In need of some algae help - long thread (sorry!)-
I've essentially run out of things to do for an algae issue and so I'm turning here. I've been in this hobby about 20 years. The tank is a RedSea Max S-500. It has been setup as is going on about 2.5 years, but was setup from a 75 I previously had (with some additional added rock) - which in turn had been setup probably about a decade (and came from a 54...which came from an old AquaPod back in the day). The tank looked great from the start and I added to the coral (mostly soft coral/LPS) and fish I had before. This issue has been going on awhile, so the timing and sequence of events are a little fuzzy, but this is the rough version of it:
About probably 8-9 months ago, I started having major algae issues. Never in any tank have I had anything like this before, and that's even having used tap water in the past (I don't anymore and haven't in years). It didn't really seem to be provoked by anything and I'm not even sure what kind of algae came first. The stocking had been stable for about a year prior to the algae starting. I admittedly fell behind on water changes for a number of months and there was some (what appeared to be hair algae). I noticed a number of inverts (namely shrimp and snails) had been dying and realized my alkalinity was quite high (14.5, usually 9.5) due to two faulty test kits (after past blunders, I double check anything that seems off). In hindsight, I think this was probably due to a dino outbreak, but I didn't figure this out right away. Curiously, the required dosing regimen of Reef Fusion had been stable for a year and suddenly dropped precipitously - hence the alkalinity spike. There wasn't any appreciable coral death at that time. Over time, the algae got much worse (I still didn't realize this was dinos) and any snails I added kept dying. Corals and such were fine, except that many were getting overgrown and a number of LPS seemed to die from that. I lost all of my many (maybe 20?) rainbow RBTAs from overgrowth. I'd pull out a liter bottle worth of pure algae and it'd be back within a week or two.
My test kit readings (again, double testing - Hannah checkers and a backup to confirm - usually API since they're cheap and an AquaSpin at the LFS) were all showing no phosphate and no nitrate. I made some major changes, assuming that the algae was consuming whatever was an issue immediately and that I just couldn't measure it. I've always been of the mindset that algae of any kind is a symptom and not something to be treated chemically, but nothing I've tried has worked. I started by adding phos binders (no change) and reducing the amount of feeding (mostly the amount of nori, and changing the holder so they couldn't rip off big pieces that may rot).
There was now clearly green hair-like algae under what I thought was cyano and it was covering every inch of the tank. Namely, I removed a sand bed in the refugium and made a big effort clean up the sand in the tank (about 1" deep, decorative and placed after the rocks to avoid any trapped areas). I removed the rocks and shook them off in a bucket of tank water and aimed flow behind the rocks to keep anything from settling back there. I replaced all of my RO/DI filters (which were only a year old anyway). I added flow (two Nero 5s in addition to the RSM stock equipment). This didn't work. I realized that there were dinos at this point and dosed DinoX and added an oversized UV sterilizer. It worked, but the "hair algae" went nuts. This was many months ago and the dinos never returned.
With the dinos gone, I re-added snails and hermits of all kinds and they did fine. Turbos (the regular mexican turbos and including the giant zebra turbos), top crown, astrea, trochus, scarlet hermits, blue legs. None eat the algae that I have. They all prefer to be on the glass and if I even put them on the rocks, they seem to fall off and go elsewhere. They also avoid whatever this algae is that grows on the glass itself. I added urchins (pincushion, tuxedo) - same thing. The tuxedos, I think, actually starved over about a month. The pincushion is still cruising around but is never on the algae. I thought maybe the algae was just too long, so I've tried putting the inverts on it after I trim it and they still won't touch it. I removed the sand from the tank bit by bit. I increased water changes. I switched salts (fluval which I really liked to coral pro). I raised my magnesium from 1100 to 1300 (it had briefly dipped to 900 after I used reefcrystals a few times when the fluval ran out - but this didn't coincide with any changes in the algae). I took out about a quarter of the rock (I had an absolute ton in there) to augment cleaning and flow. The rock and sand are in a tub with heat and flow in the basement - I checked the nitrate and phosphate in this to see if they're leeching anything (there's no light and no algae in the tub)- phos is 0.2 and nitrate is 0 in the tub after having all of the scum I cleaned out of the tank rotting in there. I tried diflucan and it didn't seem to work (several attempts). I slowly replaced all of the ceramic bioballs. No change. I added chaeto to my refugium. No change.
About 3 weeks ago, I got fed up and decided to try hydrogen peroxide. I did a water change and scrubbed/dipped almost all of the rock (I left some alone - like the one with an 8" maxima on it). The rock I scrubbed and dipped looked great. Re-growth where I hadn't dipped seemed at bay. However, as you might expect, it's starting up again and I'm just not sure what to do. With the algae almost all gone, I still had almost no phosphate (0.06) and a nitrate of 3. I've been entertaining the idea that this is bryopsis (or something) but I'm not really sure - and the fluconazole should kill it. Every time I remove algae, it seems to be back in full force within a week or two.
