I'm lost... algea... death... defeat

rsteagall

rsteagall

New member
Greetings everyone. Hope everyone has been doing well. This past summer, I became a temporary alcoholic. :D My friends said that I had a drinking problem... my reply was "NO, I do not have a problem drinking!" Heh... anyway, it wasn't hat bad but I did have a good time and had other priorities this summer.

At the end of last year, I started getting a bunch of hair algae and have never recovered from it. I don't really care to mention all the corals I've lost due to hair algae choking them out. Right now I still have some anthellia, zoas, mushrooms, ricordia, frogspawn, and all my fish except for hte blue jaw trigger left. I don't know what happened to the blue jaw. Everything else is gone/dead.

I almost don't even know why I'm writing this because I truly am at my whits end. I guess I'm either looking for someone to guide me or someone to urge me to throw in the towel.

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Here are my current system specs:

-58gal tank with about 15g of water in the sump at any given time.

-8w? uv filter running 24/7

-about 3-4 gallons of cheato in my sump running on about 18 hours of light per day.

-a single 250w 14k hamilton (from what I remember at least) No supplemental lighting and a photo period of 7 hours per day.

-coralife super skimmer is not running. It wasn't pulling any skim, so when it clogged, I just unplugged it for the summer.

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Exact bioload:

1 - kole tang (bought in Feb.)
2 - clown fish
1 - six line wrasse
1 - royal gramma
1 - serpent star
?? micro serpent stars
?? blue leg hermits
?? misc snails
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Things I've tried:

-I tried every 1 to 2 week ~8 gallon water changes for about 3 months and didn't notice any change at all. I used RO/DI water and the TDS was reading 0 when it went into my 32 gal brute garbage can storage container. All summer, I may have done one water change. Water changes or not, I've not seen any changes.

-I tried my coralife super skimmer and a cpr backpack. Neither would produce any skimmate.

-I tried reducing light from 9-10 hours down to 7 hours and didn't notice any change. Yesterday, I lowered it down to 4 hours.

-I'm feeding a pinch of flake food about every 2-3 days and have been doing this for about 4 months now.

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Things that just "happened":

-the first thing that I've already mentioned is skimmer is now unplugged. It wasn't pulling anything anyway... so I don't see that it mattered.

-the fuge light went out for 2-3 weeks. When I replaced it, nearly all the hair algea that was in the fuge was gone. The cheato survived just fine and is as green as ever.

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Through all these things since around the beginning of the year... hair algae still exists the same no matter what I do. The only thing that I measure and dose is buffer. All other measurements like nitrate/nitrite/ammonia come out to be 0.


Thoughts? All I know is that I'm about sick of trying. :(
 
Ryan. Did you ever at any point use tap water for water changes in the past? Reason I ask is if you did (as I did) your rock may have absorbed phosphates and is now leaching them back into the pristine water you are now putting in. they are then absorbed so fast they test kits dont read it. I test Zero now on my phosphates, but still get a bloom of bryopsis which has isolated itself to just the reutrns in the tank so it is easy to pluck out.

how old is that hamilton bulb in that light?


As you and everyone that has seen my tank knows, I dont change my water. havent in about a year and a half. I use the coil denitrator to rid the nitrated and supplement with sealab #28 cubes. I had a bad bubble algae a while back which was remedyed by emerald crabs. They did a reat job on the algae and got rid of the hair I had as well.

My superskimmer runs when I have time to clean it. Those venturi's clog up so easily with salt creep that I have to take a fork and clean out that air inlet every 2 weeks to keep it from just dumping tons of water into the cup. It is under my tank and quiet and i only remember to check it every few days to a week or two. sometimes I just unplug it and forget about it for the rest of the month.

Tank temp?
 
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Tank temp = a pretty constant 77F these days. In the summer it was getting up to about 79F with a high of about 82 one day that I remember.

Since I've had this rock (I bought it from O'Coralman), I have never used tap water. When I got it, it didn't have any hair algae that I can remember. I've always used measurable 0 tds water. Is it possible the BRUTE garbage can is adding something to the water?

I'm certain, the hamilton bulb is less than a year old.

Lindsey, msg me your phone number or give me a ring this afternoon when you get a chance. I might want to come by your house after guitar practice tonight.
 
Sure dude. I hate to hear you have having tank issues, but yea, you were focused on other things this summer. my current phight is with Xenia. WOrse than hair algae.

I highly doubt that can is causing the issues. when clean those can be used for food grade uses. COuld be that rock. it came from a source you dont know much about. maybe he used tap?

U use a clear plastic tote for my top off water. it sits covered in the garage. my tank gets to 82 every day in the summer time and then back to 79 or so at night. got down to 76 or lower this week while I was gone (need new heater) and I think i will lose my clam.

