Evening, looking for some help in balancing higher nutrients and less algae, I cannot understand how any SPS keeper has +5 ppm N and measurable PO4 and isn't also overrun with algae.
The basic question, and the TL/DR version, I would like to have opinions on is the following:
Is anyone actually successful in keeping algae down while keeping color up? What do you attribute to your success and what can I change to improve my tanks coloration and viability?
Some background:
I have been having problems with either coral coloration or algae for the past few years. However, nutrient levels have never been high (N and P04 have never had a reading on my tank with salifert, red sea, sea chem, hanna checkers store testing etc, I even tried Triton and they came back with the P04 reading of 0.00918612 mg/l. Even when algae was growing like crazy I had no measurable readings.
Even with the algae and color issues, I have gotten fairly successful at keeping sps alive for decent length of time, some coral have had more than 2 years of growth and need to be pruned monthly. I have grown frags of coral from 0.75" to the size of footballs.
What I cannot seem to do is keep the colors vibrant and still keep the algae down. Shortly after buying a coral they tend to wash out, though they still grow they look pastel, outside of actinics they look whitish. Or I have algae growing like crazy that eventually chokes out the coral.
I assume my problem with coloration is low nutrients. But when I decrease nutrient export I get algae.
When I ease up on dosing carbon or slowing the water changes the color comes back, but the algae quickly takes over (last time it lasted about 1 month algae free then it took almost 6 months and probably cancerous reef chemicals to kill it).
There has to be a happy medium. As part of maintenance I would spend 30-60 minutes hand pulling algae from tank, which makes me unable to enjoy it).
As far as CUC to eat algae goes, I have tried hermit crabs and they ALWAYS end up eating snails and ignoring the algae, no matter the species of snail or the species of crab. I have tried emerald crabs, they picked on polyps and then ate snails or fish (once). I have tried larger fish like tangs/rabbit fish and they generally outgrow the tank having to be recaptured, worse than that they tend to prefer the nori and frozen foods and only pick at the algae.
When heavily dosing carbon I find that the coral begin to suffer and some never show good growth. I have tried coral feeding, Red Sea energy A & B, while this was early in my SPS tenure (so wasn't done with perfect regularity) I cannot say it helped at all. I have tried DT's phyto live cultures with no changes in the SPS corals (fan worms loved it). If anyone has a different suggestion for feeding SPS I am willing to give it a shot, currently feed Rods Food twice a week (currently as in this week i started it as a regular thing).
As far as trace elements go, I had triton test my water, they recommended tweaking a few of the major elements (strontium, potassium and magnesium) and indicated minor deficiencies in several trace elements (boron, iron, and some others). I bought the required potions to replace them, did the proper dosing for the duration of the bottles but I saw no positive changes to write home about. I don't want to go back this route, I don't really want to add supplements I can't regularly test for myself and most trace test kits have very poor reliability. Further, it is my belief that more frequent water changes will address this problem.
I have not added amino acids yet, though that should have been covered by the Reef Energy.
Current Plan:
Add more fish, feed more frozen, and add more snails (currently on cerith snails, as they seem the eat the largest variety of algae and algae producers without eating each other, I also plan to couple them with more banded trocus snails, though they only seem to like film algae on the glass) while changing to 10% weekly changes (12 gallons takes like 20 minutes to do).
That said, past experience dictates the more fish the more pollution therefore the better the colors and the more algae which seems like a vicious circle. As a note, I do not believe I have ever had the 'recommended' number of snails or crabs. I buy 10-20 each time I get fish or coral but they never seem to accumulate, many empty shells and long-lived hermits though.
Tank Critters:
Kole Tang
2x occ clowns
1x McCoskers (sp?) flasher wrasse
1x Blood Shirmp
Maybe a few hermits left
Cerith Snails
Banded Trocus Snails
1x Coral Beauty (just added last night, had a ton of aggression from tang, TBD if she remains, currently in acclimation box)
Tank maintenance:
20% water changes every other week;
replace the bulbs on my light yearly;
Use RO/DI (5 stage 90 gpd filter MaxCap Spectrapure);
Dose NOPOX (currently up at 8ml/day);
Skimmer Cup cleaned weekly
Tank Stats
75 gal display
20 gal sump
40 gal frag tank
2x mp 40
800 gph return pump
Alk: 10 dkh - Salifert (dose BRS 2-part via GHL doser)
Ca: 440 - Salifert
Mg: 1365 - Salifert (dose ESV B-Ionic by hand whenever)
Temp: 78
ph: 8.4
SG: 35 ppt
Lighting
6 bulb ati t5 (8 hours for 4x bulbs 3 hrs for 6) with 48" actinic reef bright xho (12 hrs on)
Par ratings are somewhere between 200 on sand to 350 on aquascape top, as measured with Apogee par meter.
Filtration
Reef octopus diablo xs 250 (or 200);
Currently running 2x 11 Oz units of Chemi-Pure blue and one serving of GFO - while typically I do no run any chemical filtration, i recently had a huge algae outbreak that required me to use AlgaeFix to eliminate it, coupled with twice weekly water changes and the aforementioned chemical media it seems to have worked;
Filter socks, changed when they being to overflow (about weekly);
The basic question, and the TL/DR version, I would like to have opinions on is the following:
Is anyone actually successful in keeping algae down while keeping color up? What do you attribute to your success and what can I change to improve my tanks coloration and viability?
