Algae problems

[o2bnh20]

I'm having a breakout with algae of a king I haven't seen in my tank before. It seems to be a layer all over my LR, my snails, and my substrate. When i turned off the main pump to my fuge, and also turned off all the pwereheads, there started to be some floating algae in the water. It looked like little dots with air bubbles attached to it, and it was all over everything. When I started the pumps back it was a whirl of green all over the place.
I have added three fish 3 days in a row(chromis). I have a plastic grill over my pre-filter box to keep the snails from coming in and I have a foam pre-filter in my overflow(lifereef). I'm at a loss why to the sudden growth. I have a healty supply of cheata algae and calupra in my fuge that's not controlling this.

sg=1.026
ph=7.9-8.1
phosphate=0.05ppm
NO2=0
NO3=0
NA4=0
temp=82
I'm wondering if feeding my one coral with plankton two times a week is the problem? My tank is 58g and I have been feeding two capfulls of PK's twice a week. Can anyone help me solve this. Sorry it got so lengthy,
Scott

 

[kmk2307]

o2bnh20,

The algae sounds like cyanobacteria. Try to reduce your phosphates. They should be undetectable. What is PK's? Do you mean DTs? Do you use purified water to mix your saltwater and topoff with? How much light is on your refugium? Did the algae appear after you added the fish? How many fish total (and what kinds) do you have now?

Kevin

 

[Plantbrain]

If your NO3 are zero and you have a fuge, there's simply not enough nitrate to suppoort the macro's growth, there's plenty for the Cyano. You can do a few things, add KNO3 or add more fish/food etc.

You need to remove the Cyano that's there, then re set your tank, check Ca/Alk temp, dosing traces etc

I'm not sure why PO4 remover is going to do anything at 0.05ppm of PO4.

Macro's use that in a day, so you'll select for the Cyano there, not the macro's, the cyano's might slow down, but they will come back later.

Cyanos are very small and possess exteremely low nutrient needs for growth and mainteance.

Macro's need far more nutrients.

So limiting things is a poor apporach for growing a macro.

The same approach is true for FW plants.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[o2bnh20]

I do use RO/DI Water, I meant DT's not PK's. I have 3 Chromis, 1 6 line wrasse,1 canary blenny and a royal gramma. What is KNO3?. I did a very thourgh cleaning and sucked up all the algae I could. It has reduced, but is still present. Can anyone find a link that has a picture of this Cyano so I can see if this is it. I have been thinking about adding a tang to help with some of the hair algae I have.

 

[Plantbrain]

I doubt knowning the precise species if really going to help you.
Some light vacuuming, removal of any detrital matter, clean filter, water change, you can do a 3 day blackout but this might effect other anumals and plants/macros.

KNO3 is potassium nitrate. They sell it most places, as stump remover, which is roughly 99.5% pure KNO3. You can also buy it on line etc for about 3-4$ lb, a 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gal of water will add roughly 10-11ppm of NO3 to your tank, the extra K+ at this level will not influence the system.

Smaller doses will work, say 1/2 this amount and you can can also make standard reference solutions with the RO water to check you accuracy of you test kits.

If you add a known mass of KNO3 or any salt/compound and dissolve it in a liquid, you can easily get the ppm of that solution.

This all may sound complicated but it's not, there's calculators on line for just this type of situation.

See Chuck Gadd's site for a calculator.

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_aquacalc.htm

Personally, I dose things dry unless I need to be particularly accurate.

This provides roughly 1ppm accuracy so this is beyond the accuracy of even a 60$-100$ Hach or Lamott low range test kit.

But macro algae do need a fair amount of NO3, 0.0ppm is not good. How can they grow with that little?

If you take care of the macro's, they will take care of you.

I think people are too scared of nutrients and not focusing on the biological components(plants/macros) for filtering.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[o2bnh20]

Well when I say -0- NO3, it's really maybe 0.02ppm. Anyway very little. I might try to take a pic of the tank and see if you can determine exactly what it is.

What about the DOC content? I've used a product called chemi-pure before and I was wondering if this would be of benefit?

I don't want to sound skeptical, but I'm always leary of adding things to my tank until I thoughly understand what I'm doing.

But I'm grateful for your time helping me with this
Scott

 

[o2bnh20]

Too many zeros on the nitrate 0.2ppm