Advice Please!

[Samina]

So I have been running into some issues and will turn to you experts for some much needed advice!

I have been battling brown hair algae that I manually remove but still comes back. The crazy part is that my system usually registers around 0.03-0.01 PO4 Hanna checker ULR and 0ppm NO3 Red Sea. I have been dosing saltpeter to bring nitrates up to 2ppm every other day but the system ends up using it up pretty quickly. However, since I have a persistent algae problem, is it safe to assume that my PO4 is probably much higher? I am wondering if I should run GFO (passively in media bag in sock) even though the Hanna registers such a low PO4 result? I setup a AWC with a DOS just this past week to change out 50% in the month. Before that, I was doing ~15% biweekly (some times 3 weeks) water change on average. I am hesitant on using GFO because a year ago I ran that and purigen and bottomed our nutrients and ended up with a long and tiresome battle with dinos and don’t want to deal with that again. Thoughts?

A little background on the tank:
55g display with ~20g sump w/fuge. Actual water volume is probably ~60g in the system. ~3 years old. Mixed Reef (leathers, gorgonions, softies, mushrooms, lps, and sps). Feed a cube of frozen mysis everyday. Sometimes skip a day. And occasionally (couple times a month) feed TDO Chroma Boost. Colors on coral are not where I’d like them to be but PE is great. ~50lbs rock.

LiveStock:
Mandarin Goby
Yellow Watchman Goby
Bangai Cardinal
Blue Green Chromis
Lyretail Anthias (2)
Rubyhead Wrasse
Fire Shrimp
Peppermint Shrimp
Spiny Urchin
Acro Crab
Emerald Crab
Lettuce Slug
Various snails/hermits

Run a curve 5 skimmer, CO2 reactor, carbon reactor, uv, khg, and dose ESV 2 part. Photon V2 lights come on at 7a ramp up until 12p with max intensity set on blue channels to 60% and white at 10%, ramp down and shut off at 9p. MP40 on reef crest at max of 50% and gyre 3K at pulse on max of 40%.

 

[cracker]

Hi Samina, I'm not the algae person s here is a bump for You for more peeps to see.

 

[sfin52]

Pics please. You may be at the dino stage again. I doubt your po4 is high. Nitrates at 0 and po4 at or close to 0 may have triggered dino again. Dino I believe are in most of the tanks but are not a problem till the conditions are right.

Also low nutrients maybe the reason for coral color not looking the best.

 

[Samina]

I have attached some pics. It definitely doesn’t look like the dinos I had before so that’s why I thought it was some form of brown hair algae. But let me know what you guys think!

 

[Subsea]

Phytoplankton combines Carbon:Nitrogenhosphorus in the ratio of 116:16:1
Macroalgae combines C:N in the ratio of 560:30:1.

I have found nuisance, soft fleshy algae’s to flourish when nutrients are low. Dosing to increase nitrate makes a lot of sense to me. Keeping a 30:1 ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus is a desirable goal with nitrates between 5-10 ppm. This allows desirable algae, coral zooanthelia is algae, to outcompete undesirable algae.

Carbon dosing grows bacteria. Some of that stuff looks like bacterial slime. Cynobacteria comes in many colors. I am not a fan of organic carbon dosing. What does your skimmate look like?

You mentioned a 20G refugium. What kind of lights? What kind of macro? How does it look to you?


For certain, the healthy nuisance algae is consuming nutrients and should be manually removed. Is it slippery or brittle? Does it cling to rock and leave holdfast? Pull it out, vacumen it out, then if it has holdfast use a toothbrush dipped in hydrogen peroxide and kill it. Refresh toothbrush every 60 seconds.

https://www.reefcleaners.org/nuisance-algae-id-guide
This should help with identification.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I don’t belive in trying to maintain ratios in the tank. As long as there is both available your fine.

When you ding deep, some algaes have stupid sneaky ways of feeding themselves. As you experienced wirhb dinos and many do woth Bryopsis.

It’s at that point one really has to ten to clean up crews. Then it’s chems and compounds tobkill algaes. Vibrant, fluconazole etc.

