Skimmer Stripper

[reefing102]

So no this isn’t about a stripper getting along with my skimmer. A few weeks ago, I think going on a month now, I shut down my skimmer as it was just going crazy and couldn’t get it to calm down. Well since shutting it down, my hair algae is slowly disappearing and coralline is coming back. I’m not dosing anything to get rid of the hair algae. I’m thinking my skimmer was stripping the nutrients from the water even though my tests were “fine”. I haven’t retested anything but I’m not complaining. I can see bare rock again. I’m thinking I’m just going to keep it off and see what happens. I can always turn it back on if need be

 

[kharmaguru]

So no this isn’t about a stripper getting along with my skimmer. A few weeks ago, I think going on a month now, I shut down my skimmer as it was just going crazy and couldn’t get it to calm down. Well since shutting it down, my hair algae is slowly disappearing and coralline is coming back. I’m not dosing anything to get rid of the hair algae. I’m thinking my skimmer was stripping the nutrients from the water even though my tests were “fine”. I haven’t retested anything but I’m not complaining. I can see bare rock again. I’m thinking I’m just going to keep it off and see what happens. I can always turn it back on if need be

Yep, what creates balance is often counterintuitive.

 

[griss]

Nice. I continue to fight cyano. Two nights ago (after reading some of @Timfish posts) I decided to remove my filter sock to see if that has any impact.

 

[Timfish]

One of the "inconguities" or counterintuitive effects I observed a long time ago was nuisance alga disappearing as nutrients increase, there wasn't any correlation with nutrent levels and nuisance alga. Clearly something else a lot more complex was going on in these reef systems, The research on the various and conflicting roles of DOC and sponges (and likely fungii but we have even less info oon them than sponges) has helped alot in expanding our understanding of how complex these system really are.

Patience and diligence is needed. One of the hardest issues I have is guessing when I might need to be more proactive at manual removal and when I should just leave it be f or a few weeks and wait and see what happens. Probably the one technique that helps me not do to much at one time is limit how much I try to remove to only what I can do with a normal water change.

 

[Timfish]

I didn't have time to add this yesterday but it's a good example of Kharmaguru's point on stuff being counterintuitive. I often use "straws" to siphon off nuisance algae when it starts growing on sand. Cleaning the sand by rinsing in tapwater or soaking for a little bit in H2O2 sometimes works really well and sometimes just changes the kind of algae and sometimes makes the problem a lot worse. When it makes the problem worse I have seen the problem fixed, and on occasion almost overnight, by siphoning out and rinsing it multiple times* with aqaurium water.

So . . . killing the algae with tapwater or H2O2 . . .
sometimes get's rid of it . . .
sometimes changes the kind of algae . . .
sometimes makes it worse . . .
but rinsing with aquarium water then gets rid of it.

The hypothesis in the later case being rinsing sand with aquarium water replaces the nuisance algae with other microbial stuff.


*Rinsing in this situation is an inch or two of sand in a bucket, adding a couple gallons of water, stirring thuroughly, dumping the water quickly to minimize stuff settling and repeating several times.