Algae problems

[bwidner]

I have had a recent outbreak of green hair algae and red slime in my tank and parameters have read steady for the last 3 weeks now
nitrates 5
nitrites 0
phosphates .2

so I can figure out what is causing this all the water in the tank is ro/di water from the machines at the smiths on tramway, tried a lawnmower blenny and saw him constantly eating it for a week, havent seen it at all int he past week though, bout a couple of XLG nassarius snails and they disappeared the night I bought them, everything in the tank is doing great the xenias and star polyps are spreading like weeds the candy cane trumpet i growing another head the mushroom are spreading all over the rock they are on and the macroalgae in the refugium seems to be growing also (although some red algae is growing on the chaeto), any ideas other than water changes did a 20% last tuesday and it brought the nitrates to 0 and phospate to .1 I have also cut the lights back from 10hours daily to 8 now in 30 minute increments everyday. I have a seaclone skimmer and have done most of the diy mods suggested on the site and it is pulling less but a much thicker skimate out.....I am all out of ideas and am looking for some more help I really dont want to buy a algae remover chemical because it a temporary fix I want to permantly try to fix this. its a 55g with a 20g sump, I have 10 or so hermits 5 smaller turbo snails a few cerith snails and somewhere if they are still alive the lawnmower blenny and the XLG nassarius snails, every time I add more hermits they seem to start fighting and killing off the smallest ones and snails I have trouble with keeping alive other than that all the corals are very happy and my pair of clowns and hippo tang seem perfectly happy as well, any ideas?

 

[israelnajar]

Well I am pretty sure that the nassarius are hiding in the sand bed, that is usually where they hang out until they smell some food.

The RO machines in the stores are good, usually. If you have a TDS meter you should check the TDS of the RO from those machines. Who knows when the last time the membranes were changed, ya know. If you dont have one try switching where you get your water. Check out water to go, you can find a 25 gallons free coupon in the valpak.


How much and what kind are you feeding? You may be over feeding.

Is your tank in direct sunlight during the day at anytime? That may be causing the bad algae also.

You can throw some macro algae into your sump with a clip on light to out compete the GH in the display. You can probably get some from any of the big three LFSs . If not hit me up I am sure I can spare some.

You could also throw another 8 to 10 more turbos to keep the HA in check while your macro catches up.

Im sure other people might have something to add.


Edit:

How old is the tank? Algae is common in new setups.

Also, don't be afraid to post in one of the main forums as this one is a little slow sometimes.

 

[bwidner]

I have both calpuera and chaeto in my sump currently doesnt seem to be helping much though its been in there for 3 weeks now and red sslime algae is growing ON it in places.....I feed every other day mysis shrimp and flake food alternating I feed them in small amount if they finish what they get in a minute or so they get a little more the way they attack the food I doubt overfeeding is a problem. Should I assume the lawnmower is dead? havent seen hime for a week now and I used to have a bi-color until the move I never went more than a day or two without seeing him

Tank has been up all in all for 3 years, I moved 2 months ago and did add about 10lbs of live rock that seemed to be fully cured when I added the sump from southwest reef. Dont really want to add more turbos as they seem to constantly die in the tank dont know why so I want to keep that as a 2nd to last resort.... as far as the nassarius what do u mean until they smell food? I was told they are almost as good algae eaters as turbos and I placed them both on rocks with a good algae growth on them.

 

[rabid frog]

Well there could be a million reasons why. First of all you should shoot for 0 phosphates. That can easily be done by running a phos. reactor. They are fairly inexpensive and work really well. I top off with tap water and mine are 0.

To rid your self of the hair algae can be some work. When I had an out break in my 55. I fought it for a bit. I would put a sock on the end of the tube coming from the over flow box. Take a old tube sock, rubber band it on the end of the hose and put it back in the sump. works as a cheap filter. I then took the lr and srcubbed it off in the tank water. It passes through the over flow and gets trapped in the sock. Take the sock and throw it away after 1 night. Repeat this as necessary.