Also Tangs get very very lazy. I have 3 of them and 2 act like they are picking but dont do squat for the algae. LAZY SOBs
 
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I bought the dual DI chambers from O'Coralman too... so, I'm pretty confident that he used DI water. Every time I went to his house, he was filling barrels. Plus, I was clean for at least 6 months before the first sign of hair algae. I think I'm going on about 2.5 years with my tank now.
 
If it's old rock from an established system with a sandbed it very well could be saturated with phosphate. Did you use old sand when you setup the tank? How long has the tank been setup?

Chris
 
ORganize a fuge. Look at relevant threads in the newbie forum where we talk about fuges. THat and ro/di will solve your algae problem, and they're not hard to set up.
 
Hey Ryan. Hate to hear you are having issues...

How's your sump set up (bio balls, sand, rubble, nothing, etc.)?

Are you running a sand bed? If so, how deep?

What is your alk? Running a higher alk (well high for me is anything over 5 dKH:rolleyes:, but generally 8 to 10ish or so) can get rid of micor algaes. I had some bryopsis that lived through the move (go figure) that proliferated wafter setting everything up and suffering loses. It is gone now:). I've finally gotten my alk stable. I have had a calcium reactor since April and through being lazy and leary of babysitting it until I get it figured out, I still haven't set it up...

Could very well be the rock, too. If O'Coralman had the tank set up for a while (I remember some nice stuff coming out of his tanks and they seemed mature), the rock may have had years to store up PO4. I don't know what to recommend for a skimmer for a tank that size, but skimming will help pull nutrients, too. How often do you groom the cheato? It can store PO4 and leach it back out over time, too.
 
Fishdoc and gary, good points.. if bioballs are present, they can house detritus which can cause PO4 issues. I have them in my sump and I am slowly phasing them out. I can se Cheato catching this stuff too....
 
In my fuge/sump I have cheato only and run it bare bottom. During the 3 months that I was doing at least weekly water changes, I was washing out and trimming my cheato back quite frequently. Also, to clean the sump I was turning off my return pump and stirring up any detritus there might have been and used a foam filter on a powerhead to collect and dispose. I thought that was the best that I could do without emptying/cleaning the whole sump out.

My sand bed is about 2-3" deep and looks fairly clean. This was new Caribsea fiji pink(?) wet stuff that I bought from the Critter.

When I was doing frequent water changes, I would buffer to > 9 dKH. I was doing this mainly because this is what was killing off my sps that I had. Yes I did hear that it would help with macro algaes, but I never saw that it did with hair algae.

So, rock "sponges" up PO4? I kind of don't understand that. If that is the case, how often do people just throw their rock away? Wouldn't all rock that is collected after being in the ocean for XXX years be saturated with PO4 if this was the case? (Sorry for the plethora of questions on this subject.)

Someone needs to come out to my house, drink with me and talk about it. :)

-Ryan
 
The deal with rock taking up phosphate is that calcium carbonate will absorb phosphate. When detritus builds up in a sandbed it contains phosphate and that builds up too. The rock that is in contact with the lower parts of the sandbed will absorb phosphate. When the rock gets in an environment with less phosphate than the rock it will leach that back out into the water column.
I bought some used rock one time. I placed it in a 29 and the phosphate was high enough in the rock to give the tank a reading of about 4 ppm if I remember correctly.
If it were my tank I would try a series of 20% water changes over a couple of weeks until you change out about your whole water volume.
If you feel like it while you are doing this I would siphon the sandbed really well and remove the rocks and scrub them clean. Vaccume well under the rocks also.
If after doing all that the algae still comes back with a vengence I would consider replacing your sandbed and/or rock.
Before you do that an idea might be to put a piece of rock in a bucket with new water and test the phophate of the bucket water after about a week. That would give you an indication if it is comming from the rock.

hth, Chris
 
While I was in Iraq I got some hair algae problems.

I haven't tested PO4 but I guessed it was high. That and nitrates as the tank didn't have a waterchange for about 15 months. The tank itself was set up 5 years ago with a DSB and TBS rock. I have an 18 inch hang on fuge almost full of chaeto.

So, here's what worked for me.

I got a Phosban reactor and set it up. Then I got some turbo snails and big emerald crabs from the critter. I wasn't sure about the crabs but they both started pulling up clumps of hair algae and eating it the second they landed on a rock covered with algae. That rock was stripped clean overnight and is still clean.

There are still some patches here and there. I pull out as much as I can by hand and I also have clumps of chaeto in the main tank too.

I started dripping kalk again. I've heard keeping the pH up helps (as well as higher KH) and that kalk helps take out PO4 too.

