Turf or GHA?

[PhaneSoul]

While it's always possible the sandbed is to blame, I really doubt it (there are always folks who ascribe every problem to the sandbed; including, apparently global warming ) That your nutrient readings are good suggests that your husbandry practices are OK. Algae control is more than just nutrient control IME. Once algae takes hold, it can be tough to control. Key is to mechanically remove as much as you can and find something that will eat the rest. Bristletooth tangs are awesome tank members, but not particularly good at eating filamentous algae. Unfortunately Tangs often have to be 'taught' to eat hair algae. Some do, some do not. My current band eat every thread that has the audacity to try to grow in my tank. The only places I have any GHA is where they cannot reach. I'd at least try a Zebrasoma and an Acanthurus.

That your tank went its first 10 months without algae problems also suggests that your rocks are not leaching nitrates or phosphates, so it's unlikely they're magically leaching it now. Easy enough to determine though; just re-cure a piece in a separate vat and measure (remove all the hair large first otherwise it will contaminate the experiment).

The fact that there are no testable nutrients in the water column means nothing. the algae is taking them all up.

what has most likely happened was the sandbed was neglected allowing it to fill up with nutrients. when it was full the rocks started absorbing the nutrients, and now there are no more nutrient sinks in the system for the nutrients to go. the fact that the first 10 months went smooth backs this up because that is right around the time a poorly maintained tank starts showing its ugly head.

along with the test that ca1ore just stated, a quick one would be to snap off a small piece of rock so you have a bit of clean rock exposed. if algae grows right there within the matter of a few days it just goes to further show there are nutrients in the rock.

here are a bunch of threads that have just been dug up with some excellent info regarding this very subject.

DSB leaching phosphates?

 

[ca1ore]

This tank is a 135 display with 50 sump that has a 20 fuge. Chaeto grows like mad. Three fish only....kole, firefish, chromis.

Three fish in a 135 is pretty lightly stocked; how much are you feeding them? Just doesn't seem like a scenario where you'd be generating a lot of nutrients for GHA growth. Are you running a skimmer (I'd assume so)? Are you removing chaeto as it grows? I'm inclined to think perhaps your rocks have been leaching phosphate right from the start (though that doesn't really explain the first 10 months).

I run a 265 with 35 fish, feed them 4 times day, don't bother to vacuum my sandbed, and have very good SPS growth and no GHA in the display. Tank is closing on 18 months setup. Comparatively speaking, just doesn't seem to me you'd be generating enough excess nutrients to be saturating your rocks. There are plenty of tanks that run with measurable nitrates and phosphates, so unmeasurable levels certainly are significant; even if nutrients are being bound up into algae growth. Remove the algae and you remove the nutrients.

Although they can be controversial, I've run algal turf scrubbers for many years and found them to be an excellent part of an effective nutrient export program. On my tank, I probably remove about a packed quart of chaeto and a packed cup of turf algae weekly. As you battle the display algae, you may want to consider an ATS.

By all means remove the sandbed if you think its warranted. It's a topic that generates some rather dogmatic positions, so I would be very curious to see if it helps to solve your display algae problem or not.

 

[Fishmommy]

Keep the advice coming, I am listening to everyone very carefully!
I feed a small pinch of flakes once a day during the week, and frozen food on the weekend. Kole gets nori also. I skim and harvest chaeto.
The algae is growing on the sand, rocks, and walls of the tank. The walls are not leaching, so it must also be in the water column.
The algae took off when I stopped GFO for a month and dosed some KNO3 to try to improve my coral coloration. this was last october, but it has not subsided since returning to GFO and stripping the nutrients.

 

[CStrickland]

Looks a little turfier than GHA to me, an easy way to tell is how readily it pulls off in a mat. Turf is more like the chunks of fuzzy moss you see on a log in the woods, GHA is stringier and kinda comes apart in your hand.

Here is my noob explainer of the phos issue, take it for the $.02 it's worth:
Phosphate that is a component of detritus, or bound in your rocks and sand after over a year of lackadaisical husbandry, will not show on a water test. It is able to "hide" by attaching to carbon. Phos will continue to shift forms between organic and inorganic, but once the binding sites on the calcium carbonate structures are full, it will no longer be taken up by the rocks and sand. So where before some organic (carbon attached) phos would land on the rocks and sand in the form of detritus or uneaten food, and be released from its bond only to be quickly reabsorbed, it is now hanging around available for the algae. See how fuzzy the algae is? That's a nice trick. It keeps the fertilizer right where it can be used to grow instead of letting it be swept along in the current to a macro setup, GFO reactor, or run-of-the-mill skimmer (I'm assuming that if you had one and it was super strong, you'd have mentioned that); those methods are all just eating leftovers and I think the bits on the wall are too. If phos is the only thing missing then the algae will use it to bloom in response to its new found happy home before it ever shows on a Hanna.

I think this is the dogmatic part, likely only worth $.01 or less.
It makes more sense to me to get the nutrients out pretty quick after the fish and corals have a chance to eat them, while they are still "hiding" by being bound to carbons in detritus or bacteria. A tighter food chain that feeds the things you like to look at, but doesn't leave nutrients around for algae to use. This means: really blowing off the rocks, vacing the sand, and cleaning the sump; skimming wet if you can. Pulling out the algae you have and getting on top of the fertilizer you are adding is a really logical way to proceed. Adding more CuC to eat it binds it for a little while, but they still poop so it isn't really going anywhere. My snails have not grown much since I got them, relative to how much detritus I've sucked out. I think they just move the phos around the tank, which is good to a point cause I can't reach some places, and I like to look at snails. It's probably a catch up game for a while, and then you can relax a bit. Personally I'd rather go for a little elbow grease before I started cranking in products like algae-x, but in your shoes I would be considering all my options too

I like feeding my fish 3x a day. He wags his tail when I aproach the tank, it's dorbles. I would much rather take out his poo than feed him less, same as having a dog. I hope if I've mistated any aspect of these processes someone with more experience will correct me, as I am very new.

