Algae just keeps coming fast

[Aquaman6410]

My tank is a 32 gallon biocube with retrofit nanobox LEDs. The tank is about 10 months old now and I can't enjoy the tank due to the ongoing algae battle. I use RO water with 0 TDS which I make at home and use Fritz RPM salt. The tank is home to 2 clowns, a yellow watchman, a pistol shrimp, and a few other random inverts (hermits, snails, a fire shrimp). Tank was mainly set up with some fiji pink sand and reefcleaners dry rock with a few tiny pieces of live rock to seed coraline, etc. The other equipment is an MP10 powerhead and inTank baskets with purigen, chemipure elite, BRS ROX carbon, and filter floss.

When I first started the tank, I went through a dino phase. I ended up battling it with raising my nitrates and phosphates which got rid of it. A great victory! Then came the green hair algae. A crazy outbreak for a month until I kept manually removing it, keeping up with water changes, and using continuum bacter clean m. Sure enough, I beat that too. All the while my corals are growing really nicely and still are. I then get red cyano bad. Continue with weekly maintenance and finally had to use chemiclean which did wonders. I finally beat the cyano after a month or so of battling. The chemiclean was the last resort as my zoas were starting to close due to cyano. Got rid of the cyano, zoas opened, everyone was happy and the tank looked great for a week or so. Now, I have an out break of brown hair algae! What gives! Lol I just want to enjoy my tank and corals.

I do a 20% water change every weekend. My water 2 days after a water change reads at 0 ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 0 nitrate, pH 8.0, dkh 8, phosphates undetectable. Temp sits around 77 to 77.5 on average. Salinity at 35ppt. ATO keeps this pretty stable. What do I do? I want to throw in the towel some days. I keep/raise discus as well and they are a breeze compared to this. Where do I go from here? I only feed once every other day because I'm scared to make things worse. My corals are beautiful and are growing so well except one plug or two I have at the bottom, they grow but are getting covered constantly in algae at the base of the plug they are on. Do I need to add something like a protein skimmer or macroalgae like chaeto? I figured weekly 20% water changes would be enough but perhaps not. I'm open to buying anything that may help manage the root cause. I can post more pictures later but I'll post one top down picture I took during my last water change. I love my corals and tank. This is my first adventure into reef from the Discus hobby but so far, its super frustrating! I'm hoping you guys can help me out. Thanks all!

 

[CC13]

My tank is a 32 gallon biocube with retrofit nanobox LEDs. The tank is about 10 months old now and I can't enjoy the tank due to the ongoing algae battle. I use RO water with 0 TDS which I make at home and use Fritz RPM salt. The tank is home to 2 clowns, a yellow watchman, a pistol shrimp, and a few other random inverts (hermits, snails, a fire shrimp). Tank was mainly set up with some fiji pink sand and reefcleaners dry rock with a few tiny pieces of live rock to seed coraline, etc. The other equipment is an MP10 powerhead and inTank baskets with purigen, chemipure elite, BRS ROX carbon, and filter floss.

When I first started the tank, I went through a dino phase. I ended up battling it with raising my nitrates and phosphates which got rid of it. A great victory! Then came the green hair algae. A crazy outbreak for a month until I kept manually removing it, keeping up with water changes, and using continuum bacter clean m. Sure enough, I beat that too. All the while my corals are growing really nicely and still are. I then get red cyano bad. Continue with weekly maintenance and finally had to use chemiclean which did wonders. I finally beat the cyano after a month or so of battling. The chemiclean was the last resort as my zoas were starting to close due to cyano. Got rid of the cyano, zoas opened, everyone was happy and the tank looked great for a week or so. Now, I have an out break of brown hair algae! What gives! Lol I just want to enjoy my tank and corals.

I do a 20% water change every weekend. My water 2 days after a water change reads at 0 ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 0 nitrate, pH 8.0, dkh 8, phosphates undetectable. Temp sits around 77 to 77.5 on average. Salinity at 35ppt. ATO keeps this pretty stable. What do I do? I want to throw in the towel some days. I keep/raise discus as well and they are a breeze compared to this. Where do I go from here? I only feed once every other day because I'm scared to make things worse. My corals are beautiful and are growing so well except one plug or two I have at the bottom, they grow but are getting covered constantly in algae at the base of the plug they are on. Do I need to add something like a protein skimmer or macroalgae like chaeto? I figured weekly 20% water changes would be enough but perhaps not. I'm open to buying anything that may help manage the root cause. I can post more pictures later but I'll post one top down picture I took during my last water change. I love my corals and tank. This is my first adventure into reef from the Discus hobby but so far, its super frustrating! I'm hoping you guys can help me out. Thanks all!