Caleb at Pet Palce in Clarksville has some sea hares that are supposed to be algae eating monsters. If you are coming to the meeting on the 8th, maybe you could pick one up. If you want one, I'd call and make sure they are still availible or call and have them hold it for you.

Bottom line is you can beat this. It may never be perfect, but you can do this...
 
Well... I finally performed an official PO4 test on my tank. I would estimate it to be somewhere around 2ppm according to the Salifert test I used. :( I tested my water out of my RO/DI storage container and luckily that was 0ppm.

So, before my upgrade, I'm interested in trying to get this under control one more and final time. I'm ready to try just about anything. Tonight I'm going to clean my Coralife Superskimmer 220 and try to get it working. In the past though... I still get no skimmate. I've done some reading and it seems like I need to add something to help it skim better... a binding agent?

On hand I have some Kent Essential Elements, Kent Coral Builder, Kent Superbuffer-dKH, Reef Complete, and Kent Zoe Marine. Will any of those additives assist in skimming by adding a binding agent? Is there anything around the house that I can safely put in there? http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-09/rhf/index.php makes mention of maybe adding Vodka to the tank... I definitely have some of that around! :P

I will be performing about an 8-10gal water change tonight, but does anyone have a thought on the stuff I mentioned?

Thanks,
The Lazy Reefer :O
Ryan
 
None of those things will help as far as removing phosphate. Odd that your skimmer isn't doing anything. The skimmer should be working on it's own without any "binding agents". I suspect the binding agent will only provide marginal help at best and likely be a waste of money. I could be wrong. The best thing to do is to figure out where the phosphate is comming from. Then you can fix it:)
 
Freak if I know where the phosphate is coming from. I feed like every 2-3 days now only once and would like to think I have a fairly low bio-load

1 kole tang - small to medium sized
1 royal gramma - medium sized
2 clowns - small to medium sized
1 sixline wrasse - small :P
several snails
several small blue hermits
1 serpent star

Are there ANY corals that produce PO4?

I have several zoanthids/palys, frogspawn, gsp, and a fairly large colony of anthellia polyp.

Jeez...Maybe its time to get that pressure rated pump I need to buy and try this MR2 out. :P

Keep the thoughts coming please... :)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11372550#post11372550 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rsteagall
Freak if I know where the phosphate is coming from. I feed like every 2-3 days now only once and would like to think I have a fairly low bio-load

1 kole tang - small to medium sized
1 royal gramma - medium sized
2 clowns - small to medium sized
1 sixline wrasse - small :P
several snails
several small blue hermits
1 serpent star

Are there ANY corals that produce PO4?

I have several zoanthids/palys, frogspawn, gsp, and a fairly large colony of anthellia polyp.

Jeez...Maybe its time to get that pressure rated pump I need to buy and try this MR2 out. :P

Keep the thoughts coming please... :)
Click to expand...

My post above may hold some clues;)

The deal with rock taking up phosphate is that calcium carbonate will absorb phosphate. When detritus builds up in a sandbed it contains phosphate and that builds up too. The rock that is in contact with the lower parts of the sandbed will absorb phosphate. When the rock gets in an environment with less phosphate than the rock it will leach that back out into the water column.
I bought some used rock one time. I placed it in a 29 and the phosphate was high enough in the rock to give the tank a reading of about 4 ppm if I remember correctly.
If it were my tank I would try a series of 20% water changes over a couple of weeks until you change out about your whole water volume.
If you feel like it while you are doing this I would siphon the sandbed really well and remove the rocks and scrub them clean. Vaccume well under the rocks also.
If after doing all that the algae still comes back with a vengence I would consider replacing your sandbed and/or rock.
Before you do that an idea might be to put a piece of rock in a bucket with new water and test the phophate of the bucket water after about a week. That would give you an indication if it is comming from the rock.
Click to expand...

hth, Chris
 
OK... I'll take it to heart this time what you say and read better next time :).

A couple of questions though:

I've always thought my sandbed looked pretty clean as far as detritus goes. Even today when I look under the tank at the bottom, it looks clean with some kind of worms tunneling through it at the bottom of the glass. All our aquariums have calcium carbonate and we all have rocks in contact with the lower parts of the sand bed. If this is the case, how is PO4 buildup in rocks and sandbed prevented to a point where there is never a possibility of it being leached back into the water column?

Lastly, does it have to be a piece of rock touching the sandbed and is this rock to be placed into a newly made bucket of saltwater?

Thanks,
Ryan
 
The other thing I'd add is if your skimmer has never been pulling out stuff, then you likely have had a long time of nutrient build up with very little export. I've heard the CSS skimmers are hard to dial in -- but I have no experience with them. I think DMBillies used to use one (may still). You might see if he has any pointers for dialing them in.
 
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