Some background:
I have been having problems with either coral coloration or algae for the past few years. However, nutrient levels have never been high (N and P04 have never had a reading on my tank with salifert, red sea, sea chem, hanna checkers store testing etc, I even tried Triton and they came back with the P04 reading of 0.00918612 mg/l. Even when algae was growing like crazy I had no measurable readings.
Even with the algae and color issues, I have gotten fairly successful at keeping sps alive for decent length of time, some coral have had more than 2 years of growth and need to be pruned monthly. I have grown frags of coral from 0.75" to the size of footballs.
What I cannot seem to do is keep the colors vibrant and still keep the algae down. Shortly after buying a coral they tend to wash out, though they still grow they look pastel, outside of actinics they look whitish. Or I have algae growing like crazy that eventually chokes out the coral.
I assume my problem with coloration is low nutrients. But when I decrease nutrient export I get algae.
When I ease up on dosing carbon or slowing the water changes the color comes back, but the algae quickly takes over (last time it lasted about 1 month algae free then it took almost 6 months and probably cancerous reef chemicals to kill it).
There has to be a happy medium. As part of maintenance I would spend 30-60 minutes hand pulling algae from tank, which makes me unable to enjoy it).
As far as CUC to eat algae goes, I have tried hermit crabs and they ALWAYS end up eating snails and ignoring the algae, no matter the species of snail or the species of crab. I have tried emerald crabs, they picked on polyps and then ate snails or fish (once). I have tried larger fish like tangs/rabbit fish and they generally outgrow the tank having to be recaptured, worse than that they tend to prefer the nori and frozen foods and only pick at the algae.
When heavily dosing carbon I find that the coral begin to suffer and some never show good growth. I have tried coral feeding, Red Sea energy A & B, while this was early in my SPS tenure (so wasn't done with perfect regularity) I cannot say it helped at all. I have tried DT's phyto live cultures with no changes in the SPS corals (fan worms loved it). If anyone has a different suggestion for feeding SPS I am willing to give it a shot, currently feed Rods Food twice a week (currently as in this week i started it as a regular thing).
As far as trace elements go, I had triton test my water, they recommended tweaking a few of the major elements (strontium, potassium and magnesium) and indicated minor deficiencies in several trace elements (boron, iron, and some others). I bought the required potions to replace them, did the proper dosing for the duration of the bottles but I saw no positive changes to write home about. I don't want to go back this route, I don't really want to add supplements I can't regularly test for myself and most trace test kits have very poor reliability. Further, it is my belief that more frequent water changes will address this problem.
I have not added amino acids yet, though that should have been covered by the Reef Energy.
Current Plan:
Add more fish, feed more frozen, and add more snails (currently on cerith snails, as they seem the eat the largest variety of algae and algae producers without eating each other, I also plan to couple them with more banded trocus snails, though they only seem to like film algae on the glass) while changing to 10% weekly changes (12 gallons takes like 20 minutes to do).
That said, past experience dictates the more fish the more pollution therefore the better the colors and the more algae which seems like a vicious circle. As a note, I do not believe I have ever had the 'recommended' number of snails or crabs. I buy 10-20 each time I get fish or coral but they never seem to accumulate, many empty shells and long-lived hermits though.
Tank Critters:
Kole Tang
2x occ clowns
1x McCoskers (sp?) flasher wrasse
1x Blood Shirmp
Maybe a few hermits left
Cerith Snails
Banded Trocus Snails
1x Coral Beauty (just added last night, had a ton of aggression from tang, TBD if she remains, currently in acclimation box)
Tank maintenance:
20% water changes every other week;
replace the bulbs on my light yearly;
Use RO/DI (5 stage 90 gpd filter MaxCap Spectrapure);
Dose NOPOX (currently up at 8ml/day);
Skimmer Cup cleaned weekly
Tank Stats
75 gal display
20 gal sump
40 gal frag tank
2x mp 40
800 gph return pump
Alk: 10 dkh - Salifert (dose BRS 2-part via GHL doser)
Ca: 440 - Salifert
Mg: 1365 - Salifert (dose ESV B-Ionic by hand whenever)
Temp: 78
ph: 8.4
SG: 35 ppt
Lighting
6 bulb ati t5 (8 hours for 4x bulbs 3 hrs for 6) with 48" actinic reef bright xho (12 hrs on)
Par ratings are somewhere between 200 on sand to 350 on aquascape top, as measured with Apogee par meter.
Filtration
Reef octopus diablo xs 250 (or 200);
Currently running 2x 11 Oz units of Chemi-Pure blue and one serving of GFO - while typically I do no run any chemical filtration, i recently had a huge algae outbreak that required me to use AlgaeFix to eliminate it, coupled with twice weekly water changes and the aforementioned chemical media it seems to have worked;
Filter socks, changed when they being to overflow (about weekly);