This will give the crabs and snails a chance to get the algae while it is short. It is kind of hard for them to get after it once it is long.

Also in my experience nassarius snails are not a good algae eater. They are better on the diatoms. You may also try getting a Urchin. They move stuff around a bit, but they are great algae eaters.

As far as the red slime. You are best off getting the red slime remover and using it. It is reef safe and works well. Most of my experience with it, 1 dose does the job.

As you may have read, Seaclones are not the best skimmer to use. You will be better off buying a Aqua C of some sort. They are also fairly inexpensive and are great nag for the buck in my experience. I had 1 on my 75 sps and 1 on my aquapod. They do a great job.

Hope this helps, I know algae battles can be hard. Just keep after them. Good news is once you win the battle, most other problems will seem minor in comparison.

 

[bwidner]

i really dont want to spend more money on a skimmer, I flip the house AI live in every 2 years and following this next flip in under a year( owned 2 at once this last time) I will be pretty much buying a permanent house as I should have around 220k in equity when I sell this one, at that time I will upgrading to a 400-500g reef so thats why I did the seaclone mods, after I did that my elvels dropped fairly considerable over the next 2 weeks, as far a phosphate reactor I think I may get by without one as phosphate levels were at .8 and I added rowa-phos 2 weeks ago in a filter bag and put in in between a baffle in the sump and levels fell fast to .2 next test day is tommorrow hopefully it will be reading 0. I had a urchin once before and it lasted 3 month before it died I think it was a royal or emporer urchin and am concerned as most of my corals are small and attached more so to frag rocks than the actual large rocks and dont want to constantly have to fix what it is knocking over

 

[rabid frog]

well its going to be a lot of work to get rid of your algae . The stuff is not going to go away by itself. If you are moving that often you may want to wait on setting up a reef. Maybe just do a Fowlr. It is pretty hard on reefs to constantly move them.

I have given you what has worked for me in the past, do with it as you wish. I hope it all works out for you in the end.

 

[bwidner]

I have the foam prefilter in my overflow that I clean once a week can I use that and clean daily vs the sock? I pull what I can off the rocks daily by hand and throw it away vs scrubbing. My system now has very few corals and like I said the final move in a VERY VERY long time will happen in a year or so, thats why I have been mostly sticking to hardier softies vs getting anything delicate. I noticed last week when I was at coral island they have like 4 different red slime removers, what do you recommend? With an aqua sea if I can pick one up for under $80 on ebay I will do that any more and I will feel like it is a waste of money. I have read that doing the mods I have done to the seaclone as well as making a non porous foam gasket, it performs almost as well as an aqua c or backpack skimmers, on several different sites. Will increased flow help? currently my tank flows at about 23-24x total water volume per hour, I know they say move it above 10x to help with algae outbreaks but I am so far above that already would it help any more?

 

[bajabum]

Raise magnesium levels and hair algae/bryopsis goes by by. Silicates are the problem along with phosphates. Could have accumulated in rock or sand.
I use seaclone if I want to really skim a tank in my system after I raise magnesium. Slow the water flow down in the skimmer so you have max air and min water flow. Most skimmers are run at to high a water flow rate. I am building my own fractionators (skimmers) on my overflow to sump. 4' pipe, air pump (1.5 watts), make my own airstones. I shoot for a 4 minitue water residence time in the pipe. Low flow, low turbulence in the skimmer and a whole lot of nutrient problems go away. Spent the time since you first posted experiamenting to find best approach. Just happened that I had a couple of tanks in my system with both. While I build my fractionators, I am using a limewood airstone down the central tube of my old skimmers with water flow turned low. I am also dropping alk level and keeping pH above 8.2 with short dark periods, but skimming the dead stuff is the only way to stop the nutrient cycle and get the overload out. My first fractionator will go on line this weekend on the tank that still has the green cyno/dino problem which occured after hair algae was terminated.