I think your off to a good start with the water changes. One thing to note is have you tested your RO/DI water and when is the last time you changed out your filters? Sometimes its as easy as replacing old filters if your output water is not 0.00 PPM. I replace my sediment and carbon blocks each month, my DI resin when they start to show above 0.00 PPM output (usually every 4-6 months) and my RO membranes when the output water before my DI stages rise to above .10 PPM (which is usually every year). One of the best pieces of advice I can give with your RO/DI is buy and install a flush kit. They are super cheap and increase the life of your RO membranes by 10x as they allow them to flush out after each use.

It looks like Cyano on the sandbed. I would maintain the water change schedule and possible try and clean the sandbed. Try to get that stuff sucked up and just be consistent with your routine and it will go away in a few weeks. IMO you can buy stuff like Chemiclean and it will get rid of it in a couple days, but if the root cause is not looked after it will return.

https://www.marinedepot.com/Reverse...ystems-Captive_Purity-RO1313-FIRORAFL-vi.html

https://www.marinedepot.com/Boyd_Ch...nterprises_(Chemi_Pure)-BE1115-FIADAL-vi.html

 

[KrisReef]

How long are you running your lights? Since the corals are growing, I think if you stay the course that eventually you will get past the ugly algae stage, and to me the tank isn't a total disaster by any means.

 

[Vahanyos]

Chemi clean does work wonders - but as the previous poster mentioned, it's best to find the root of the problem. Chemi Clean is just a band aid in my opinion

 

[cracker]

Hello, Welcome to the Algae club . I'm always having problems . it was suggested the brown stuff likes a really low to zero nutrients . So get the nutrients up just a little bit & manually remove as much as possible And add more snails . This has worked for me & the algae war in my tank is at a stale mat at this point & getting better slowly . You got it on your sand bed as well?




1

 

[CC13]

Hello, Welcome to the Algae club . I'm always having problems . it was suggested the brown stuff likes a really low to zero nutrients . So get the nutrients up just a little bit & manually remove as much as possible And add more snails . This has worked for me & the algae war in my tank is at a stale mat at this point & getting better slowly . You got it on your sand bed as well?

Would elevated nutrients not fuel further unwanted growth?

 

[iDeath]

I would recommend doing a chaeto reactor. I've got one on my redsea nano and it helped tremendously. I just have the reactor in the stand where it can't be seen and plumb water to it and it returns back into the back section. If you do this I think you'll get a better handle on it since the chaeto will directly compete with the algae for nutrients. Best of luck.

Edit: also they are very cost effective to add and it has other benefits as well.

 

[Aquaman6410]

I think your off to a good start with the water changes. One thing to note is have you tested your RO/DI water and when is the last time you changed out your filters? Sometimes its as easy as replacing old filters if your output water is not 0.00 PPM. I replace my sediment and carbon blocks each month, my DI resin when they start to show above 0.00 PPM output (usually every 4-6 months) and my RO membranes when the output water before my DI stages rise to above .10 PPM (which is usually every year). One of the best pieces of advice I can give with your RO/DI is buy and install a flush kit. They are super cheap and increase the life of your RO membranes by 10x as they allow them to flush out after each use.

It looks like Cyano on the sandbed. I would maintain the water change schedule and possible try and clean the sandbed. Try to get that stuff sucked up and just be consistent with your routine and it will go away in a few weeks. IMO you can buy stuff like Chemiclean and it will get rid of it in a couple days, but if the root cause is not looked after it will return.

https://www.marinedepot.com/Reverse...ystems-Captive_Purity-RO1313-FIRORAFL-vi.html

https://www.marinedepot.com/Boyd_Ch...nterprises_(Chemi_Pure)-BE1115-FIADAL-vi.html

I currently use an inline tds meter and a pen tester. It is at 0ppm currently. Changed my sediment filter just the other day. I have two carbon blocks I haven't changed in about 6 months because I don't see chlorine in the output water. I have two di resin cartridges, one is still pretty new, the first cartridge is about half exhausted. I use the flush kit from brs, all of my system is from them. TDS from my tap is about 350ppm but after the first stage goes down to 10ppm. Then the first di cartridge gets it to 0, the second cartridge is just there as a backup in case anything gets by the first.

It looks like cyano in that pic but I need to get a better pic tonight. Its brown hair growing in those spots you see on the sand. The cyano is much much better after the chemiclean.

 

[Aquaman6410]

How long are you running your lights? Since the corals are growing, I think if you stay the course that eventually you will get past the ugly algae stage, and to me the tank isn't a total disaster by any means.

I run my lights for about 10 hours and seem to get great coral growth. Mainly a bluish look. Blues/Violet on all of that time with about 4 hrs midday of some white mixed in.

How long is the ugly stage typically?

