Nitrate Dosing, Carbon Dosing, Po4 Remover...Still HA...

[bblumberg]

I am late to the thread here, but have you tried adding more voracious algae grazers? A single lawnmower blennie in each tank did a great job cleaning up algae in both my 150g and 75g reefs. A foxface rabbitfish got rid of bubble algae in my 75 in just a few days and I have not seen it come back so I put one in my 150g as well.

Also, perhaps I missed this, but what type of lighting does your tank have? I thought it was a good idea to replace some of the cool white (6500K) LEDS in my (now defunct) nano tank with a mixture of warm white (2700K) and neutral white (5000K) and immediately developed a hair algae problem. Just a thought. My 150g has 4 neutral white (4000K) COB LEDs but I don't run them because I start to see algae within a few days whenever they are on.

 

[Horace]

Yes, a scrubber is more effective. Sorry, but I believe you were warned that the holes in the spray bar would need a lot of maintenance. And yes, the water running down a screen into the water is quiter than piping.
Good luck with it.

I had a buddy here who used that design and touted it as superior....so i went with it. He was wrong lol. I threw that thing in the trash....so a new ats would need to be built. I think this time around i would go with the simpler is better solution....

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[Horace]

I am late to the thread here, but have you tried adding more voracious algae grazers? A single lawnmower blennie in each tank did a great job cleaning up algae in both my 150g and 75g reefs. A foxface rabbitfish got rid of bubble algae in my 75 in just a few days and I have not seen it come back so I put one in my 150g as well.

Also, perhaps I missed this, but what type of lighting does your tank have? I thought it was a good idea to replace some of the cool white (6500K) LEDS in my (now defunct) nano tank with a mixture of warm white (2700K) and neutral white (5000K) and immediately developed a hair algae problem. Just a thought. My 150g has 4 neutral white (4000K) COB LEDs but I don't run them because I start to see algae within a few days whenever they are on.

I have the ledgroupbuy Lumias (new version)

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[Scrubber_steve]

I had a buddy here who used that design and touted it as superior....so i went with it. He was wrong lol. I threw that thing in the trash....so a new ats would need to be built. I think this time around i would go with the simpler is better solution....

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The standard slot works well & is easy to clean when necessary.

 

[reefgeezer]

Your routine sounds precisely what i was doing. My SPS look just OK....def not what im used to. Funny, my last tank i had to add nutrients, this tank has too many.....so frustrating. Oddly i didnt ha e to go through nearly this level of effort to get rid of po4 previously. What sucks is to get my nutrients to a level that the HA stops hurts my corals....its a no win situation lol

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I hear ya. It sucks when you spend good money, work so hard, and do what you believe you are supposed to do, only to get poor results.

SPS corals shouldn't go in the crapper just because nutrients are low. They may respond poorly to lowering phosphate too quickly though. Pale color should be about the worst thing that low nutrients would cause. You could add amino acids to help the SPS keep some color... maybe.

 

[Horace]

I hear ya. It sucks when you spend good money, work so hard, and do what you believe you are supposed to do, only to get poor results.

SPS corals shouldn't go in the crapper just because nutrients are low. They may respond poorly to lowering phosphate too quickly though. Pale color should be about the worst thing that low nutrients would cause. You could add amino acids to help the SPS keep some color... maybe.

I have thought about picking up some KZ products to help....such as their coral food and aminos. I am so skeptical about miracles in a bottle though, especially when ive had amazing colors and growth with nothing but good husbandry and light!

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[reefgeezer]

I have thought about picking up some KZ products to help....such as their coral food and aminos. I am so skeptical about miracles in a bottle though, especially when ive had amazing colors and growth with nothing but good husbandry and light!

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Amino acids may have some value for nitrogen and carbon replacement if they can be assimilated by the corals. I believe there is always enough phosphate unless your are aggressively removing it with Lanthanum Chloride or GFO. I've seen amino's effect in my tank in the short term... better color fairly quickly... but I don't know if it's a long term solution. They were too expensive to continue for long. You won't need them though unless you intend to drive nutrients down to zero to rid the tank of algae. Personally, if most of your corals are SPS, I'd just live with the poor color for a while and address the algae. As long as the corals are otherwise healthy, the color will come back.

Have you arrived at a method for nutrient control yet? Someone said it before, the shotgun method is problematic. I know you've tried before, but IMO... If you have a decent skimmer & a cheap dosing pump, I would really recommend carbon dosing. It just works. That means using some GFO when needed, and possibly adding nitrates every once in a while to keep a little in the system. I prefer just vinegar or maybe a 9:1 ratio of vinegar to vodka. NoPox is OK if you just must use a commercial product.

For reference, I have a tank half the size of yours that is about the same age. It has eight decent sized fish in it including a Yellow Tang, a Kole Tang, and a Navarchus Angel. The bioload is pretty heavy.

 

[Horace]

Amino acids may have some value for nitrogen and carbon replacement if they can be assimilated by the corals. I believe there is always enough phosphate unless your are aggressively removing it with Lanthanum Chloride or GFO. I've seen amino's effect in my tank in the short term... better color fairly quickly... but I don't know if it's a long term solution. They were too expensive to continue for long. You won't need them though unless you intend to drive nutrients down to zero to rid the tank of algae. Personally, if most of your corals are SPS, I'd just live with the poor color for a while and address the algae. As long as the corals are otherwise healthy, the color will come back.

Have you arrived at a method for nutrient control yet? Someone said it before, the shotgun method is problematic. I know you've tried before, but IMO... If you have a decent skimmer & a cheap dosing pump, I would really recommend carbon dosing. It just works. That means using some GFO when needed, and possibly adding nitrates every once in a while to keep a little in the system. I prefer just vinegar or maybe a 9:1 ratio of vinegar to vodka. NoPox is OK if you just must use a commercial product.

