Death Tank!

[mpcart]

This is more of a venting exercise than a request for help . . . but if anyone has any good ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

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I've been fighting a terrible algae problem - hair, bryopsis, and cyano - since I moved my tank in June. It was mostly caused by my own stupidity. I accidentally let my SG get to 1.032, I didn't run a skimmer for a couple weeks due to a broken pump, I overfed my fish, and let my Ca and Alk get too low when I had problems with my CaRx. I also have a flow problem because my SPS have gotten so big they are blocking the flow - kind of a weird "problem" to have.

I got all that fixed - except the flow issue, but was left with a huge algae problem.

I fixed the cyano problem with chemi-clean. I regularly pluck off the bryopsis and hair algae, and I run a phosban reactor.

To combat the bryopsis problem I raised my Mg over a week or so to well over 2500 ppm using Epsom salt. Being stupid, I didn't bother to check my levels until all my crabs, snails, and starfish died.

I bought $75 worth of clean up crew, acclimated it, and had it all die within 10 minutes of being in the tank. So I lowered my Mg to 2000 ppm, and found out my sg was still at 1.030.

I then lowered my sg to 1.025, bought another $50 cleanup crew today, acclimated it, and it died within 15 minutes of being in the tank.

I guess I'm going to have to do some massive water changes, lower the Mg to 1600 or so and see if that helps.

This tank has been nothing but a pain in the rear the last couple months.

Newbies should take notice - Don't ignore your tank or let algae problems get out of control!

The good thing is that my SPS are growing like crazy and most of them have colored up nicely during this whole mess.

Ugh!

-Mike

 

[chadfarmer]

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

 

[frenchie]

have to stabilize your water parameters were they should be normally than let system run its course than try cleaner crew again, fast fix is a sea hare. refugium area in sump helps to absorb nutrients to starve algae in display tank. I used S.A.T. made by tlc company.

 

[dphins]

Any chance you could post a pic of the tank?

 

[DrBDC]

Good luck. I hate when stuff like that happens. Water changes are probably your best option right now.

Using the epsom for the mag raise, your sulphate balance is way out of wack. The only real way to lower that is lots of water changes. I'd keep that up until you get the mag gets down around 1400ish. Then if you want to raise it back to 1600 for hair algae battle, use tech-m or a mgcl/mgso4 mixture of about 7-1. Just be sure not to raise more than about 50-100 per day.

Have you checked your new salt mix mag levels? I've noticed that a coralife and reef crystals both have been giving just over 1500 mag recently. That could dillute the decrease you get from the water changes.