Algae help

dakotap · May 6, 2023

Tank is over a year old and has been looking fine up until about a month or so ago. I've been fighting this algae for a while now. About 2-3 months since the tank looked good. I have hair algae that have popped up everywhere and brown algae on the sand bed. I tried chemi-clean, then I have done a 3-day blackout, several 20% water changes, and did a two-week treatment of microbacter clean and razor together. Manual scrubbing and removal. I don't know what else to do. I've lost about $1000 in coral fighting this and the rest don't look good. I'm at my wit's end and about ready to leave the hobby for a while. I routinely find my nitrate bottomed out regardless of how much I feed and supplement. Have added neonitro many times to keep no3 around 5-10. Attached are some pics of the parameters I just checked as well as pictures of the tank. Any help would be appreciated.

The_Paradox · May 6, 2023

The struggle is real. The pictures are a little blurry for me, but looks like a combo of hair algae and maybe diatoms? You mentioned massive coral loss and bottomed out nitrate so dinos also come to mind. In my experience you cannot really fight more than one issue at a time. For any specific advice that worth anything, we would need to know if its diatoms or dinos and what type.

From what you did say, I know my tanks always have dino outbreaks if I bottom out nitrate. Assuming you do not want to sit at zero (ULNS), I would dose 5ml of Neotitro and test. Keep dosing until you get to something like 5ppm. Wait 24 hours and test again to get a rough idea of how much nitrate is being used per day.

As for the hair algae, I have tried a million things as I am sure everyone in the hobby has. With nitrate and phosphate that low my first and usual go to is more clean up crew. Algae will always be in the tank so it's really just a matter of finding out how to control it not truly eliminate it.

Glenner’sreef · May 6, 2023

Do you feel that you’re collecting way too much dirt in your tank. Your sandbed is deep enough to achieve this. Ryan at BRS refers to this as a “kitty litter box” lol. I have about a 1/2” of sand, a Diamond Goby, large cleanup crew, higher flow and sand is vacuumed every 3 weeks with water change. Sand is always white. No algae issues. Also what test kit is determining your low numbers? Are those 2 Neros on back wall? What size 3s or 5s? How large is your tank? I spend time weekly maintaining numerous tanks. This bound up and stagnant dirt and lower flow can create problems.

Glenner’sreef · May 6, 2023

Here’s where I have my sand level. At or below tank frame.

dakotap · May 6, 2023

Glenner’sreef said:
Do you feel that you’re collecting way too much dirt in your tank. Your sandbed is deep enough to achieve this. Ryan at BRS refers to this as a “kitty litter box” lol. I have about a 1/2” of sand, a Diamond Goby, large cleanup crew, higher flow and sand is vacuumed every 3 weeks with water change. Sand is always white. No algae issues. Also what test kit is determining your low numbers? Are those 2 Neros on back wall? What size 3s or 5s? How large is your tank? I spend time weekly maintaining numerous tanks. This bound up and stagnant dirt and lower flow can create problems.

My glass gets very dirty daily. I’ve noticed that increase over the past several months. My sandbed is probably 1.5” - 2” it used to be white up until the past two or three months. My tank is a 50 gallon aio from Waterbox with 2 Nero 3’s on the back wall running at about 70-75%. I do not have any sand churching gobies. I do have quite a few nassarius snails though. My ph, sg, alk, po4 and no3 kits are Hanna checkers and my mg and ca are salifert.