Well, 2 years in and I've hit the wall. After successfully battling dinoflaggellates, hitchhiking homicidal stone crabs and parasitic isopods, I have been done in by the comparatively common culprits of bubble algae and bryopsis ( I think).
Had several posts on here the last few months and have tried lots of things. More frequent water changes, 3 day blackouts, purchasing high quality phosphate kits, physically removing algae and treating with hydrogen peroxide, and even adding a gfo reactor.
Phosphates still register nothing, which I'm told can be a false positive as they are just getting used up in the water column (so how the heck do you know where your at?). Nitrates are between 10 and 15. Not ideal but actually very consistent for my tank (I've been taking readings and documenting since day 1, usually every 2 or 3 weeks.) My husbandry has been consistent (did a lot of reasearch on these forums before running the tank). Water changes have always been every other week (about 15%) and always with Rodi water. Been running a skimmer for about a year. Test water parms every 2 or 3 weeks. Feeding is probably lighter than it should be honestly, small amount only once a day, never enough to get to the bottom. Frozen food is rinsed first. I've removed many of the live rocks by hand during weekly maintenance and applied hydrogen peroxide to try and kill the bryopsis I couldn't manually remove. I've manually removed tons of bubble algae with a siphon or taking out the rocks to remove, rinse and return. I removed the small refugium in the back of the 45
gallon all in one and added a gfo reactor for 4 weeks. Switched out the media every 5 days only to find it kept escaping the reactor. Didn't seem to help much and also tanked my alk (also, coincidentally or not seems to have kicked off a doatom bloom which i also cant seem to fix) so I've put the refugium back and I'm slowly raising the alk back. (My sump crab is happier.
). Corals are softies (toadstool leather, gsp, kenya tree, sinularia and xenia) and LPS (duncan, candy cane and Caribbean rose). All are growing and happy, to be honest. But I can't decrease the algae. It's driving me nuts. I feel like I need to just nuke all the rock or just live with the algae. Photo attached; could be worse I suppose but after nearly 6 months, I feel like I've lost the battle.
I know that it's part of the hobby, you can try to do everything right and it still goes awry. But it can be so supremely frustrating. Sorry for the long post, just needed to vent I guess and let other new folks know that even two years in you are still 'new to the hobby'
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Had several posts on here the last few months and have tried lots of things. More frequent water changes, 3 day blackouts, purchasing high quality phosphate kits, physically removing algae and treating with hydrogen peroxide, and even adding a gfo reactor.
Phosphates still register nothing, which I'm told can be a false positive as they are just getting used up in the water column (so how the heck do you know where your at?). Nitrates are between 10 and 15. Not ideal but actually very consistent for my tank (I've been taking readings and documenting since day 1, usually every 2 or 3 weeks.) My husbandry has been consistent (did a lot of reasearch on these forums before running the tank). Water changes have always been every other week (about 15%) and always with Rodi water. Been running a skimmer for about a year. Test water parms every 2 or 3 weeks. Feeding is probably lighter than it should be honestly, small amount only once a day, never enough to get to the bottom. Frozen food is rinsed first. I've removed many of the live rocks by hand during weekly maintenance and applied hydrogen peroxide to try and kill the bryopsis I couldn't manually remove. I've manually removed tons of bubble algae with a siphon or taking out the rocks to remove, rinse and return. I removed the small refugium in the back of the 45
gallon all in one and added a gfo reactor for 4 weeks. Switched out the media every 5 days only to find it kept escaping the reactor. Didn't seem to help much and also tanked my alk (also, coincidentally or not seems to have kicked off a doatom bloom which i also cant seem to fix) so I've put the refugium back and I'm slowly raising the alk back. (My sump crab is happier.
). Corals are softies (toadstool leather, gsp, kenya tree, sinularia and xenia) and LPS (duncan, candy cane and Caribbean rose). All are growing and happy, to be honest. But I can't decrease the algae. It's driving me nuts. I feel like I need to just nuke all the rock or just live with the algae. Photo attached; could be worse I suppose but after nearly 6 months, I feel like I've lost the battle.I know that it's part of the hobby, you can try to do everything right and it still goes awry. But it can be so supremely frustrating. Sorry for the long post, just needed to vent I guess and let other new folks know that even two years in you are still 'new to the hobby'
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