jlinzmaier
Premium Member
I'm hoping somebody here has some ideas about what's going on.
I've been a reefkeeper for over 8 years now and I've learned a lot along the way but this situation has me baffled.
I currently have a 420 gallon display tank. It is plummed down to the basement where there is a 150 gallon sump, three 25 gallon frag tanks and a 55 gallon refugium.
I keep my salinity extremely stable at a SG of 1.026. My alk and ca are always rock solid at 7.5 dkh and 450. My mag level was always at 1250 but when I started to see so much algea I was questioning if it was maybe bryopsis so I raised my mag level to 1600. It didn't look like bryopsis and looked just like plain hair algea but I was dumbfounded by the fact that it was growing so fast and my snails and hermits weren't taking care of it.
The only supplements I dosed were kalk, zeovit amino acids, and zeovit coral vitalizer. The tank was rocking and I had better coral growth and polyp extension than I had ever had. I dosed kalk using a BRS pump and the zeovit supplements were being dosed at half of the bottles recommended dose.
Up until recently I had been dosing vodka at a rate of 7ml per day. That prevented any significant algea growth and was at a point where my chaeto was appearing to be slightly nutrient depleted but still growing. It was a really nice balance. The corals had nice deep coloration and the sps polyps and tissue looked healthy and vibrant. My nitrate levels were always zero and po4 was always about 0.05 (using a photometer)
In the beginning of May it all started to go downhill. At the start of May I had a relatively light bioload. Large show size blue hippo tang, purple tang, a few other gobies, a flame angel, and a CBB. One day my blue hippo tang decided to jump out of the tank and I hadn't noticed until the next day. When the large tang jumped out, that pretty much cut my bioload in half (or maybe more). I completely overlooked the fact that I'd need to cut down on my vodka dosing to compensate for the decreased feeding and overall bioload.
After a week or two I started to notice the sps corals which have polyps out during the day no longer had them out, the tissue of the sps corals seemed to thin out significantly, some of the LPS bleached out, and my chaeto turned lime green and completely stopped growing (it actually started to die off for a a day or two so I removed the dying portions. It was at that point it dawned on me that I needed to cut my vodka dosing so I stopped it completely. I did continue dosing the amino acids and coral vitalizer thinking that those nutrients would help the corals recover from such a low nutrient system. At the same time I noticed the corals beginning to bleach I also started to see some significant hair algea growing. It was also quite odd that even when the corals were bleaching and chaeto not growing the hair algea started to grow so significantly. After a couple weeks of having stopped dosing vodka dosing my corals continued to look bleached and continued to look more and more irritated, all while the algea like crazy.
I thought it was time now to stop dosing everything and start from scratch. I added a couple hundered astrea snails, an urchin and some hermit crabs. I sucked out as much algea as I could and actually added a wavebox that I had lying around to ensure detritus wasn't settling and allowing the algea to grow. The entire time the hair algae was brown and appearing unhealthy. Some of it siphoned off the rocks easily but the majority was held fast to the rocks. I also did some very large water changes trying to limit nutrients for algea growth. During these several weeks the hair algea continued to grow like crazy, the film algea stopped growing on the glass, and the chaeto looked like it was just hanging onto life in a lime green color and no strength to it's structure (almost like spaghetti).
I then began dosing AA's again because my corals continued to look so bleached and unhappy. After a couple more weeks of dosing the AA's and not seeing a positive response from the corals I decided to stop the dosing. It wasn't helping the corals but could be contributing the algea growth - I guess.
Now I'm back to square one again. The CUC isn't taking care of the hair algea, more algea started growing in my frag tanks, and the corals are still bleached but appear to be stabalized. They aren't getting any worse but aren't getting any better.
