0 Nitrates 0 Phosphates - Still have an Algae problem

[jazonPartij]

If I have 0 Nitrates and 0 Phosphates, I do a 20% water change every week or two, and I still have an algae issue. I have four fish in a 40 gal IM Fusion. I’m using a Hydra26HD for lighting. Why can’t I get rid of this algae?

 

[Flippers4pups]

How old is your tank?

 

[Justfebreezeit]

What fish?

 

[jazonPartij]

Tank is about 7 or 8 months old.

 

[jazonPartij]

Two clown, engineer goby, and a damsel

 

[Justfebreezeit]

So your nitrate and phosphate are either reading a false 0 because the algae is using it faster than it can show up on a test. That or your algae is using ammonia directly as a fuel source.

You have a low enough bio-load that it shouldn't be an issue. Are you feeding dry food, and how often are you feeding?

The issue dosen't look terrible. An urchin and a few more snails would likely clean it up in a few weeks if you manage to solve the nutrient issue.

Also the tank is still relatively young, it could be an ugly phase that should take about a month to go away on its own. I just finished one at the 6 month mark.

 

[jazonPartij]

So your nitrate and phosphate are either reading a false 0 because the algae is using it faster than it can show up on a test. That or your algae is using ammonia directly as a fuel source.

You have a low enough bio-load that it shouldn't be an issue. Are you feeding dry food, and how often are you feeding?

The issue dosen't look terrible. An urchin and a few more snails would likely clean it up in a few weeks if you manage to solve the nutrient issue.

Also the tank is still relatively young, it could be an ugly phase that should take about a month to go away on its own. I just finished one at the 6 month mark.

I’m feeding frozen food mostly. I started feeding every other day because the algae keeps getting worse. It’s not terrible but I don’t want it to get out of control. I have a fairly hefty clean up crew but either it’s not the right kind? Just some random hermit crabs and snails. Maybe 25 hermit crabs and about 50 small snails. Aside from water changes, any recommendations for keeping the problem in check?

 

[Paul B]

Stop changing the water. You have no nitrates or phosphates, why are you changing it?
You are adding new nutrients. Leave it alone and go out to dinner.

 

[Max!]

My LFS has an algae blenny with a stomach the size of a yoga ball. My point being they eat eat GHA like its no bodies business - and they're neat.

 

[Pdash]

I'm fairly certain I had the same stuff (brown cyano). It loves low nutrients and high flow. It was completely covering my rock work and sand. I beat it by doing a couple of things, first I manually removed it from the rocks I could easily pull from the tank, and then covered those surfaces with peroxide. Next I added more trochus snails, an urchin, and a bristletooth tang.I then started feeding way more and dosing nitrates via KNO3 (even placing food in the filter socks in the sump) I have been shooting for PO4 above .05 ppm (don't let the nitrate dosing drive PO4 too low if you have corals they will likely die in these circumstances) and nitrates above 3-4 ppm. My bristletooth tang was the biggest factor imo, plus raising nutrients so green film algae can grow instead of this brown stuff. My guess is the stuff out competes everything else when there is much more (but still very little) PO4 than nitrate. Hope this helps. The stuff went from plague levels to gone in 2 weeks.

 

[Matthew Russell]

In the last few months I got my tank off of GFO and started using a refugium. The refugium thrived at first reducing the phosphate to very low levels, close to zero, and nitrate was at zero as well. Eventually the refugium became too efficient and my macro algae started to die. I am also having issues with Cyano. I did some research and found that having your levels at zero isn’t a good thing and an imbalance of phosphate and nitrate is also no good. I reduced the amount of time my fuge ran to 12 hours and started dosing iron, Nitrogen/nitrate, and molybdenum. This has vastly improved the health of my macro alge and my SPS coral seems to be loving it. I started dosing Red Sea coral colors daily. One of the Red Sea coral color bottles is iron so it works out. I dose the Pax Bellum NO3 daily and the Pax B iron every other day or so instead of the Red Sea coral colors. This has lead to what I think has been a major milestone in my tanks progress. The Cyano seems to be reseeding as well.