Need some help

M

MatAndPatti

New member
After running a BC29 semi-successfully for a couple of years, everything has really gone to hell and I need some help!

Now, some background.... We've had a pretty bad bubble algae outbreak in this tank for a while. I just never got around to getting the fluconazole to treat it, so it's started getting a little crazy. I'd say that things were already in a slow decline. About a month ago we did a ~12 gallon water change before going away. We went away for a week and left some pre-packaged doses of food for a friend who was watching pets for us. Came home to what looked like much worse bubble algae as well as one heck of a cyano outbreak. A few things that had looked fine before were down to skeleton or most of the way there. Pulled what was worth saving and put it into our 40BR. At this point, even the ricordea florida that is left is starting to shrivel up.

Parameters:
Salinity 1.026
pH has been low... 7.6-8.0
alk 7.5 dKH
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 1ppm
calcium 460-470
magnesium 1400-1420
phosphate 0

Now, because the pH was low and alk has been low, I figured I would start back in dosing some of the B-ionic alkalinity component. I put in a couple of drops in a high flow area and after getting the usual milky white cloud it turned to precipitate. I've done the dosing in the evening when the pH was around its higher end. I didn't see the same behavior when dosing our 40BR so I don't think there's anything wrong with the alk solution.

Done some reading on precipitation and I just don't understand, with the other parameters where they are, why it's happening. I just wonder what I'm missing or whether I should be testing for something else.

Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!
 
Are you dosing into the display? I'd dose into a large volume of water. That said, 7.5 dKH is fine. Are you sure that you are getting a permanent precipitate? Sometimes alkalinity supplements will form little blobs that dissolve eventually.

The pH largely is set by the carbon dioxide content of the water, which usually is a direct function of the ambient air levels.
 
bertoni said:
Are you dosing into the display? I'd dose into a large volume of water. That said, 7.5 dKH is fine. Are you sure that you are getting a permanent precipitate? Sometimes alkalinity supplements will form little blobs that dissolve eventually.

The pH largely is set by the carbon dioxide content of the water, which usually is a direct function of the ambient air levels.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response!

Yes, I'm dosing directly into the display, near where the return gives some decent flow.

Not sure if the precipitate is permanent or not. I only put a few drops in because of what I observed and thought that maybe I had larger problems. I can take a look tonight to see if it's dissolving or not.

What's the safe level to raise alk per day? Is 1 dKH alright? I fear that based on some older water test data I have that perhaps my recent water changes swung it up by 1 dKH all at once.

Is it possible my bubble algae infestation is starving things out? I have maintained my usual 2x weekly feeding schedule all this time, but I wonder if the algae is absorbing enough nutrients from the water that it's out competing things.
 
A couple of miscellaneous things to add... the pH range I gave is the typical daily swing due to lighting schedule.

And I just noticed my signature line is obsolete... The 29 has been cycled for quite a while now.
 
I suspect your phosphate and nitrate are higher than your test kit indicates. Especially since the outbreak happenned with someone else feeding the tank, it is possible that the nutrients are high. Bubble algae is pretty easy to pick out manually, and I would start by doing that daily. I would also do another water change and maybe add some gfo short term (im not a fan of long term gfo use, but in a pinch with an algae and cyano outbreak, it may help). What type of food are you using? Ive had much better luck with frozen mysis and spirulina that with anything dried when it comes to phos and nitrate issues (which is likely leading to the algae proliferation). If all else fails try to manually pick everything you can reach and then leave the lights out for 2-3 days.
 
I dosed 2-3 dKH in one shot every day for years in one of my tanks. It only had soft corals and a lot of coralline algae, though.

7.6 for pH is low enough that I might investigate a bit, but it's not all that low. A bit better aeration might help. Any film on the water surface might cause a larger swing, for example. pH measurements can be off by quite a lot, too, though. I might try a bit of GFO, to see whether that can reduce the algae growth without harming the corals, but GFO always is a gamble.

The bubble algae might be starving the corals, but that's hard to determine. I'd work on getting rid of it. If there's not too much, a bit of manual pruning will help remove nutrients, but I wouldn't spend more than a few minutes per week on that, personally.
 
Well, thanks for all the comments, but this tank is basically crapped the bed at this point. 2 of the ricordea have, for lack of a better description, melted into blobs of tissue. The remaining ones are not looking that great. I wish I could find some kind of smoking gun, but none of my parameters seem *that* out of whack. :headwally:

I did dose some red slime remover about a week ago, tho given the state of things at that time, I don't feel like that did anything to affect where things are at now. It did seem to help out with the cyano as I was hoping.

Anything I'm not testing for that may be useful?

I may head to our LFS tomorrow with a water sample to see if they have any ideas.
 
I'd probably stop all the feeding, and do a series of 15-20% water changes. Losing animals is a bad sign. What animals are in the tank?
 
bertoni said:
I'd probably stop all the feeding, and do a series of 15-20% water changes. Losing animals is a bad sign. What animals are in the tank?
Click to expand...

At this point, it's just a few more sad looking ricordea. We moved anything else worth saving out of the tank about 1-2 weeks ago.

After consultation with our LFS, we're going to do a 3 day blackout to see if we can't knock down the bubble algae. Right now I'm strongly suspecting that with the amount of algae we have that it's just starving everything else out. It's really quite a mess at this point. :headwally:
 
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