 

[PhaneSoul]

Three fish in a 135 is pretty lightly stocked; how much are you feeding them? Just doesn't seem like a scenario where you'd be generating a lot of nutrients for GHA growth. Are you running a skimmer (I'd assume so)? Are you removing chaeto as it grows? I'm inclined to think perhaps your rocks have been leaching phosphate right from the start (though that doesn't really explain the first 10 months).

I run a 265 with 35 fish, feed them 4 times day, don't bother to vacuum my sandbed, and have very good SPS growth and no GHA in the display. Tank is closing on 18 months setup. Comparatively speaking, just doesn't seem to me you'd be generating enough excess nutrients to be saturating your rocks. There are plenty of tanks that run with measurable nitrates and phosphates, so unmeasurable levels certainly are significant; even if nutrients are being bound up into algae growth. Remove the algae and you remove the nutrients.

Although they can be controversial, I've run algal turf scrubbers for many years and found them to be an excellent part of an effective nutrient export program. On my tank, I probably remove about a packed quart of chaeto and a packed cup of turf algae weekly. As you battle the display algae, you may want to consider an ATS.

By all means remove the sandbed if you think its warranted. It's a topic that generates some rather dogmatic positions, so I would be very curious to see if it helps to solve your display algae problem or not.

Here is some more for ya ca1ore. a thread from RC including randy, short, sweet and to the point phos binds with caco aka liverock and sand.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15968762

another short and sweet link:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/flbay/millero1.html

this one is longer and a lil harder to comprehend.
http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncw/f/gills2006-1.pdf
but basically autotrophic bacteria inside the live rock use an enzyme to liberate (free, unbind, ect) from the calcium carbonate structure to incorporate into their mass. when they die the live bacteria then push the dead (bacteria flock) out of the rock. this is how phosphates are purged from live rock. its also a majority of whats shown in this picture from cleaning my 10g tank.

I siphon the sandbed in this tank once a week, every week its around the same. 5g bucket btw

Although algae scrubbers will export INORGANIC nutrients, they are only masking the ORGANIC nutrients that are in your tank rotting providing inorganic nutrients. ats's are just a band aide for the underlying problem, rotting detritus. just like gfo, bio pellets, carbon dosing, ect.. none of those export detritus and therefore are just money spent on something extra that you could have easily handled with a 15$ siphon.

ca1ore, have you read this thread?
keeping sps is soooo hard

because it goes thru all of this plus a lot more. sources included.

 

[ca1ore]

Although algae scrubbers will export INORGANIC nutrients, they are only masking the ORGANIC nutrients that are in your tank rotting providing inorganic nutrients. ats's are just a band aide for the underlying problem, rotting detritus. just like gfo, bio pellets, carbon dosing, ect.. none of those export detritus and therefore are just money spent on something extra that you could have easily handled with a 15$ siphon.

I would suggest that it is poor etiquette to hijack the OP's thread, so I'll offer a few thoughts then drop it .....

You and I clearly don't agree on much, and have had variations on this debate elsewhere, and to the point of complete tedium. You like to link to threads here on RC and elsewhere, and that's fine, I can 'google' too (perhaps the most interesting aspect of many of your cited threads is the very high percentage of 'users' who are long gone from RC; maybe still active in the hobby, maybe risen from the ashes in a new guise, maybe out of the hobby ). The mechanisms by which phosphates are utilized in the reef tank appear to me, at least, to be less well understood than you suggest. I have not, for the record, ever stated that I didn't believe the principles of phosphate binding in the reef tank; simply that robust export mechanisms can compensate for rote tasks like sand vacuuming. If you want to do it, that's fine - heck I do it on my 30g, just not on my 265 ('paradoxically', I have an algae problem in the former but not in the latter). You have posted that picture of the bottom of your bucket in at least three places that I can recall (though how you arrive at 1/8 of it being uneaten food, I cannot fathom - perhaps you have access to sophisticated testing equipment :lol; so let me post two of my own.




You're welcome!

With regard to algae, you cannot have it both ways. Either the algae is binding up nutrients or its not. Our test kits apparently don't measure organic phosphate (well, or at all?), so its bacterial action that converts them to inorganic forms. But if those inorganic forms become unmeasurable because they are bound up in algae, then the removal of said algae exports them from the system. I don't see that as a bandaid.

According to you, my tank ought to be a eutrophic mess - unable to maintain SPS and a Magnifica anemone. Yet its not. Hmmn I've been doing this a long time (maybe you have too, dunno) and have arrived at an approach that works for me. Don't expect anyone else to take the same path; indeed maybe they shouldn't, but dogmatic positions clearly fly in the face of demonstrable evidence (the 'pudding').

ca1ore, have you read this thread?
keeping sps is soooo hard

because it goes thru all of this plus a lot more. sources included.

Have you read the thread - I know you have posted to it, as have I :lol:

There are many routes to success in this hobby, and an equal number to failure, and maybe you truly believe that disaster is just around the corner for my approach; only time will tell.

Apologies to the OP for the hijack; I now return you to your regular programming .....