreak and again i had the same, and this stuff nearly made me pack it all in aswell. But i stuck at it and with patience you WILL win!
Firstly start dosing NO3 PO4 X, this is basically a refined vodka that is simple to use and has excellent qualitys. Up your water changes to 25% twice a week and syphon as much of the algea as possible during your water changes. This process doesn't work overnight and you need patience its took me about 6 weeks to win the battle.
I also stripped out any unwanted material out of my canister filter and just have seachem matrix stones and live rock rubble now to try and reduce a nitrate problem i had and they are now coming down aswell.

Also remember a new marine tank can take upto 12 months to really establish itself and these problems your having is all part of the learning curve and cycling process of your filters and tank.

Dont give up because the rewards when its all settled is highly rewarding.
Good luck

[campbelldavid80]

Thanks for all your advice . I have checked the water I am using & getting a 0 reading with a tds meter. I have put a bag of seachem phosguard in my filter to lower my phosphate levels they are 0.25 at the moment.
Can anyone recomend a good phosphate test kit? Im using a nutrafin one & I dont think its very accurate!
I was thinking about blacking out my tank for 3 days to starve the alge of light, do you think this will help & will it harm my fish? Any advice will be much appreciated as this is all new to me. Thanks again. Dave

[achiro]

Originally Posted by campbelldavid80

Thanks for all your advice . I have checked the water I am using & getting a 0 reading with a tds meter. I have put a bag of seachem phosguard in my filter to lower my phosphate levels they are 0.25 at the moment.
Can anyone recomend a good phosphate test kit? Im using a nutrafin one & I dont think its very accurate!
I was thinking about blacking out my tank for 3 days to starve the alge of light, do you think this will help & will it harm my fish? Any advice will be much appreciated as this is all new to me. Thanks again. Dave

Going to true RO/DI water, adding GFO, and decreasing light times and intensity worked for me, once I got rid of the cyano I put in turbo snails and a sea hare and have been algae free for several months.

[fishgate]

I got the below and it works.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...fm?pcatid=4098

[Mcgeezer]

For bubble algae - use an emerald crab. your bubble algae will dissapear i promise

for phosphates, use chemi pure elite - it works very well. it will also reduce the need for frequent water changes

hair algae - mexican turbo snails


best course of action is to feed the animals who have ravenous appetites for the stuff....def make sure you dont have any direct or ambient light going into the tank