Here's where I am now:
Tank is a RedSea Max S500 (134g ish) with 3 ReefLed 90's on the long blue mode (I have not changed this - and there was no algae for the first 1.5-2 years of this tank's life - but this is about the only thing I haven't swapped out). Sump has chaeto and tons of rock but really no detritus. Running carbon and the RSM skimmer. A Coralife TurboTwist 12 UV sterilizer. The stock flow with the RSM 500 + added Nero 5 x 2 recently. About 100lbs of rock. No sand in the refugium anymore. Some (minimal with a lot of bare glass) still in the tank. Have ceramic bio balls (all replaced in the past few months). Dosing Reef Fusion 1/2.
Livestock (beyond snails/hermits and urchins, I have nothing new since a year ago): tons of hairy mushrooms, the surviving hammers and torches, a lot of big leathers, some zoanthids, a bunch of hermits/snails as above, a pincushion urchin, a huge maxima.
Fish - 3 percula clowns, 2 yellow damsels, 1 kupang damsel, 1 powder blue tang (the most recent addition - a bit over a year ago), 1 yellow tang, 1 sailfin tang, 1 flame angel (none of these ever pick at the algae either)
Feeding - nori (only enough that they rip it out and eat all of it in about a minute), fed most days and spectrum pellets (not overfed) daily.
Current (and really pretty much unchanged throughout all of this) test readings (Hannah checker + API + aquaspin at LFS):
Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
pH 8.2
ALK 9.5-10 dKh
Calcium 500
Mag 1200 (minimum in past 9 months 900, only briefly and this was more recently)
Nitrate 0 (maximum 3.0 in the past 9 months)
Phos 0 (maximum 0.1 in the past months, almost always reads 0)
Some photos are attached. The tank about a year ago. I've lost a ton of coral as you'll notice.
The tank with the algae and a closeup of the algae a few months ago.
...and a picture of the tank after taking the rock out, scrubbing it and H202 dipping it.
As mentioned, the algae is now coming back after a few weeks, including where it had been obliterated. The dipped coral are all starting to look great again after the dip (so is the algae...).
Any advice is appreciated. Having had so many tanks for so many years, I've realized there's always some new problem to be had but this is a new one. At wits end with it.
I've essentially run out of things to do for an algae issue and so I'm turning here. I've been in this hobby about 20 years. The tank is a RedSea Max S-500. It has been setup as is going on about 2.5 years, but was setup from a 75 I previously had (with some additional added rock) - which in turn had been setup probably about a decade (and came from a 54...which came from an old AquaPod back in the day). The tank looked great from the start and I added to the coral (mostly soft coral/LPS) and fish I had before. This issue has been going on awhile, so the timing and sequence of events are a little fuzzy, but this is the rough version of it:
About probably 8-9 months ago, I started having major algae issues. Never in any tank have I had anything like this before, and that's even having used tap water in the past (I don't anymore and haven't in years). It didn't really seem to be provoked by anything and I'm not even sure what kind of algae came first. The stocking had been stable for about a year prior to the algae starting. I admittedly fell behind on water changes for a number of months and there was some (what appeared to be hair algae). I noticed a number of inverts (namely shrimp and snails) had been dying and realized my alkalinity was quite high (14.5, usually 9.5) due to two faulty test kits (after past blunders, I double check anything that seems off). In hindsight, I think this was probably due to a dino outbreak, but I didn't figure this out right away. Curiously, the required dosing regimen of Reef Fusion had been stable for a year and suddenly dropped precipitously - hence the alkalinity spike. There wasn't any appreciable coral death at that time. Over time, the algae got much worse (I still didn't realize this was dinos) and any snails I added kept dying. Corals and such were fine, except that many were getting overgrown and a number of LPS seemed to die from that. I lost all of my many (maybe 20?) rainbow RBTAs from overgrowth. I'd pull out a liter bottle worth of pure algae and it'd be back within a week or two.
My test kit readings (again, double testing - Hannah checkers and a backup to confirm - usually API since they're cheap and an AquaSpin at the LFS) were all showing no phosphate and no nitrate. I made some major changes, assuming that the algae was consuming whatever was an issue immediately and that I just couldn't measure it. I've always been of the mindset that algae of any kind is a symptom and not something to be treated chemically, but nothing I've tried has worked. I started by adding phos binders (no change) and reducing the amount of feeding (mostly the amount of nori, and changing the holder so they couldn't rip off big pieces that may rot).
