Absolute Distress! Algae is breaking my WILL!! Help please

[wattson]

stop all your dosing except the big 3,, get rid of your nutrient sand bed,,the one best thing I ever did was go bare bottom...I will never look at sand EVER again....far easier to clean and control nutrients without the sand,,and blast flow in the tanks without any sand spike issues and skim skim skim

 

[mcarroll]

Just my opinion of course.

I don't remember you saying too much about cleanup crew like snails or crabs before. I know tangs are boring, but any recommendations on invert's or other herbivores?

I seem to recall you saying something about damselfish before....lots of them are technically herbivores from what I've read, but damsel's get treated like plague by hobbyists.

 

[Seth Francis]

Has anyone suggested a turf scrubber or growing chaeto in your sump?

 

[mcarroll]

get rid of your nutrient sand bed,,the one best thing I ever did was go bare bottom

I have tanks both ways and like both well enough. If you take some care, a sand bed can't hurt anything...but that's where most of us fall down.

For anyone who wonders about this stuff, check out this diagram I found that shows coral cover, algae cover, sand cover and DOC levels for some major reefing areas all combined, BTW. Most reefs have sand, but not all...and not all that have sand have a lot of it.

Interestingly, the most pristine reefs (c) have the least sand, or even none in one case:

What I still wonder is about the proximity of those sand beds to the actual corals.

In some cases corals grow right on the sane of course, but those probably aren't very established reefs. My gut tells me that established reefs would necessarily be more isolated from the sand bed....simply from everyday growth up, away from it if for no other reason.

(BTW, you can follow that DOI (or put it into google) to locate the original article this is from.)

 

[Antlrman]

Has anyone suggested a turf scrubber or growing chaeto in your sump?

No, but I am having a hard time keeping any of my algae alive in my sump for some reason. So right now it is empty. I am workin on getting all the fiji mud out a little at a time currently

 

[Paul B]

I don't remember you saying too much about cleanup crew like snails or crabs before. I know tangs are boring, but any recommendations on invert's or other herbivores?

I seem to recall you saying something about damselfish before....lots of them are technically herbivores from what I've read, but damsel's get treated like plague by hobbyists.

I didn't say anything about a clean up crew because although they are interesting, they won't clean up algae unless you can teach them to poop outside the tank. It's like if you were to pull out all the algae, put it in a blender and dump it back in your tank. I know that most people think that the algae that goes into a clean up crew is magically transported to another universe, but most of the time, that doesn't happen.
I never said anything about damselfish except I don't particularly like them.

Algae will grow if it "wants" to grow and no one knows why. We think we do, but we don't. Put some RO/DI water out in the sun and algae will grow all over it. There is a whole plethora of things we don't know and why algae grows is one of them. My nitrates are 160 and my phosphates are so high I can make toothpaste out of my tank water, but I have no algae. I don't know why and neither does anyone else..
But it doesn't matter what causes it to grow. You just need to force it to grow outside your display like an algae filter or lighted refugium. I have one and scrape the algae off it every 2 weeks.

WE make a lot of mistakes in this hobby and "battling" things is one of them. Instead of "battling" things like ich and algae we should use them to our advantage. Algae is not a disease it is a natural plant that is the absolute best thing to clean out water and make it the most healthful it can be. But we don't want to see it.

Adding all those chemicals will totally disrupt the balance of your tank, especially the bacteria which work in conjunction with algae and viruses to keep a tank in sync so we have no problems just like the sea.
NSW stays stable as long as we don't mess with it.
Just my opinion

 

[Brew12]

I didn't say anything about a clean up crew because although they are interesting, they won't clean up algae unless you can teach them to poop outside the tank. It's like if you were to pull out all the algae, put it in a blender and dump it back in your tank. I know that most people think that the algae that goes into a clean up crew is magically transported to another universe, but most of the time, that doesn't happen.

I think there is value in a CuC although nutrient removal isn't one of them. What they do accomplish is taking nutrients that are in a form/lcoation we don't want them in and release them back into our system. Hopefully they can be utilized in a more appreciated form next.

