Need Help - Algae Issues going on 3 Months Now

[moneymm]

I am getting brown algae on my sand, if i a vacuum it up during a water change, it is back in 1-2 days. i have a ton of algae on the glass every 3 days. (not a big issue) and I have a bunch of Hair algae on my rocks and crab/snail shells. (overall my tank is embarrassing to show to people).

my levels are all good, and i do 20% water changes every 2 weeks.

any suggestions?

I had some serious cyano that i battled for 2 months a few months back, and after getting that under control i have been dealing with this now.

I was running GFO and carbon mix for a while but i ran out of GFO and i figured i should stop anyway b/c the cyano was gone.

I had an outbreak of baby cerith snails. (100 or so).

i only have 3 fish, and no coral.

would a sand sifting goby help?

 

[coralsnaked]

try increasing the flow in your tank w powerheads/ bigger powerheads

 

[moneymm]

try increasing the flow in your tank w powerheads/ bigger powerheads

thanks i have a sump return which has some flow. and a 850w power head and a 750 powerhead. should i still add more.

one issue i have is that one of the power heads needs to point to the surface of the water or else i get a film on top of the water and it seems like the stuff i need to, doesnt go down the overflow.

what should i add exactly?

 

[leetch]

Sounds like a phosphate/nitrate issue to me. Flow helps but won't cure your problem. Have you added anything new lately? Rock/Fish/etc.

If you have GHA along with cyano, you need to work on your water. What is your phosphate reading? What is your nitrate reading?

Sand sifting stars are nice to keep your sand bed stirred up. The biggest problem with them is if there isn't enough to eat, they bury themselves and croak. You can generally tell though because their arms start to fall off.

On my 36 bow I only run a skimmer and an hob filter with no media (basically for added water volume and as a small fuge for Chaeto) and my rock and sand are clear as a bell. I have 2 powerheads, one pointed to the surface and the other at mid tank level just to create better flow for my coral. I use a turkey baster every few days to pick out any detritus I see to hopefully keep nitrates down.

 

[moneymm]

Sounds like a phosphate/nitrate issue to me. Flow helps but won't cure your problem. Have you added anything new lately? Rock/Fish/etc.

If you have GHA along with cyano, you need to work on your water. What is your phosphate reading? What is your nitrate reading?

Sand sifting stars are nice to keep your sand bed stirred up. The biggest problem with them is if there isn't enough to eat, they bury themselves and croak. You can generally tell though because their arms start to fall off.

On my 36 bow I only run a skimmer and an hob filter with no media (basically for added water volume and as a small fuge for Chaeto) and my rock and sand are clear as a bell. I have 2 powerheads, one pointed to the surface and the other at mid tank level just to create better flow for my coral. I use a turkey baster every few days to pick out any detritus I see to hopefully keep nitrates down.

i havent added anything, and as I said this has been going on for months now. about 6 weeks ago i had a huge amount of baby cerith snails. i would say over 100 of them. but i already had the algae issue before they were born.

nitrates around 15. phophates it says 0, but it said zero when i had cyano, so im guessing the test doesnt work.

 

[leetch]

i havent added anything, and as I said this has been going on for months now. about 6 weeks ago i had a huge amount of baby cerith snails. i would say over 100 of them. but i already had the algae issue before they were born.

nitrates around 15. phophates it says 0, but it said zero when i had cyano, so im guessing the test doesnt work.

The nitrates are a tad high...preferred to be under 5ppm. The GHA and cyano may be soaking up some of the phos/nit causing your tests to be off.

I would step up the water changes a bit, clean/remove any old filter media, get some Chaeto if you have a place to put it (this helps but may take a few weeks to really reduce nitrates). The ceriths should help keep the sand somewhat stirred up but if you can manage it, get some flow moving around the area of your sand that's browning...again, it won't cure the problem but will at least make the tank look a little better. Make sure your tank filtration media is clean. I venture to guess once you get the nitrates down to <10 and preferably <5 your tank will shine.

I use phosphate RX for maintenance once a month but I can't say for sure that it helps or if keeping stuff clean is the main reason I don't have any problems. t.

I personally wouldn't add any more creatures at this point even if they do help sift the sand because you'd be adding more bio-load on your system which could exacerbate the problem.

It is very important that your media is clean. If it's housing nitrates due to old filter media or dirty media, you won't be able to resolve the problem. If you have enough live rock for the tank, you should only need a quality skimmer without any other filtration media.

Good luck and be patient. Step up the maintenance and I'd bet you'll be pretty happy in a few weeks.

 

[Sk8r]

GFO doesn't affect cyano. It's after phosphate, not carbon. OTOH, the algae loves phosphate, which soaks out of your rock and sand over time, which is why it can take time to manifest. You need the GFO (medium changed monthly until you see a decline of the green stuff) until you get rid of the phosphate. Wind and yank the algae, toss it, which directly exports phosphate; but also run the GFO to get ahead of it.

 

[jminick2]

step up water changes, run gfo, up the flow, you obviously have phosphate issue, killing your lights for a few days wouldn't hurt either.

 

[NS Mike D]

In the same boat as you, Did a lot of reading here which has ben helpful. The two things (which are mentioned here) that was surprising is why my phosphates have been reading 0 all along, I read that the testing kits isn't that great and the algae may be consuming phosphates leeching from the rock before it show up on test, so am going to add go into my rector.

The second thing is that I cut back my light schedule ( I was keeping them on too long) and while I still have the algae on the sand, it scaled back. In fact I can see the difference in the morning v the end of the day. My glass is cleaner as well.

Good luck.

 

[bobbychullo]

The two things (which are mentioned here) that was surprising is why my phosphates have been reading 0 all along, I read that the testing kits isn't that great and the algae may be consuming phosphates leeching from the rock before it show up on test, so am going to add go into my rector.

The second thing is that I cut back my light schedule ( I was keeping them on too long) and while I still have the algae on the sand, it scaled back. In fact I can see the difference in the morning v the end of the day. My glass is cleaner as well.

Good luck.

this ^