stop pest algae cold: how to

[Sk8r]

If you have bad algae...

1. the job of a cleanup crew is to prep the sandbed just by living there for the 4 weeks before you put your first fish in. It is NOT to eat all the algae.

2. if you have a stain on your sand, if it's brown it's diatoms, if it's red it's cyano, and relax---both are pretty common, no big deal unless you have a lot of the red stuff, in quarter-inch-deep sheets of it full of bubbles: that's a problem.

3. If you have a green stain on your rock, you're about to have algae. Sometimes a lot of it.

4. you should be using ro/di from your first fill. If you didn't, there's a fix for it, but it'll take time.

5. start using ro/di now and forever.

6. get a GFO reactor, 1 small one per 50 gallon
or the larger model, 1per hundred gallon.
Change out the gfo after a couple of weeks, and keep running it, changing this time after 4 weeks, and every 4 weeks thereafter until the algae starts miraculously losing its grip and disappearing. Ultimately this stuff strips out all the phosphate that arrived with a)tapwater fill b) rock c) sand.

7. you can use a LITTLE phosphate. Don't stripmine your tank: if it won't grow ANY algae even in the fuge, you may have gone overboard. Shut down the GFO.

8. in general, hereafter, you can run the gfo reactor just occasionally, either with GFO, or, with an adapter screen, with NPX, which is a nice thing, just not adequate for a really bad algae situation.

HTH.

 

[Sk8r]

getting a lot of questions about cyano---'tis the season.
It's LIGHT based, actually. A ray of sun getting to your tank can help a little patch really flourish. An old light can do it, all over.
It's ancient, adaptable, and the closest thing to an alien life form you'll ordinarily meet. The way to get rid of it is to turn out your lights 3 days a month (if you have corals, use actinic alone on the fourth day.] And have your skimmer working at max, to uptake the dieoff. It's a bacterium, not an algae, or at least, it's sort of a bacterial sheet: it's very very ancient, so weird it rates pages of explanation in Wikipedia, and it's really kind of cool stuff. If it didn't exist, there'd be no life on this planet that breathes oxygen. Thanks to it, we exist. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with it in your tank.

 

[jrozzi]

what about bubble algae? what eats it? and what's the best removal? I know gfo doesn't work and I know lights out doesn't work.

 

[Sk8r]

Actually, bubble is a transient, usually. Lasts a while, then goes away. Nothing really eats it enough to bother with, and most visitors to your tank will ignore your corals and ooh and ah over the beautiful bubble-stuff. If you have really large conspicuous bubbles, manually remove them, but otherwise just consider it an interesting texture that will last a few weeks and then start to disappear. GFO will indeed help, over time. GFO just takes a few months and needs to be backed by a decent skimmer. Any time you're trying to fight algae or cyano, a decent skimmer and your micro-life are how the dieoff waste gets processed out as the GFO medium binds the phosphate.

 

[Tommy081708]

Noticed last night my LR (over an 18 hr period) went from normal to extremely dark brownish almost purple/black. Reduced my photo period to 7 hrs, changed carbon, and skimmer on full blast. What could this be? I recently got rid of all my hermits as I am prepared to battle whatever comes forth of the decision.

 

[jrozzi]

Actually, bubble is a transient, usually. Lasts a while, then goes away. Nothing really eats it enough to bother with, and most visitors to your tank will ignore your corals and ooh and ah over the beautiful bubble-stuff. If you have really large conspicuous bubbles, manually remove them, but otherwise just consider it an interesting texture that will last a few weeks and then start to disappear. GFO will indeed help, over time. GFO just takes a few months and needs to be backed by a decent skimmer. Any time you're trying to fight algae or cyano, a decent skimmer and your micro-life are how the dieoff waste gets processed out as the GFO medium binds the phosphate.

I ran GFO to the point where my phosphates were undetectable and my sps started dying and the bubble algae was as bad as ever. Ive had this tank running since the end of april and its never gone away.

 

[mgrmax]

I ran GFO to the point where my phosphates were undetectable and my sps started dying and the bubble algae was as bad as ever. Ive had this tank running since the end of april and its never gone away.

I had a pretty good amount of bubble algae and hair algae. I finally pulled the rock and scrubbed it all with 50/50 tank water and hydrogen peroxide. I left them in the bucket of 5 minutes then rinsed them in a separate bucket with tank water.

I removed what corals I could prior to the dip. The only ones left during the bath were zoas and they opened back up a couple days later.

That was a few months ago and no bubble algae has returned. I have no idea what it would do to other corals so proceed with caution.


And thanks for the info Sk8r. As always, great post!

 

[Sk8r]

Phosphate is always undetectable by the tests we commonly run, when there is algae. Why? Because it is bound up in the algae. You need to keep running gfo until the algae is gone.

 

[mgrmax]

Phosphate is always undetectable by the tests we commonly run, when there is algae. Why? Because it is bound up in the algae. You need to keep running gfo until the algae is gone.

I have yet to detect phosphates in my DT wether I have rampant hair algae or none at all. I have however, been able to detect it in my top off water when my resin in spent.

The reason I'm stating this is because I routinely see people post their phosphate readings when asking for help in eradicating algae. What test are people using that is able to detect phosphates in a system that is using the phosphates to feed the algae?

 

[Code4]

I use a red sea test for phosphate. I have quite a large amount of long hair algae covering most of my rocks. My results are .34. I just ordered a reactor to hang on my tank. I have a red sea 250. So it will have to hang on the outside of my tank for now.