Personally , cuc aside , I’d go the fluconazole route first (V can bottom out no3 Po4) a tooth brush and stop the no3 dosing.

 

[Samina]

Thanks everyone for your input, really appreciated!!

The sump is ~20g and there is a section within it for the fuge. I just have a chunk of red gracilaria in there with a LED grow bulb from Amazon.

The algae is pretty slippery but it’s not slimy (if that makes any sense!) I am able to pull chucks off but some still remains. It’s not at all brittle.

I will do some more manual removal and look into beefing up my CUC. Wait a few weeks and then depending on progress, look into fluconazole. I am hesitant to use peroxide on a toothbrush because there are many areas that the algae is growing around the bases of some of the coral. I guess I won’t put any GFO since PO4 is already registering 0.01 as of this morning and I’ll continue to dose NO3.

 

[Subsea]

A normal coral dip that I have used for years, is a 10% solution of hydrogen peroxide for ten minutes. With delicate corals I reduce to 5 minutes. It is collateral damage for algae and micro inverts like flat worms, bristle worms, pods, micro stars etc. In tank use involved syringe to target treat and toothbrush to surface eradicate.

Many differrent ways to address algae.

IMO, hydrogen peroxide is target specific. Broad spectrum treatment has unintended consequences.

 

[dwest]

So I have been running into some issues and will turn to you experts for some much needed advice!

I have been battling brown hair algae that I manually remove but still comes back. The crazy part is that my system usually registers around 0.03-0.01 PO4 Hanna checker ULR and 0ppm NO3 Red Sea. I have been dosing saltpeter to bring nitrates up to 2ppm every other day but the system ends up using it up pretty quickly. However, since I have a persistent algae problem, is it safe to assume that my PO4 is probably much higher? I am wondering if I should run GFO (passively in media bag in sock) even though the Hanna registers such a low PO4 result? I setup a AWC with a DOS just this past week to change out 50% in the month. Before that, I was doing ~15% biweekly (some times 3 weeks) water change on average. I am hesitant on using GFO because a year ago I ran that and purigen and bottomed our nutrients and ended up with a long and tiresome battle with dinos and don’t want to deal with that again. Thoughts?

A little background on the tank:
55g display with ~20g sump w/fuge. Actual water volume is probably ~60g in the system. ~3 years old. Mixed Reef (leathers, gorgonions, softies, mushrooms, lps, and sps). Feed a cube of frozen mysis everyday. Sometimes skip a day. And occasionally (couple times a month) feed TDO Chroma Boost. Colors on coral are not where I’d like them to be but PE is great. ~50lbs rock.

LiveStock:
Mandarin Goby
Yellow Watchman Goby
Bangai Cardinal
Blue Green Chromis
Lyretail Anthias (2)
Rubyhead Wrasse
Fire Shrimp
Peppermint Shrimp
Spiny Urchin
Acro Crab
Emerald Crab
Lettuce Slug
Various snails/hermits

Run a curve 5 skimmer, CO2 reactor, carbon reactor, uv, khg, and dose ESV 2 part. Photon V2 lights come on at 7a ramp up until 12p with max intensity set on blue channels to 60% and white at 10%, ramp down and shut off at 9p. MP40 on reef crest at max of 50% and gyre 3K at pulse on max of 40%.

I would not add GFO. I’d be very worried about dinos coming back. I would also trust the Hanna phosphorous measurements. I think your advice about cuc and possibly chems is where I might go next. Good luck.

 

[mta_morrow]

I don’t belive in trying to maintain ratios in the tank. As long as there is both available your fine.

When you ding deep, some algaes have stupid sneaky ways of feeding themselves. As you experienced wirhb dinos and many do woth Bryopsis.

It’s at that point one really has to ten to clean up crews. Then it’s chems and compounds tobkill algaes. Vibrant, fluconazole etc.

Personally , cuc aside , I’d go the fluconazole route first (V can bottom out no3 Po4) a tooth brush and stop the no3 dosing.

Agree 100% ^^^^^^