Advice on aggressive GHA

artman · Jun 24, 2023

I have two systems, one is untouched and doing great with no GHA or cyano. The other is a bit of a train wreck. On this system, I have Chaeto reactor going well and I dose this system live phyto, and in the past dosed iron for the chaeto and amino acids. i stopped the iron and amino acid dosing but I am left with GHA/cyano that kills coral frags. The problematic tank has nitrate ~10 and phosphate 0.1. I feed pe mysis and each tank has a tang (that does not eat the GHA) as well as mexican turbos. Some of the turbos spend lots of time on their backs. During the day, I see some gas buildup in the cyano which I assume is from dinos. But I am not seeing typical stringy dino snot looking stuff. In the past this system dealt with bryopsis but the current infestation looks less like bryopsis. I have a pentair UV system on the return line. I also have ozone on the system but it typically is not on as the ORP hovers 400-450 with the diurnal swing. I am trying to stabilize the problematic system before a month long trip that starts in three weeks. Any advice would be appreciated.

Dan_P · Jun 24, 2023

artman said:
I have two systems, one is untouched and doing great with no GHA or cyano. The other is a bit of a train wreck. On this system, I have Chaeto reactor going well and I dose this system live phyto, and in the past dosed iron for the chaeto and amino acids. i stopped the iron and amino acid dosing but I am left with GHA/cyano that kills coral frags. The problematic tank has nitrate ~10 and phosphate 0.1. I feed pe mysis and each tank has a tang (that does not eat the GHA) as well as mexican turbos. Some of the turbos spend lots of time on their backs.

Turbos might be starving to death. I have 20 well fed turbos and it is rare to see them upside down. My turbos seem to avoid cyanobacteria contaminated seaweed.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

The turbos are quite large 1-2 inches so maybe they are starving. But there are large patches of GHA that they could eat. Maybe they are being poisoned by contaminating dino toxins.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

I also looked under a microscope and the number of critters in the algae mats is astounding. Lots of stuff seems to be feeding on it.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

jda · Jun 24, 2023

If the temperature is near or above 78 degrees, the turbos are stressed. If so, lower the temp to 75, or so. They will eat more when they are cooler.

You need more consumers. Urchins, limpets, chitons, snails. Just more of them. Manually remove as much as you can to help the snails.

EricR · Jun 24, 2023

Most of the pictures seem to show frag racks. Is that correct? Maybe a full tank shot would help others see with what you're dealing with. (Mainly curious how easy it would be to remove the racks and clean out of the tank in a separate bin).

Are the anemone tentacles I see "pest" anemones or something intentional that you're growing out?

FWIW, my turbo snails never touched long GHA when I had a bit of an outbreak earlier on.
I just went with aggressive, manual removal and got passed it.
*no experience with cyano

Nick Steele · Jun 24, 2023

I suggest hermit crabs! I have 12-15 blue legs in my 20G and they are helping tons with gha! Yes manual removal is best and will be quickest but natural remedies will sustain the tank. Personally hermits will take awhile and you need to fix what caused the outbreak for them to help but once it’s fixed they will but a dent in it. Half my tank is clean and all my corals have a lovely ring around them from the crabs eating the algae!

brandon429 · Jun 24, 2023

you will need to do this, cuc can't fix that degree of eutrophication.

Build Thread - Deep Reset, Reviving my 80 gallon lowboy.

Tank is looking really good today I decided to not do much with it. I did get around to fragging the tall torch its been bothering me for awhile. I've been wanting to give all the heads a little moar breathing room so they can all grow up uniform. Took a heavier blue fts during ramp up this...

www.reef2reef.com

artman · Jun 24, 2023

Temperature is at 78 and I can try to lower it. I spent a few hours today overcoming my severe case of LARS and cleaned out the tank. I switched out the frag racks with new ones and cleaned off the frags. Used a blade and toothbrush to get off the stubborn stuff. I will send out for ICP to see if there are any surprises. The tank is on a reborn fueled calcium reactor so perhaps OPO3 from that is contributing. Also have a kalk reactor to balance out the pH. And there is some aipstasia and I will try Joe's juice for that.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

I also can try to reduce feeding to get the OPO3 down to 0.05 and nitrate to 5. I agree that nutrients are an issue.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

Add I changed the carbon/filter/DI resin in my RODI system. It was still 0 TDS but why not, its cheap.

artman · Jun 24, 2023

What is the highest I can safely keep my ORP? I have ozone that I can use but I am afraid to turn it on with a diurnal high of 450 on the ORP meter.

DaJMasta · Jun 24, 2023

I've had bryopsis that exhibited very little branching - is there a blueish sort of reflective nature to any of the hair algae? Urchins will help, but they really don't methodically eat, so there will always be patches around in my experience.

If it were me in your situation, and what I've done in other situations, is a course of flucanazole. Basically simple and safe to do (I always leave my skimmer on for oxygenation but turn the level down to prevent actual skimming), and while it takes a few days, it reliably gets rid of algae.

Some of those other pics do look like cyano mats or a little bit of dinos to me, but if you solve one problem you can decide if another needs treatment, I would try to pick the easiest problem to ID or the most problematic one and focus on that and see how it shakes out over trying any kind of multi-treatment.

vetteguy53081 · Jun 24, 2023

artman said:

This appears to be wire algae versus hair and the difference with this tank may be . . . . Is this particular tank at or near a window?
Not too many if any snails will eat wire algae and will have to be physically removed by hand and scrubbing with a firm brush as sold below at harbor freight in a container with tank water. You can use 3% peroxide to help break up the algae as you scrub.
After cleaning add a couple of pitho crabs, ninja star snails, chitons snails and a few large astrea snails to help with control

brandon429 · Jun 24, 2023

was all the water drained from the tank during the cleaning, and the insides of the tank wiped clean, and sand if any rinsed with tap for hours until clear then put back after a quick ro/di rinse? if not= target cells remain

how many gallons was this tank

even if no sand: the disassembly scraping plus all new water matching temp and salinity to the old is key

ICP testing cannot help whatsoever here. you werent having coral issues it was invasion by permission and lack of grazers, ICP testing in the presence of that plant mass is invalid for the attempt to control the plant mass, direct action and matched grazers is what fixes that...specifically it doesnt mean to guess at adding new grazers, that's a disease input that can kill your fish

it means you're the grazer until you fallow out some new ones to try, add them, see if they work, remove them if they dont. you're the physical grazer/end of the line controller like posted above until you get lucky and don't have to

artman · Jun 24, 2023

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I did a deep clean today. It is actually three frag tanks hooked into a single sump. It is not near a window. The smallest tank with only a ai prime has no problem while the other two have radions and par ~300. I scraped a bunch today and just replaced the egg crate. There is no sand. I have treated for bryopsis with fluconazole many times in the past most recently probably 6 months ago. Tank volumes are 60, 46 and 29 with a 20 gallon sump with skimmer and chaeto with kesil refug light. Chaeto grows like a weed.