Unusual Algae Issue

how hard would it be for you to put the LR on PVC stands ever so slightly higher than the substrate depth? it may be nearly impossible, i know, but it is the best way to guarantee that the LR is able to purge itself of bacterial mulm. when LR is on the substrate the bottom of the LR is not able to purge itself of the bacterial biomass and in fact allows a conduit for the wicking of phosphates up through the calcium carbonate.

getting flow back behind LR structures is difficult with a fine substrate. there have been a few ideas of late that are solutions to this problem, but are a bit different than the normal for setups here.

G~

It would be hard with the established encrusting colonies I have growing. I am moving in a couple months and plan to be breaking things apart then. Maybe I can wait until then. I wonder if my last sand bed was more efficient. I definitely have a lot of bacteria mulm on my rocks, but even direct flow doesn't seem to prevent this.
My diamond goby on the other hand I have always attributed to at least keeping a good part of the rocks free from sand. Maybe the coarser stuff he has trouble pulling away from the base of rocks. That is really the only change in my tank between now and when it was thriving.
 
I circled the worse algae issue spots:
FrontTankViewwithalgaecircles_zpsfd988d32.png
 
Maybe I am just a simpleton but the solution is obvious. The algae is only growing on the Marco rock, which has a long history of having po4 bound in the outer layers. It makes sense considering the algae will always prefer to grow on the source of it's food. The solution is to remove the source of the po4. Carbon dosing is not going to do it since carbon sources feed bacteria that consumes nitrates massively more than phosphates and the algae is attached directly to the source of the phosphates. GFO isn't going to work very quickly and has the potential to remove too much po4 from the water column which can impact the corals long before the algae since the algae is attached directly to it's food source.

Remove the Marco rock and treat it to remove the po4 in it. There are a couple of ways to do this, you can either give the rock an acid bath that will dissolve the outer layer of the rock with the po4 in it, but will kill the rock at the same time. You can also remove the rock and keep it in saltwater and dose lanthanum Chloride to extract the po4 out of the rock without killing the rock. Both ways are very effective, one is just faster than the other.

FWIW the majority of the rock in my tank is Marco rock and has been through acid baths and I have never had a problem with algae. It is very well documented that dry rock usually has po4 bound in the outer layers. If you would like a little light reading on how to deal with it, as many other people have, here are a couple of links that will help.

Acid bath done right...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1914426

Lanthanum Chloride....
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2145395
 
Maybe I am just a simpleton but the solution is obvious. The algae is only growing on the Marco rock, which has a long history of having po4 bound in the outer layers. It makes sense considering the algae will always prefer to grow on the source of it's food. The solution is to remove the source of the po4. Carbon dosing is not going to do it since carbon sources feed bacteria that consumes nitrates massively more than phosphates and the algae is attached directly to the source of the phosphates. GFO isn't going to work very quickly and has the potential to remove too much po4 from the water column which can impact the corals long before the algae since the algae is attached directly to it's food source.

Remove the Marco rock and treat it to remove the po4 in it. There are a couple of ways to do this, you can either give the rock an acid bath that will dissolve the outer layer of the rock with the po4 in it, but will kill the rock at the same time. You can also remove the rock and keep it in saltwater and dose lanthanum Chloride to extract the po4 out of the rock without killing the rock. Both ways are very effective, one is just faster than the other.

FWIW the majority of the rock in my tank is Marco rock and has been through acid baths and I have never had a problem with algae. It is very well documented that dry rock usually has po4 bound in the outer layers. If you would like a little light reading on how to deal with it, as many other people have, here are a couple of links that will help.

Acid bath done right...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1914426

Lanthanum Chloride....
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2145395

Thanks! I never did acid bath the rock. I will probably try that during the move in the near future. Would it be ok to do it in cycles where I do part of the rock at a time that way I dont kill off all my LR at once and cause an imbalance in its ability to handle its role as the bacteria will not all be killed off at once?
 
You can do it in cycles as long as the algae remains just on the rock. In your case the LC may be a better option because you won't lose the biological function of the rock. Unfortunately if you cannot easily remove the corals then there isn't much you can do other than wait it out.
 
Is it a bad idea to just put quick encrusting corals like sunset monti and monti digis on the affected rocks and let them out-compete the algae for space??
 
You can try but algae has its own defenses. The peroxide may keep the algae at bay long enough to give the corals a fighting chance.
 
Another question.....Is it normal for these issues to show up in Marco Rocks after being in an aquarium for 2 years? That is what I haven't figured out. Why am I having issues now when the first two year were just fine with no algae to speak of minus the occasional bubble algae on a frag plug and some diatoms and stuff two weeks into setup into the tanks set. I am just trying to rationalize this and make sure I'm getting at the root cause, which is proposed to be bound phosphates. Literally the tank has been algae free after initial cycling for 2 years. I still am not convinced that there is not another underlying cause, but please convince me if that is the case.
 
all calcium carbonate based rock is going to absorb phosphates. from the looks of your circles those areas probably get the least amount of random flow. this keeps the bacterial mulm produced from the LR from being swept away by the currents leaving the material there to feed algae.

Marco Rock does seem to have a reputation for having a decent amount of phosphates in it. though any mined rock is going to have a good amount of phosphates in it.

