To scrub or not to scrub. That is the question.

rjrobert

rjrobert

Premium Member
Merry Christmas all. Here is the scenerio. After restarting my 6 year old tank I have gotten some incredibly bad hair algae. I mean it is so bad it looks like a kelp farm in places.... Here are some thoughts

Tank is about a year old now, so it should not be new tank syndrom.
Tank has about 25x turnover so that should be fine for a FOWLR tank.
Lighting is just PCs and bulbs are about 3 months old.
Tank has about 250lbs of live rock
RO/DI is used with TDS of 0 at the line
10% water change weekly
I don't "think" I over feed.
Use a skimmer
Have two XL media filters. GFO (switched to Phosban today)/Carbon
Phosphates have tested at zero, which we all know just means the hair algae is utilizing it.
4 months ago I build a pretty big ATS (30"x24")that is rocking. I mean I pull probably 2 cups of algae every week from this thing....

Tank is 215gal with another 70 gal in the sump
When I say I restarted it. It was down for about 2 years due to loosing my job. It was completely cleaned. There was no old rock or sand or anything that could have been a trap and released back into the water. Rock was "premium" whatever that means from the Dr. and Sand was "live" sand.

I can't think of what else to do. I was changing so much water at one point that the salt was seriously costing me some big money.

Can you think of something I am missing. I need some help on this one.
I am thinking of pulling all the rock out. scrubbing the walls, do a 60% water change, scrub the rocks and try again.....

Thoughts?
 
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A couple of initial questions come to mind:
-What and how much/often are you feeding?

-Are you skimming "wet"?

-How deep is the sand bed in your aquarium?

-Where is most of the algae growing? (rocks, sand, glass?)
 
It's growing EVERYWHERE. I just scooped a significant amount off the sandbed. Sand (Aragonite) is only about 2" deep. I used to run a 6" DSB but not on this tank. I have a pretty cool 2'x6'x7" frag tank that was made for me. Going to start running it as a DSB with a 2'x4' section. That won't help me any time soon though as it will take a long time to establish.

Skimmer isn't "wet", Not dry either though. I would say somewhere in the middle if that even remotely makes sense. I have to clean it about once every week or so.

Food is frozen cubes. They get two cubes in the morning and two in the late afternoon.

When I say everywhere, I really mean it. Glass, overflows, Rock, Arogonite, return feeds... EVERYWHERE. I've been in the hobby for about 10 years and never have seen anything like it. I thought I understood this subject matter good enough to not have this happen. Guess I was wrong...

When I do the water changes I usually vacuum the entire aragonite bed. But that is about once a month. Should probably do it more. If anyone is in the Greece area and wants to see it, just let me know. I'm starting to get desperate. It is a real pleasure for the kids and friends in the neighborhood. I want to fix this so I can start putting in soft corals again.
 
That sounds like an awful lot of nutrient import (feedings) and not much export (skimmer cleaning 1x per week) to me.

I would substitute some (at least two) of the frozen cubes with New Life Spectrum pellets and skim wet enough to fill your collection cup once a day.

I personally noticed a decrease in algae and cyano in my aquarium when I got rid of my sand. Two inches is enough to collect detritus and cause problems, but isn't enough to get the anaerobic benefits of a DSB. I would think about siphoning out most of the sand (a little at a time) and leave just a dusting on the bottom of the aquarium. Do you have any livestock (wrasses, etc.) that rely on a sandbed? If so, I would put a tupperware container of sand in for them to burrow at night.
 
I can push the skimmer wetter

Fish eat the food in about 30 seconds with nothing left over. I've always heard that you didn't want to feed dry foods because of phosphates in them. has the experiences with these pellets been good.

Tank is relatively (for an aquarium of this size) lightly stocked
2 clowns
4 blue chromis
1 powder blue tang (6")
foxface
emperor angel
fire angel
and a bicolor dotty

I can try to siphon the aragonite weekly instead of monthly. There is no livestock stirring it so I can see it holding some nutrients. I do like the look of it in the tank so I want to try and make it work. It's just a personal thing but I don't like the looks of barebottoms. I've always taken away from the readings that 2" and under was ok and 6" and over was ok but the 2-6 range was trouble.

What do folks think about srubbing the rock?
 
I don't scrub rock

I don't scrub rock

do you run GFO or other PO4 removers?

Oh... just noticed you switched to Phosban today. Maybe try BRS stuff. Keep running it. Monitor alkalinity.

"Premium" rock. Was it dry?
 
Even if the fish eat all the food, they're still pooping a lot... As Scott says, that's a lot of input and not a lot of output. One other thing to TRY is to switch to lights not intended to support photosyntesis... Can't grow much algae without enough of the right wavelengths of light...
 
Had been running GFO from BRS for about the last 9 months. Switched to Phosban today just to try something different. The second unit is running GAC from BRS. What I can do is let that run for a few days to get the majority of the GAC usage. Then I can dump it and run one upflow with Phosban and the second upflow with GFO.

Rock was "wet" wrapped in newspapers. I rinsed it before I stacked it.

Think I should take it all out to manually remove as much as I can then restack? Or just pull as much as I can while it is in the aquarium and see if I can get it to die off.

Lighting period is 13 hours with 6 PC's

I will say that I am surprised it has still been so stubborn. The Turf Scrubber seems pretty effective in growing large amounts of algae itself.

Someone mentioned to me that I would have to bake or something because the hair algae is "seeded" and the light alone will keep it alive no matter what else I do. I haven't heard that level of doom or gloom but thought I would add it here.
 
Had a seahare for a short period of time. About 3 weeks in and it died. Not sure why. Only living thing to ever pass into the afterlife in this tank in a year.

I got the 210 gallon reef cleaners kit with hermits.Most of it was tiny little snails. Not a lot of medium sized astro's and turbo's. The algae is so established I wonder if a larger infusion of turbos would be able to break into the macroalgae. Once it gets better under control I totally see that as part of the final solution. Maybe they can get some foot hold and help.

The foxface, Tang and Angels I see nipping at it a bit.

Any thoughts on removing and scrubbing the rock vs just trying to pull as much as I can and hoping the rest can die off?
 
Curiously, what wavelength does not promote growth? I have 2 of each bulb. A blue a purple actinic and a ice white (I don't have the boxes any more to get the actual wave length.). The overall color of the tank I would estimate about 14k
 
I think the bottom line is nutrient import vs. export. If you can maintain a "net negative", exporting more than you're feeding, the algae will eventually wane and disappear. I think if you removed the rocks for scrubbing and kept everything else status quo, you'll end up in the same place you are now.

I wouldn't put much stock in anyone saying that the rock is "seeded" with the algae. It needs nutrients to grow. Eliminate the nutrients, the algae will disappear (albeit slowly).
 
I'll turn the pressure up on the export side. Given then fish load I stated above, is feeding just one frozen cube a day too little? Don't want to stunt the growth of the tang or emperor angel
 
rjrobert said:
Given then fish load I stated above, is feeding just one frozen cube a day too little? Don't want to stunt the growth of the tang or emperor angel
Click to expand...

I don't think so at all. One cube and one feeding of pellets each day will be plenty until you get ahead of this.

Good luck and keep us posted.
 
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