There was now clearly green hair-like algae under what I thought was cyano and it was covering every inch of the tank. Namely, I removed a sand bed in the refugium and made a big effort clean up the sand in the tank (about 1" deep, decorative and placed after the rocks to avoid any trapped areas). I removed the rocks and shook them off in a bucket of tank water and aimed flow behind the rocks to keep anything from settling back there. I replaced all of my RO/DI filters (which were only a year old anyway). I added flow (two Nero 5s in addition to the RSM stock equipment). This didn't work. I realized that there were dinos at this point and dosed DinoX and added an oversized UV sterilizer. It worked, but the "hair algae" went nuts. This was many months ago and the dinos never returned.
With the dinos gone, I re-added snails and hermits of all kinds and they did fine. Turbos (the regular mexican turbos and including the giant zebra turbos), top crown, astrea, trochus, scarlet hermits, blue legs. None eat the algae that I have. They all prefer to be on the glass and if I even put them on the rocks, they seem to fall off and go elsewhere. They also avoid whatever this algae is that grows on the glass itself. I added urchins (pincushion, tuxedo) - same thing. The tuxedos, I think, actually starved over about a month. The pincushion is still cruising around but is never on the algae. I thought maybe the algae was just too long, so I've tried putting the inverts on it after I trim it and they still won't touch it. I removed the sand from the tank bit by bit. I increased water changes. I switched salts (fluval which I really liked to coral pro). I raised my magnesium from 1100 to 1300 (it had briefly dipped to 900 after I used reefcrystals a few times when the fluval ran out - but this didn't coincide with any changes in the algae). I took out about a quarter of the rock (I had an absolute ton in there) to augment cleaning and flow. The rock and sand are in a tub with heat and flow in the basement - I checked the nitrate and phosphate in this to see if they're leeching anything (there's no light and no algae in the tub)- phos is 0.2 and nitrate is 0 in the tub after having all of the scum I cleaned out of the tank rotting in there. I tried diflucan and it didn't seem to work (several attempts). I slowly replaced all of the ceramic bioballs. No change. I added chaeto to my refugium. No change.
About 3 weeks ago, I got fed up and decided to try hydrogen peroxide. I did a water change and scrubbed/dipped almost all of the rock (I left some alone - like the one with an 8" maxima on it). The rock I scrubbed and dipped looked great. Re-growth where I hadn't dipped seemed at bay. However, as you might expect, it's starting up again and I'm just not sure what to do. With the algae almost all gone, I still had almost no phosphate (0.06) and a nitrate of 3. I've been entertaining the idea that this is bryopsis (or something) but I'm not really sure - and the fluconazole should kill it. Every time I remove algae, it seems to be back in full force within a week or two.
Here's where I am now:
Tank is a RedSea Max S500 (134g ish) with 3 ReefLed 90's on the long blue mode (I have not changed this - and there was no algae for the first 1.5-2 years of this tank's life - but this is about the only thing I haven't swapped out). Sump has chaeto and tons of rock but really no detritus. Running carbon and the RSM skimmer. A Coralife TurboTwist 12 UV sterilizer. The stock flow with the RSM 500 + added Nero 5 x 2 recently. About 100lbs of rock. No sand in the refugium anymore. Some (minimal with a lot of bare glass) still in the tank. Have ceramic bio balls (all replaced in the past few months). Dosing Reef Fusion 1/2.
Livestock (beyond snails/hermits and urchins, I have nothing new since a year ago): tons of hairy mushrooms, the surviving hammers and torches, a lot of big leathers, some zoanthids, a bunch of hermits/snails as above, a pincushion urchin, a huge maxima.
Fish - 3 percula clowns, 2 yellow damsels, 1 kupang damsel, 1 powder blue tang (the most recent addition - a bit over a year ago), 1 yellow tang, 1 sailfin tang, 1 flame angel (none of these ever pick at the algae either)
Feeding - nori (only enough that they rip it out and eat all of it in about a minute), fed most days and spectrum pellets (not overfed) daily.
Current (and really pretty much unchanged throughout all of this) test readings (Hannah checker + API + aquaspin at LFS):
Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
pH 8.2
ALK 9.5-10 dKh
Calcium 500
Mag 1200 (minimum in past 9 months 900, only briefly and this was more recently)
Nitrate 0 (maximum 3.0 in the past 9 months)
Phos 0 (maximum 0.1 in the past months, almost always reads 0)
Some photos are attached. The tank about a year ago. I've lost a ton of coral as you'll notice.
...and a picture of the tank after taking the rock out, scrubbing it and H202 dipping it.
Any advice is appreciated. Having had so many tanks for so many years, I've realized there's always some new problem to be had but this is a new one. At wits end with it.
Last edited:
