#%*$? Algae!!

[Sharkonwheels]

I have MORE dang varieties, and species, of algae, than I do fish!!

No matter WHAT I do, I can't get RID of the stuff!

I checked my phosphates last night, and it looks about as close to zero, as these 40yo eyes can tell from the color-matching on the test.

I've done 15-20g water changes the past 4 weekends (on a 72g tank!!)

I've had phosban in a sock for 2 weeks in the sump...
the power-compact bulbs are only like 3 months old.

I need help...this stuff is SO unsightly!

Any suggestions? I got like 3 types of hair algae, I have this long-growing branching stuff, I have this other stuff that stands up and looks like a bird feather, the green bubble stuff....

<sigh>

this stuff is UGLY! It;s even growing out of the dang sand!
I mean, it's algae, and freaking plants, it looks like!


HEEEEEELP!


Tony

 

[pedromatic]

First of all, Sharkie, chill out dude. I recommend scotch, but any adult beverage will help.

What are you feeding? Many types of food contains algae and will contribute to your problem. For example, my puffer loves Hikari algae wafers, but they promote algae even though my phosphates are around .02 and nitrates are 0.

Try some snails, lots of 'em.

 

[Sharkonwheels]

Been doing that, but the amount of vodka it takes to NOT see the algae, well, let's just mention the word "incoherent."



I feed krill to the puffer, and humahuma trigger, marine flakes for the chromis, and drop about 5 pellets for the columbian shark.

Don;t drop algae anything in the tank at present, as the rock blennies are having a total party on the glass/rocks. Seems they avoid the hair-looking stuff, though.

I have 2 snails, but they just traverse the glass - this stuff is growing on the rocks, and I mean GROWING!


Tony

 

[illal]

u need way more than 2 snails..i kno thats hard between a trigger and puffer but thats why i switched over to more on the reef safe side ... i just picked up a bunch of turbos from $1 a piece from exotic aquatic today

 

[pedromatic]

Check the ingredients on the flakes and pellets. 2 snails is not enough for a 72, get lots more, they're cheap.

Oh, and vodka works in the tank too, but I'm not going down that road in this thread.

 

[jeffbrig]

I'll throw out a couple of suggestions.

First, skip the pellets/flakes. Prepared foods contain lots of phosphate as a preservative. I prefer to make my own from fresh seafood, as does Rogger and many others.

Don't trust your phosphate test. Unless you're using one of the high quality (read: expensive) colorimetric tests, the hobbyist tests are pretty inaccurate.

When he spoke to the club last year, Julian Sprung suggested using high alkalinity to combat algae, around 10-12dkH. I have seen a reduction in the growth of my dictyota (a plague upon the earth) while maintaining alkalinity at ~10dKH, so I'm a believer.

After that, you can only look at reducing nutrient levels (skimming), and adding livestock that eat algae (tangs, snails, etc.)

 

[Sharkonwheels]

FYI I'm using "Omega One Marine Flakes with Garlic" and the pellets are "Wardley Shrimp Pellets Formula"

I don't know what more snails would do - I have like 2-3 in there, but the go ONLY on the glass, which is not REALLY where the problem is. The rock blennies go to the glass, too, and sometimes on the LR, but they don;t go near the hairy stuff.

This stuff is growing unabated.

Really frustrating...OK - looking for the vodka now...

Tony

 

[spooda420]

I too have a HA issue now, I am recently setup a biodenitrifor and 2 - TLC po4 reactors, I have read that a sea hare will eat the HA, but I think we need to control the amount of food and the amount of light that the tank is getting first then we can get animals that will pick at it.

Try skimming a little wet and adding a 03 generator, that has seems to kill all the bubble algea

remember algea/plant need food,light,water to live.... one of those things is amiss in the tanks....

 

[Sharkonwheels]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10391522#post10391522 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jeffbrig
I'll throw out a couple of suggestions.

First, skip the pellets/flakes. Prepared foods contain lots of phosphate as a preservative. I prefer to make my own from fresh seafood, as does Rogger and many others.

Don't trust your phosphate test. Unless you're using one of the high quality (read: expensive) colorimetric tests, the hobbyist tests are pretty inaccurate.

When he spoke to the club last year, Julian Sprung suggested using high alkalinity to combat algae, around 10-12dkH. I have seen a reduction in the growth of my dictyota (a plague upon the earth) while maintaining alkalinity at ~10dKH, so I'm a believer.

After that, you can only look at reducing nutrient levels (skimming), and adding livestock that eat algae (tangs, snails, etc.)

I just happened to PM Rogger about the food a couple days ago.

I have 2-3 snails, but they stick (literally, and figuratively) to the glass only.

No way I'm going down the tang route again - I lost my whole tank due to a tang and ich back in March/April. I'd be willing to try another Foxface Lo, if they eat algae. I lost mine to the ich attack in March/April.

I do have 2 rock blennies, but they pick at the glass, and don't do much to the rocks. They only pick at the rocks where they have a little bit of algae, not the bushy stuff.

What's the best way to raise, and then monitor, alkalinity?
That might be something to try...


Tony

 

[coralfragger101]

I agree with Jeff. More than likely it is your phosphates from "what" you are feeding.

Only other thing I can think of is that if the tank is very old then you could also have phosphate/nitrates bound up within the LR and substrate but chances are - that is not the case.

A clean up crew can help but water quality is always the key to long term algae control.

 

[Sharkonwheels]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10391634#post10391634 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by spooda420
I too have a HA issue now, I am recently setup a biodenitrifor and 2 - TLC po4 reactors, I have read that a sea hare will eat the HA, but I think we need to control the amount of food and the amount of light that the tank is getting first then we can get animals that will pick at it.

Try skimming a little wet and adding a 03 generator, that has seems to kill all the bubble algea

remember algea/plant need food,light,water to live.... one of those things is amiss in the tanks....

OK - some questions as I'm not an expert.
What's "skimming a little wet" and an "03 generator"?
I have the lights set to go on at 10am and go off at 4pm, as I was told to back down on the amount of lighting to see if it helps.

I do have a protein skimmer, I have phosban in a "sock" media bag in the wet/dry. I also have the skimmer set to drop it's output water on the phosban media bag.

I've been paying attention to how much I feed, to make sure there's little or none left over.


Tony

 

[Sharkonwheels]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10391801#post10391801 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by coralfragger101
I agree with Jeff. More than likely it is your phosphates from "what" you are feeding.

Only other thing I can think of is that if the tank is very old then you could also have phosphate/nitrates bound up within the LR and substrate but chances are - that is not the case.

A clean up crew can help but water quality is always the key to long term algae control.

FYI - tank was started in January.


Tony

 

[spooda420]

you should invest in a skimmer, and skimming wet is removing more water and skimmate, instead of coffee looking skimmate go go a light tea color.

o3 is hooking up a ozone generator to help eliminate the nasties in the tank.

those have help reuce the amount of HA I have in the tank.

 

[Sharkonwheels]

I do have a protein skimmer. I get about a half-cup of "stuff" per week.

How do you skim wet? Is that an adjustment on the skimmer?

Tony

 

[jessp]

how about getting different types of snails that will eat off the rocks, like the jumbo mexican turbos they work very well.

also try raising your magnesium level, there was a big thread about higher mag levels not hurting anything but bryopsis.

 

[spooda420]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10391973#post10391973 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sharkonwheels
I do have a protein skimmer. I get about a half-cup of "stuff" per week.

How do you skim wet? Is that an adjustment on the skimmer?

Tony

to skim wet adjust the skimmer... I dont know what type of skimmer you have, but Im sure you can adjust to skim wet or dry, usually its more water less air.

 

[Sharkonwheels]

I have a SeaClone 100 skimmer:

http://www.marineland.com/products/consumer/con_sclone.asp

on a 72g bowfront tank


Tony

 

[ninjamini]

Do you have hair algae?

Do you have hair algae?

If you have a hair algae problem then read my cure all. I just recently took a tank off someone's hands, a very experienced reefer too, who had a hair algae problem that they could not fix. But the fix is so easy when you understand it. This is the instructions for a established tank. If your tank is under 3 months old read below* first.

Hair algae wont grow if you don't feed it.

1. Use Ro/DI water ONLY. If your not doing this then you are making a fatal mistake.

2. Pick off the big clumps of hair. Pull the rocks out you can and pull pull pull. Dip them back in the water to get the algae to hang down. Turn off the flow for the rocks you cant remove while you pick it off. By picking off the big clumps you remove the nitrates and phosphates from the water.

3. Know why it grows. It consumes nitrates, phosphates and light. Export the nitrates and phosphates with water changes and some cheto. Rember if you test says that you have 0 Nitrates and 0 Phosphates that does not mean you don't have them. It just means that they are consumed. If you have algae growing then you have nitrates and phosphates. Yea there in there.

4. Cut back on feeding. Where do you thing those nitrates and phosphates come from. If you have any really piggy fish then you may want to move them to QT.

5. Turn down the photo period by shutting the lights off and only turn them on for 6 hours a day. Most corals can handle this for a month. Just think of it as the rainy season.

6. Get a emerald and some mexican snails. Yea the big ones. They will both eat the short stuff.

7. Time. Give it 3-4 weeks then start to turn the lights to 7, 8...more hours till your back to a normal amount of time.


Done. Now I have my nano cube filled with sand, rocks, zoos and fish because I was able to follow this plan and he was not. Which is weird since he has an awesome sps tank.

*If your tank is new that is less than 3 months old then the question is not how to get rid of them but understanding that this is only part of the natural cycle of a new tank. If this happened just as your ammonia and nitrites test at 0 then its going to grow. Its the same reason because there is alot of nitrate and phosphate in the water. This would be the time to do your first water change and then add your clean up crew. They will take care of the algae along with water changes.

Remember don.t feed your nuisance algae and it wont grow.
Good Luck.

 

[TorryRx]

Do you have a refugium plumbed in to your tank? I noticed a tremendous difference when I put a fuge on my reef tank. The cheato (or any other macro algae that you grow in it) will compete for the nutrients in the water and prevent it from being utilized by the nuisance algae.

A few emerald crabs would do a good number on the algae, but I doubt if they'd last very long between the trigger and the puffer. I have the same issue in my 90 gallon aggressive tank...cleanup crews tend to get eaten!

Algae can be very difficult to control in the aggressive FOWLR tanks, due to a few reasons...
1. The aggressive fish eat alot, poop alot and contribute significantly to the nutrients in the system.
2. It's impossible to keep a good clean up crew around without them becoming a snack for a hungry puffer or trigger.

I definitely sympathize...my aggressive tank is being run over with bubble algae, but I did manage to get rid of the hair algae...I got a Foxface.

He's happily munched all of the hair algae off of the rocks, and he's a tough guy...he doesn't bother any of the other fish, but he sure doesn't let anyone push him around. Even my maroon clown leaves him alone, and she's a nasty one! If someone tries to mess with him, he'll just raise his dorsal spines (they're venomous, BTW), and they back off.

Good luck with your algae battle! I'm sure you'll eventually get it under control, but it will take some time.

Torry

 

[TorryRx]

Sorry, double post...