In an attempt to provide some nutrients to my bleaching corals I stated feeding heavier. Never anymore than my fish would eat, but I started feeding 4-5 times a day instead of 1-2 times a day. I thought by increasing the feeding of my fish I would provide more nutrition to the corals from the detritus they excrete (and this would be more similar to the bioload of the tank prior to the hippo jumping out). I had been feeding heavy ever since and the corals continue to look bleached and the hair algae continues to grow.
In an attempt to combat the algae I thought I'd focus on a nutrient which isn't a necessity for coral growth but is certainly a necessity for algea - phosphate. I started to run a phosban reactor with about a cup of GFO. In two days my po4 dropped from 0.05 down to 0.01 and of course I caused more harm that good. At day two of running some GFO I had two SPS RTN and had others develop some STN. Stopped running GFO immediately but here I am now with bleached corals and a mess of algae. I have no idea where to go from here.
Here are some pics to show the algae growth and bleached corals.
Sympodium - Not supposed to look like this
On the left is a garf bonsai that is extremely light in color, the middle is a 6 inch myagi tort which 4 months ago had beautiful blue color with a green base. On the right and towards the back is a gemmifera that was generally unaffected by the whole ordeal.
Here is a green hairy rhodactis which is rediculously bleached out appearing starved and you can see all the algae growing around it :headwally:
Here are some pics of algea in various spots in the tank.
Here is what my chaeto looks like.
Here's a pic of algae growing all over my zoanthid frags which have been almost entirely closed up from the start of all this mess. In this pic the zoanthids are opened as much as they ever have been since the start of it all.
Aside from the large blue hippo jumping out and seriously affecting the bioload there is nothing that has changed in my tank. It was a gorgeous tank with corals growing fast and looking awesome. Now I'm embarrased to have anyone over because they'll be looking at 420 gallons of **it.
At this point I'm going to order about 300 more astrea snails because they seem to be the only snail that will eat this algae. I had all my mex turbos and mitherax crabs die off seemingly starved in a tank full of algae which they wouldn't eat. Hopefully the detritus from the astrea snails will provide some dissolved nutrients to the system which will hopefully help the bleached corals.
Hope somebody has some ideas. I'm at a loss.
Jeremy
I've been a reefkeeper for over 8 years now and I've learned a lot along the way but this situation has me baffled.
I currently have a 420 gallon display tank. It is plummed down to the basement where there is a 150 gallon sump, three 25 gallon frag tanks and a 55 gallon refugium.
I keep my salinity extremely stable at a SG of 1.026. My alk and ca are always rock solid at 7.5 dkh and 450. My mag level was always at 1250 but when I started to see so much algea I was questioning if it was maybe bryopsis so I raised my mag level to 1600. It didn't look like bryopsis and looked just like plain hair algea but I was dumbfounded by the fact that it was growing so fast and my snails and hermits weren't taking care of it.
The only supplements I dosed were kalk, zeovit amino acids, and zeovit coral vitalizer. The tank was rocking and I had better coral growth and polyp extension than I had ever had. I dosed kalk using a BRS pump and the zeovit supplements were being dosed at half of the bottles recommended dose.
Up until recently I had been dosing vodka at a rate of 7ml per day. That prevented any significant algea growth and was at a point where my chaeto was appearing to be slightly nutrient depleted but still growing. It was a really nice balance. The corals had nice deep coloration and the sps polyps and tissue looked healthy and vibrant. My nitrate levels were always zero and po4 was always about 0.05 (using a photometer)
In the beginning of May it all started to go downhill. At the start of May I had a relatively light bioload. Large show size blue hippo tang, purple tang, a few other gobies, a flame angel, and a CBB. One day my blue hippo tang decided to jump out of the tank and I hadn't noticed until the next day. When the large tang jumped out, that pretty much cut my bioload in half (or maybe more). I completely overlooked the fact that I'd need to cut down on my vodka dosing to compensate for the decreased feeding and overall bioload.