 

[Jet915]

I just ran through a cyano stage about 9 months in and I just started turkey basting the rocks every few days and started stirring the sand daily (white sand method). Cyano lasted about a month and now has all but disappeared. I also starting dosing magnesium to keep it >1300 and it seemed to promote coralline algae growth. I didnt do anything different otherwise, I do 15% water changes every two weeks...not sure if or when it will come back butnif it does, ill start turkey basting and stirring the sand again. I also bought chemiclean but havent used it yet.

 

[Aquaman6410]

Hello, Welcome to the Algae club . I'm always having problems . it was suggested the brown stuff likes a really low to zero nutrients . So get the nutrients up just a little bit & manually remove as much as possible And add more snails . This has worked for me & the algae war in my tank is at a stale mat at this point & getting better slowly . You got it on your sand bed as well?




1

I think that's what got me in this cycle. I initially raised nutrients very slightly and cleanly using macro fertilizers from my planted tanks. It got rid of the dinos but the nutrients then seemed to fuel a green hair algae outbreak. I agree low/zero nutrients can bring on dinos. Brought nutrients down again by just doing my normal water changes and stopped dosing. Then the hair algae got better and brought me cyano. After cyano, we are back to brown hair algae. I don't want to keep swinging nutrient levels as it appears to make it worse and just bring some other algae.

 

[cracker]

this will get rid of the brown algae & I agree about the nutrients/algae out break. It's a very tricky balance .

 

[Aquaman6410]

Okay, so I got a few more pictures to show you exactly what is this current outbreak is. Also a full tank shot to show all the happy coral between the algae.

 

[KrisReef]

Kinda looks like Bryopsis.

 

[Aquaman6410]

Hmmm, hopefully a better picture.

 

[Aquaman6410]

It doesn't seem to look like bryopsis here but I'm no expert. I'm not sure what it is but it's definitely an eye sore. My cure all with discus is water change, water change, and another water change. Lol With reef tanks, I'm not sure if that's always a good idea. Besides pulling it out, any ideas on how to get rid of it or the root cause? I keep thinking chaeto to out compete the algae but not sure that is going to fix it.

 

[KrisReef]

Hairy or slimy tanks reflect nutrients being present in the system. You need some nutrients but it will take time to get the tank growing coral and not algae at the same time. People use Chaeto to help with the balancing act. I think the most difficult part of these cycles is waiting them out and doing the required tank management (water changes, nutrient import & export, lighting schemes, and water flow) long enough to figure out how to balance them in your tank. Your tank situation isn't that bad based upon your photos. Keep exporting hair algae during water changes, maybe cut back an hour on your tank lighting, deploy some Chaeto in your sump, and eventually you will be past this stage.

I reread this thread, and realized you did not mention your CA, ALK, and Mg levels. If you have a light coral load water changes may keep up with these levels. They are important in your battle because coralline algae can compete against "bad" algae in a reef tank. Have you had much coralline algae growth in your tank?

 

[Aquaman6410]

Hairy or slimy tanks reflect nutrients being present in the system. You need some nutrients but it will take time to get the tank growing coral and not algae at the same time. People use Chaeto to help with the balancing act. I think the most difficult part of these cycles is waiting them out and doing the required tank management (water changes, nutrient import & export, lighting schemes, and water flow) long enough to figure out how to balance them in your tank. Your tank situation isn't that bad based upon your photos. Keep exporting hair algae during water changes, maybe cut back an hour on your tank lighting, deploy some Chaeto in your sump, and eventually you will be past this stage.

I reread this thread, and realized you did not mention your CA, ALK, and Mg levels. If you have a light coral load water changes may keep up with these levels. They are important in your battle because coralline algae can compete against "bad" algae in a reef tank. Have you had much coralline algae growth in your tank?

Thank you for this information. I'll keep up with the weekly 20% water changes and removing algae as best as I can manually. I can cut back light an hour as well (so hard because I love seeing it lit up). Should I reduce the daylight white period and replace with more morning or night blues? Or just cut the entire lighting period down by an hour overall? I can try to grow chaeto in the back of the tank in the sump area and see how that goes.

I plan on testing my calcium, mg, and alk right before my next water change so probably tonight. My weekly w/c with fritz tend to keep them up. Alk was 8.0 when I checked a couple days ago. Calcium is usually around 430ppm and mg around 1400ppm. I have some coralline growth. I had 99% dry rock to start but they have coralline now here and there. I'd anyways love more though. I have the fritz products to dose calcium, mg, and alk if needed(won them in a contest!) but have not needed them yet.

 

[saltwaterlover]

A foxface rabbitfish is an incredible fish for eating algae they will eat it all

 

[Aquaman6410]

Isn't that a bit too big for my tank?

Also, would adding a protein skimmer to the setup help get rid of algae outbreaks by removing the things that will eventually fuel it? Wasn't sure if one would be worth it in a tank this size with weekly 20% water changes