 

[Paul B]

Hopefully, but we are not even sure exactly what nutrients in what proportions grow algae. We do know that it grows on every healthy reef in the world. Too much of one thing or too little of another thing "could" cause a bloom. Or it could have something to do with different strains of bacteria or viruses. It is not just nutrients as it grows the most in new tanks with all new water and not so much in old systems with a load of nutrients.
The best thing to do is don't be concerned as to what is causing it because of what I mentioned about it being natural and normal and it grows everywhere. Just make friends with it and force it to grow someplace else that has better growing conditions. We should start thinking of algae as our friend, something that makes the water actually much better and not a disease. If we have absolutely no algae, something is wrong and our water may not be healthy. All aquarium water has enough light and nutrients to grow it, so why doesn't it always grow? Why do we never think about that.

Scuba dive anywhere and you will see that most of the fish are tangs. What do you think they are eating? If you dive at night you will see that the rocks are covered in urchins and they don't eat Happy Meals. They scrape the algae so small that we don't see it but if you remove the multitudes of tangs, urchins, slugs, chitens, abalone, snails, crabs and algae bleenies algae would cover the reefs.
But all we hear on fish forums is how bad it is and how we are battling it.

In the sea all those creatures eat it but most of the sea is too deep for algae to grow so those nutrients just sink to be used by other creatures that we don't see.

Look at this picture I recently took off one of the more remote Hawaiian Islands. Look in the holes. Urchins in almost every hole. Algae doesn't have a chance, but it is growing or you would not see all those urchins. And I took this in the day. At night there are so many urchins that you can barely see in between them.



Now look on the same reef in a place with no urchins. Maybe they got eaten by that moray in the center. Idon't know why there are no urchins but the place is covered in algae, and this is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.





If we want to learn about algae, parasites or Speedo's all we have to do is jump in the ocean and open our eyes. OK, put on a mask first. But the sea is full of algae, parasites, flatworms and everything else. The sea knows how to live with those things as I learned. But in this hobby we feel all these things are pests. They think we are pests.

 

[Brew12]

Hopefully, but we are not even sure exactly what nutrients in what proportions grow algae. We do know that it grows on every healthy reef in the world. Too much of one thing or too little of another thing "could" cause a bloom. Or it could have something to do with different strains of bacteria or viruses. It is not just nutrients as it grows the most in new tanks with all new water and not so much in old systems with a load of nutrients.
The best thing to do is don't be concerned as to what is causing it because of what I mentioned about it being natural and normal and it grows everywhere. Just make friends with it and force it to grow someplace else that has better growing conditions. We should start thinking of algae as our friend, something that makes the water actually much better and not a disease. If we have absolutely no algae, something is wrong and our water may not be healthy. All aquarium water has enough light and nutrients to grow it, so why doesn't it always grow? Why do we never think about that.

Scuba dive anywhere and you will see that most of the fish are tangs. What do you think they are eating? If you dive at night you will see that the rocks are covered in urchins and they don't eat Happy Meals. They scrape the algae so small that we don't see it but if you remove the multitudes of tangs, urchins, slugs, chitens, abalone, snails, crabs and algae bleenies algae would cover the reefs.
But all we hear on fish forums is how bad it is and how we are battling it.

In the sea all those creatures eat it but most of the sea is too deep for algae to grow so those nutrients just sink to be used by other creatures that we don't see.

Look at this picture I recently took off one of the more remote Hawaiian Islands. Look in the holes. Urchins in almost every hole. Algae doesn't have a chance, but it is growing or you would not see all those urchins. And I took this in the day. At night there are so many urchins that you can barely see in between them.



Now look on the same reef in a place with no urchins. Maybe they got eaten by that moray in the center. Idon't know why there are no urchins but the place is covered in algae, and this is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.





If we want to learn about algae, parasites or Speedo's all we have to do is jump in the ocean and open our eyes. OK, put on a mask first. But the sea is full of algae, parasites, flatworms and everything else. The sea knows how to live with those things as I learned. But in this hobby we feel all these things are pests. They think we are pests.

Now this I completely agree with. I don't see how you can have a healthy tank without growing algae. You may never see it if your CuC gets it before you have that chance but it should be there.
I think people try so hard to rid their tanks of algae they open the door to bacteria like cyano and dino's. I embrace my algae.

 

[Paul B]

You agree with me!!! I am exhilarated.