After a week or two I started to notice the sps corals which have polyps out during the day no longer had them out, the tissue of the sps corals seemed to thin out significantly, some of the LPS bleached out, and my chaeto turned lime green and completely stopped growing (it actually started to die off for a a day or two so I removed the dying portions. It was at that point it dawned on me that I needed to cut my vodka dosing so I stopped it completely. I did continue dosing the amino acids and coral vitalizer thinking that those nutrients would help the corals recover from such a low nutrient system. At the same time I noticed the corals beginning to bleach I also started to see some significant hair algea growing. It was also quite odd that even when the corals were bleaching and chaeto not growing the hair algea started to grow so significantly. After a couple weeks of having stopped dosing vodka dosing my corals continued to look bleached and continued to look more and more irritated, all while the algea like crazy.
I thought it was time now to stop dosing everything and start from scratch. I added a couple hundered astrea snails, an urchin and some hermit crabs. I sucked out as much algea as I could and actually added a wavebox that I had lying around to ensure detritus wasn't settling and allowing the algea to grow. The entire time the hair algae was brown and appearing unhealthy. Some of it siphoned off the rocks easily but the majority was held fast to the rocks. I also did some very large water changes trying to limit nutrients for algea growth. During these several weeks the hair algea continued to grow like crazy, the film algea stopped growing on the glass, and the chaeto looked like it was just hanging onto life in a lime green color and no strength to it's structure (almost like spaghetti).
I then began dosing AA's again because my corals continued to look so bleached and unhappy. After a couple more weeks of dosing the AA's and not seeing a positive response from the corals I decided to stop the dosing. It wasn't helping the corals but could be contributing the algea growth - I guess.
Now I'm back to square one again. The CUC isn't taking care of the hair algea, more algea started growing in my frag tanks, and the corals are still bleached but appear to be stabalized. They aren't getting any worse but aren't getting any better.
In an attempt to provide some nutrients to my bleaching corals I stated feeding heavier. Never anymore than my fish would eat, but I started feeding 4-5 times a day instead of 1-2 times a day. I thought by increasing the feeding of my fish I would provide more nutrition to the corals from the detritus they excrete (and this would be more similar to the bioload of the tank prior to the hippo jumping out). I had been feeding heavy ever since and the corals continue to look bleached and the hair algae continues to grow.
In an attempt to combat the algae I thought I'd focus on a nutrient which isn't a necessity for coral growth but is certainly a necessity for algea - phosphate. I started to run a phosban reactor with about a cup of GFO. In two days my po4 dropped from 0.05 down to 0.01 and of course I caused more harm that good. At day two of running some GFO I had two SPS RTN and had others develop some STN. Stopped running GFO immediately but here I am now with bleached corals and a mess of algae. I have no idea where to go from here.
Here are some pics to show the algae growth and bleached corals.
Sympodium - Not supposed to look like this
On the left is a garf bonsai that is extremely light in color, the middle is a 6 inch myagi tort which 4 months ago had beautiful blue color with a green base. On the right and towards the back is a gemmifera that was generally unaffected by the whole ordeal.
Here is a green hairy rhodactis which is rediculously bleached out appearing starved and you can see all the algae growing around it :headwally:
Here are some pics of algea in various spots in the tank.
Here is what my chaeto looks like.
Here's a pic of algae growing all over my zoanthid frags which have been almost entirely closed up from the start of all this mess. In this pic the zoanthids are opened as much as they ever have been since the start of it all.
Aside from the large blue hippo jumping out and seriously affecting the bioload there is nothing that has changed in my tank. It was a gorgeous tank with corals growing fast and looking awesome. Now I'm embarrased to have anyone over because they'll be looking at 420 gallons of **it.
At this point I'm going to order about 300 more astrea snails because they seem to be the only snail that will eat this algae. I had all my mex turbos and mitherax crabs die off seemingly starved in a tank full of algae which they wouldn't eat. Hopefully the detritus from the astrea snails will provide some dissolved nutrients to the system which will hopefully help the bleached corals.
Hope somebody has some ideas. I'm at a loss.
Jeremy
