ALGAE HELP for SNAKEMANVET

[Below Sea Level]

These are Pics that SNAKEMANVET wanted me to post for him. These were taken only 24 hours after he cleaned the algae out. As you can see it has completely come back over an inch long since. He is going to post more on it soon. Apparently it is quite brown and covers the rocks, sand, everything.

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I personally have not seen algae grow so long in such a short period of time.
Thanks for looking.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

When i say everything is covered,i mean everything. even my softies and mushrooms get covered. for about 5 weeks in a row i did 20% water changes, even vacuumed the gravel during water changes. and i use a turkey baster to blow it off the live rock and softies. any help with would greatly be appreciated. thanks david

 

[gflat65]

How much flow do you have and how old are your lights? Those are the first things I check, typically. What is your PO4 and Alk? if the tank is only 5 months old, it may still be cycling with a high bioload.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

tank is about 10 months old, po4 is between 0 and 0.1. my alk is around 9 to 10. my lights are new, i bought them from steve in january.I had high nitrates, finally got them down to 5 ppm. this stuff looks like cyno. I bought some red slime remover from reef down under. it didn't work, also used chemi clean same result.

 

[turboex901]

hey david, get an r/o machine quick. if you cant buy all youre water from the fish store. from what i understand phospates read zero on alot of tests simply because they cant read very low. you may have an abundance of phosphates and not know it. also bump up the flow ALOT.hope this helps somehow. <~~steve
EDIT: what kind of rocks do you have? sometimes "base rock" is absolutly LOADED with phosphates that continually leach out and water changes does very little to remedy the problem. the phosphates are in the rock itself. good luck and let us know how it goes

 

[just dave]

It looks like Dinoflagellates.
If it is it can be toxic to fish and certain inverts and siphoning it out will get you no place. You'd have a better chance of getting Barrett off crack 'n getting rid of Dinoflagellates by scrubbing and siphoning.
The best fix is to get a pH monitor that is freshly calibrated and keep your pH at 8.4 or higher during the day and no lower 'n 8.3/8.2 during the night. Use calcium hydroxide to do this as it will have the added benefit of participating phosphate out as well.
Stop adding anything (supplements ,liquid foods ,trace elements ,...etc.) to the tank during this time. I also would refrain from doing water changes as well until it's over. As good as SSW is it does have certain nutrients added that would be counterproductive at this point. Keep your skimmer in prime operating condition and keep any mechanical filter media cleaned out/off. This goes for any kind of media placed in such a way that would trap debris.

 

[Rendos]

The best fix is to get a pH monitor that is freshly calibrated and keep your pH at 8.4 or higher during the day and no lower 'n 8.3/8.2 during the night. Use calcium hydroxide to do this as it will have the added benefit of participating phosphate out as well.

Wow...the phosphate will participate...I think it may precipitate also.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I have a ro/di unit that is about 3 months old,when my phosphate and nitrates were high i did not have a problem with this stuff. It appeared after i got everything back like it should be phosphates- 0 -0.1 nitrates -5ppm alk- 9/10 ph-8.3 -8.4. this stuff has even covered my turbos pretty bad.

 

[Codeman00]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7073871#post7073871 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Rendos
Wow...the phosphate will participate...I think it may precipitate also.

I was going to post that.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I have cut back on my lights, the mh's were on for about 10 hrs now down to 4hrs, It seems to have slowed it down abit, but my corals don't like having the light they were used to .

 

[Sk8r]

I'm having a little brown bloom and am chasing info on silicate levels and diatoms. I haven't reached any solutions yet, except that nassarius snails can help a little, ditto conchs, more help from (possibly) silicate removal media from, possibly Coralife; even ro/di water can have some; sand and rock can input silicate; using play sand is way bad for silicates; and that where it regards brown stuff, silicate is more likely the bad guy than phosphate is. That's the list of what I've found so far. Mine started up coincidentally with forgetting once to turn off the actinics all night, (my bad!) an accidental burst of fresh water (forgot to unplug the autotopoff when messing with the sump) and an afternoon sunbeam (change of season brought it to the tank during the hours I'm normally out of the house.) Causality in the last two instances is unproven. I'm pretty sure the actinics were a bad mistake. Hope that at least gives you some buzzwords to search. I'll be tracking this thread in hopes of answers, myself.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

Thanks SK8R for the info.I have had brown diatom algea before, and it nothing compared to this.I will working on it.

 

[Sk8r]

I wonder if running a 1 micron cannister filter could at least provide mechanical relief from your situation: cause is something else, but there's got to be stuff loose in the water column. If I find out anything in my search after my own small problem I will locate this thread and post it.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

mY RO/DI UNIT HAS A 1 MICRON AND TWO 5 MICRON FILTERS, THEN THE DI UNIT. HAVE CHECKED T.D.S IT SHOWED 3.

 

[Codeman00]

Snakemanvet, I cant promise that this is part of your problem or not, but a TDS of 3 after the DI is too high. It should be 0, maybe 1 at the most if your filters and DI resin were old.... but definetly not a TDS of 3, especially with a three month old unit. What is the TDS going into the RO/DI? What is the TDS coming out of the RO mebrane (meaning before the DI)?

 

[wjhuie]

I dont think that a reading of 3 tds is all that bad is it. if my trash can sits with the lid off for a while the tds goes up anywhere between 3 and 5 tds .

 

[Codeman00]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7091075#post7091075 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by wjhuie
I dont think that a reading of 3 tds is all that bad is it. if my trash can sits with the lid off for a while the tds goes up anywhere between 3 and 5 tds .

I'm not sure how you can qualify your statement above. jdieck, the one who actually created the reef chemistry and calcium reactor web programs, disagrees with that statement. Anything over a TDS of 1ppm is not good and action needs to be taken.
See his post here: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=777590&perpage=25&pagenumber=2

Also, you can refer the last section of Randy Holmes-Farley
s RO/DI article "Reverse Osmosis/Deionization Systems to Purify
Tap Water for Reef Aquaria." Its in the section entitled "Tips on Using RO/DI" - Tip #9 - " If you are using a TDS or conductivity meter, then the measured value should drop to near zero, or maybe 0-1 ppm TDS or 0-1 mS/cm. Higher values indicate that something is not functioning properly, or that the DI resin is becoming saturated and needs replacement. "
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-05/rhf/index.php

I'm not saying that this is the reason for Snakemanvet's algae problem, I'm just saying that its not normal and he might want to look into it.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I have not checked the tds straight out of the unit, just the water in my tub that i hold water for my topping off. I might have dust or lint from the house getting in my water, since my tub is in my laundry room. I will be borrowing the tds meter in a couple of days. will post the results.

 

[knowse]

For an accurate tds reading you should use a clean as in rinsed in ro water GLASS container.

I went threw the dino fight. What I did was LARGE and FREQUENT water changes. 20% a week aint gonna do it. I did 30-50% three times a week for 5 weeks. Syphon out what you can. Sand was where mine orgininated from so I had to take out most of it. I also dosed b-ionic with each water change.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

Thanks knowse for the info. Since i have cut back on my lights it has cleared up pretty good.