G~
 
It isn't "normal" but that doesn't imply it isn't possible. The conditions have to be right for algae to grow, and it is possible that the conditions were not right until recently. Everything still points to the rock as being the source but there is no way of knowing exactly what is causing it to happen 2 years later.
 
algae needs nutrients. if the Marco rock was full of phosphates, than it would have grown algae at that time. bacteria working on phosphates in a calcium carbonate media is going to happen.

i am pretty sure the cause is not enough flow in those areas allowing either detritus from the open water column to settle there or a lack of flow in the area not allowing the bacterial migration of phosphates out of the calcium carbonate media to remove the detritus formed by this process. think of trying to "cook/purge" LR in a bucket without any flow. the detritus will just pile up on the LR along with the bottom of the purging container. LR "cooking/purging" works because of the flow. without the flow throughout the LR structure in a system the process can not fully occur in that system and pockets of algae can develop from the detrital build up along with an increase in phosphate concentrations in the LR in those areas.

G~
 
algae needs nutrients. if the Marco rock was full of phosphates, than it would have grown algae at that time. bacteria working on phosphates in a calcium carbonate media is going to happen.

i am pretty sure the cause is not enough flow in those areas allowing either detritus from the open water column to settle there or a lack of flow in the area not allowing the bacterial migration of phosphates out of the calcium carbonate media to remove the detritus formed by this process. think of trying to "cook/purge" LR in a bucket without any flow. the detritus will just pile up on the LR along with the bottom of the purging container. LR "cooking/purging" works because of the flow. without the flow throughout the LR structure in a system the process can not fully occur in that system and pockets of algae can develop from the detrital build up along with an increase in phosphate concentrations in the LR in those areas.

G~

Thats the thing, some of the areas have really high flow. Before the algae took over the areas there was a clearish fuzzy film that I assumed was bacteria. Even direct flow or turkeybasting didn't seem to blow it away. This is on a lot of the surface of the rocks. I was thinking the biofilm or whatever it was trapped detritus or directly released phosphates itself. The phosphates have never (even before the algae) been detectable in the water column. I guess I really need to solve the issue of what allowed the film to grow so much in the first place. Maybe overdosing carbon source?
 
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It isn't "normal" but that doesn't imply it isn't possible. The conditions have to be right for algae to grow, and it is possible that the conditions were not right until recently. Everything still points to the rock as being the source but there is no way of knowing exactly what is causing it to happen 2 years later.

The conditions have to be right...well they had light and phosphates from the phosphate bound rock. The nitrogen may not have been very high and I guess could have been the limiting factor, but from my experience phosphates seem to always be the limiting factor for algae. I'm trying to figure what conditions changed if it is purely bound phosphates in the rock that are finally being utilized by the algae. That is why I was leaning towards the bacteria and film causing detritus accumulation even in a high flow environment.
Again I appreciate the advice, but I am trying to rationalize it. I know thats not always possible, but I think the evidence may suggest another factor to play rather than purely bound phosphates in the rock, finally deciding to rear their evil head. Of course it is still a possibility and during my tank move I can test it, but if its not the root cause I do not want to misdiagnose and come to a similar fate after acid washing the rocks and recycling them two years down the road again when things are finally starting to look more mature.
 
It is certainly a puzzle and it has a solution. The hard part is always finding the solution. It is also very possible that it isn't the rock itself but considering the algae is only on the rocks it is difficult to point in a different direction with any certainty. Out of curiosity, do you have chronically low ph?
 
This Pic shows some of what the rock looked like before the algae and some with algae starting for reference. the before look is higher left and the algae start is lower left. FYI this is two inches too the left and 4 inches away from an mp40 on reef crest at 100% in a 58 gallon with the mp40 and a korallia 1400 that come on randomly every couple of minutes and stays on usually about 7-8 minutes on average and also has ~500gph return.
IMAG1517_zpsac9ed825.jpg
 
that looks exactly like phosphate laden LR. were carbon dosing at some point? if so, that will explain it all. carbon dosing is fantastic at removing the phosphates/nitrates from a water column, but suck at actually helping a system to become less eutrophic. the whole time you are carbon dosing the bacteria have an easy source of carbon to feed on. this seems all good, but the this keeps carbon from the bacteria in the LR who are necessary for removing phosphates from the calcium carbonate matrix. this leads to the calcium carbonate winning the phosphate war. it will just do what it does best bind phosphates. the whole time one is carbon dosing all of the worthless test kits are showing "perfect" water parameters for the "advanced" reefkeeper, but in reality the nutrients in the LR are going up.

when someone stop carbon dosing, the bacteria in the water column no longer have an easy source of carbon. the bacteria in the water column and the LR are now on an equal footing. this means that the bacteria in the LR can start on all of that great phosphates that have had a chance to bind up in the LR. think of the first few weeks of "cooking/purging" of LR in a bucket, only this time in your tank. :( you wouldn't also happen to be seeing a lower pH would you?

carbon dosing like tool in this hobby has a specific use. the unfortunate part is that very few people actually use it in its specific use. they all use it as a masking agent for eutrophication from the build up of detritus in areas that can not be maintained. i would only suggest carbon dosing to those that are running a true oligotrophic system. one that detritus is not allowed to settle, anywhere and the system has a monster UV and skimmer. this dosing would only be needed here and there not constantly done. just to get the levels to a truly low level, not the false low level that our test kits lead us to believe.

G~
 
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