For reference, I have a tank half the size of yours that is about the same age. It has eight decent sized fish in it including a Yellow Tang, a Kole Tang, and a Navarchus Angel. The bioload is pretty heavy.

Today I have the following nutrient reduction methods in place:
-GFO - Rowaphos
-Carbon (i dont run it 100% of the time) - Currently using ROX carbon from BFS
- 30" Life Reef Skimmer
- I have been adding Potassium Nitrate to the tank as well to keep the nitrate from hitting zero, which it does fairly rapidly. Ive not added any in a couple weeks though, so its probably time to add more. My experience was when adding that, the algae grew like crazy...and I was also having SPS issues around the time, so I stoppped dosing it just incase it was related.

-As noted, I DID dose Vinegar...I was dosing quite a lot....Up to 120ml per day (220g total volume). What i noticed was a HUGE bloom of red slime while doing carbon dosing. As with everything, I cant 100% attribute that to the carbon dosing, but it certainly SEEMED correlated. Right now, i still do have a bit of red slime here and there, but its like 5% of what I had before....so its controlled ATM it seems.

About a month ago I added about 1.5 cups of Rowaphos to the tank. My thought was THAT should do the trick for knocking out the po4. It very well may have, but the HA has NOT gone away, it just seems to have slowed its growth substantially. Killing HA seems to require near zero nutrients once it is established. I THINK what happened when I dosed that chemical to kill it, it mearly released those nutrients back into the water column, and I didnt absorb them fast enough (not enough GFO) to prevent the regrowth. I SHOULD have been super aggressive with the GFO as soon as the algae started to die...but unfortunately hind sight is 20/20.

 

[reefgeezer]

...- I have been adding Potassium Nitrate to the tank as well to keep the nitrate from hitting zero, which it does fairly rapidly.

-As noted, I DID dose Vinegar... I THINK what happened when I dosed that chemical to kill it, it mearly released those nutrients back into the water column, and I didnt absorb them fast enough (not enough GFO) to prevent the regrowth. I SHOULD have been super aggressive with the GFO as soon as the algae started to die...but unfortunately hind sight is 20/20.

So, your system right now isn't really running 0 nitrate. It is just being bound by the algae. Adding more nitrate now will just feed the algae more. I mentioned adding nitrate for sometime later. I add it now because I've passed the problematic algae phase and am just maintaining low nutrients waiting for the tank to mature.

IMO, you need something to compete for nutrients with the algae that is located in the same place as the algae. Bacteria induced by the carbon dosing will do that. Carbon dosing will also create organic molecules that bind free nitrate & phosphate and keep it from the hair algae. Both the bacteria and the organic molecules are removed by your skimmer (Great skimmer by the way) and/or the GAC. Yes, Cyano could occur if you drive the organics too high. As vinegar seems less likely to cause Cyano, start with a low dose and slowly increase it.

Being super aggressive with the GFO might cause you corals suffer. Using less and changing it more often is safer. You can also slow the flow to the reactor to reduce the efficiency.

 

[Horace]

So, your system right now isn't really running 0 nitrate. It is just being bound by the algae. Adding more nitrate now will just feed the algae more. I mentioned adding nitrate for sometime later. I add it now because I've passed the problematic algae phase and am just maintaining low nutrients waiting for the tank to mature.

IMO, you need something to compete for nutrients with the algae that is located in the same place as the algae. Bacteria induced by the carbon dosing will do that. Carbon dosing will also create organic molecules that bind free nitrate & phosphate and keep it from the hair algae. Both the bacteria and the organic molecules are removed by your skimmer (Great skimmer by the way) and/or the GAC. Yes, Cyano could occur if you drive the organics too high. As vinegar seems less likely to cause Cyano, start with a low dose and slowly increase it.

Being super aggressive with the GFO might cause you corals suffer. Using less and changing it more often is safer. You can also slow the flow to the reactor to reduce the efficiency.

i realize there is nitrate bound in the HA, so perhaps adding nitrate is only beneficial when you are carbon dosing, so the bacteria can out compete for the po4 when its nitrogen limited. Ive heard of tanks with super low No3 (mine is), and the only way to really drop the po4 is by adding no3 for the bacteria to grow. So I think all I did was fuel the HA because it is also no3 limited, and since its the most aggressive thing in the tank, it gets first crack at the No3, and it just fuels the HA growth.

I think I may give the Vinegar another try. I did do the recommended dosing schedule that is posted out there. Increasing very slowly over a matter of weeks. I dosed almost a gallon of Vinegar over a period of months....so I did give it a fair trial IMO. Its worth another shot though...i gotta do something . I just dont want my corals to suffer substantially. So I think this go around I will try some aminos while I get super aggressive at nutrient reduction to keep them from getting too malnourished. May try some of that Phol's Coral Vitalizer as well. Apparently it is a Food that isnt supposed to add N/P. Not sure how thats possible though

 

[reefgeezer]

I think I may give the Vinegar another try. I did do the recommended dosing schedule that is posted out there. Increasing very slowly over a matter of weeks. I dosed almost a gallon of Vinegar over a period of months....so I did give it a fair trial IMO. Its worth another shot though...i gotta do something . I just dont want my corals to suffer substantially. So I think this go around I will try some aminos while I get super aggressive at nutrient reduction to keep them from getting too malnourished. May try some of that Phol's Coral Vitalizer as well. Apparently it is a Food that isnt supposed to add N/P. Not sure how thats possible though

Sounds like a plan. Maybe skip the nitrate dosing for a while. Careful with the GFO. Good luck.