Algae and Vinegar

[Bob46]

I am having a huge problem with algae and nitrates. There is some kind of algae growing on my sand and I can not get rid of it. It is only on my sand and I barely have any hair algae in my tank a few strands here and there.

Last week I did a nitrate test and it was off the chart. So I have done 3 20 gallon water changes in my 75 gallon tank and siphoned the algae out every time and now my nitrates are at 80.

The skimmer is pulling out some nasty green gunk. All I have in the tank at the moment is a cleaner shrimp and snails. Im thinking I dont have alot of phosphate do to the lack of hair algae.

My fish are in day 25 of copper treatment for ich and the tank is in fallow period. Do you think it would be ok to dose vinegar to try and bring nitrates down.

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 80
PH 8.4
Temp 80

 

[Bob46]

Oh the tank is about 8 months old.

 

[toothybugs]

That is one really nice looking set up!! I will admit to slight jealousy

Try going lights out for a few days. Your skimmer seems to be doing what it's supposed to, so I wouldn't worry about that. But dosing alcohol/ vodka or vinegar will probably help longer term. But try lights out for a few days and let the system do its thing first. That doesn't look like an alga to me.

Edit: And a healthy water change will be a nice first step. No fish or corals, I'd pull at least 25-30%, I don't think 50% is unreasonable.

 

[Bob46]

I have done 3 days lights out and it helped a little. But the stuff came back after a few days. I have cut my light schedule back to 10 hours a day 2 hours just blue and 8 hours white and blue. The zoas didnt really like the 3 days lights out the palys did ok as well as the mushroom. I have already changed about 60 gallons of water in the 75 last week. So I should just keep do water changes till nitrates drop.

 

[Bob46]

And I forgot im using RO/DI. 1 tds out of membrane 0 after DI resin.

 

[whosurcaddie]

And I forgot im using RO/DI. 1 tds out of membrane 0 after DI resin.

That's good your DI should last you a long time. It looks like what you have is green Cyano. It mostly comes in red but it can be green orange and brown as well.

Vinegar dosing is a great method for reducing nitrates as well as phosphate but the phosphate lowers much slower than the nitrate. Here is a article on the dosing instructions and schedule you should follow if you want to start dosing vinegar.
http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/116-vinegar-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium

I would also recommend looking into a GFO reactor. Nextreef has some nice reactors at good price. Also Avast Marine if you don't mind building your own.

 

[droog]

How long are you running the lights, and what are your Alk/Mg/Ca readings?

Also, where did the rock come from. Its possible your rock just started to leech phosphate. See Sk8r recent posts in this forum on how to deal with that. GFO reactor is probably best.

My tank is also about 8 months old also, but my rockwork is covered in purple corraline algae where yours still looks fairly new. From what I understand the only requirement for this to grow is stable Alk 8-9 dKH.

I like the RedSea KH Pro test kit. KH reading can be done accurately in 30s with that kit.

-droog

 

[tmz]

Yes you can dose organic carbon(vingar. vodka, et alia ) to reduce nitrate and phosphate but I'd take some time to study it before making that choice. This thread of mine may be of interest:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2134105&highlight=organic+carbon+dosing

GFO may help.

BTW, any tds above zero post di is a problem. It's likely worse than post ro tds since loosely bound molecules like ammonia accumulate and are displaced by others with a strogner affinity for the resin binding sites when the resin exhausts ,ie when it puts out more than zero tds.

 

[Sk8r]

If it is cyano---you never described color---it will indeed keep coming back after a lights-out kills it: you skim to get rid of that die-off, and you do the lights-out again after a few weeks. Ultimately this persistence gets rid of the problem.

 

[Bob46]

It's a forest green color. I think I'm going to do a couple of more large water changes and run some gfo and carbon. I don't have a sump so I am going to run a mix the gfo and cabin and use a hot magnum filter.

 

[acabgd]

Larger water changes are more beneficial in your case than several smaller ones. Your nitrates being sky high, I would do two 50% water changes in 2-3 days and get the nitrate down below 10ppm.

 

[Dan_P]

Nice setup!

You seem to have cyanobacteria. At this point just use a turkey baster to suction it up, avoid disturbing the substrate too much. It might not get much worse.