ALGAE takeover

[Burrow09]

My 90 Gallon tank is cycled and about 2 years old. My algae Problem started about 3 months ago and just keeps getting worse. Here is some of my tank parameters

My lighting schedule is currently 12 hours with LED lights
Working Protein skimmer
Nitrates are high but improving
Other levels are all normal

I’ve thought about taking all my live rock out and just scrubbing to try to manually remove it. Vibrant? What does everyone suggest to try first?

 

[brandon429]

see this direct, matched work thread.

scrubbing is how you catch it up, but the other steps matter so much.

 

[brandon429]

Algae Identification

its a little different, on our sand rinse thread we dont remove the sand while water is in the tank, we disassemble the entire system down to an empty aquarium. we dont do that to always take the long road its specifically to keep you from clouding up the tank while corals are in there. a 45 is...

www.reef2reef.com

a very close match to your tank but its smaller. same biology, scalable biology.

what you really want to do in a large tank is test rock before you begin, know to what degree of manual access/scraping with knife/dental debriding of target with peroxide will work, and sustain.


you want to model the job and see if growback reduces/stores before attacking the whole tank.

when you can command one rock to comply, and it looks like its going to sustain, a manual 90 rip clean is ideal.


*after modeling, here's a 120 gallon rip clean for the final fell swoop gemmed out reef:

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

just those two threads=100% restoration for your reef no better way possible.

any water dosers you'd employ take weeks, deliver more decay into the system vs remove it, our method cannot be beat its just work inefficient, you gotta exercise keto 250lb bench press that reef into compliance. the sandbed must be rip cleaned or half this job will be missed in efficiency.

 

[Jmj3783]

You can look into fluconozol (spelling?). I used it and along with manual removal got rid of a bad gha problem.

 

[brandon429]

making all new water is best if you do choose manual removal of mass, and feed for it.

*can drain off and brute hold 75% of that above, and reinstall in the clean condition reef, saving you to only 25% new water made.

I consider that an o.k. tradeoff for large reef restoration work, although at 200% water changed in one month, full sps lps reef, Jon shows new water rocks.

 

[Burrow09]

“Rip clean” is meaning taking all the rock out scrub and replace. On top of that take out 75% of the water and replace it? Start there

Ive Had my tank for a few years but I’ve never really took reefing serious. But I want to. Just frustrated with my algae takeover

 

[Dan_P]

My 90 Gallon tank is cycled and about 2 years old. My algae Problem started about 3 months ago and just keeps getting worse. Here is some of my tank parameters

My lighting schedule is currently 12 hours with LED lights
Working Protein skimmer
Nitrates are high but improving
Other levels are all normal

I’ve thought about taking all my live rock out and just scrubbing to try to manually remove it. Vibrant? What does everyone suggest to try first?

Just curious. You mentioned that your tank is cycled and two years old. Usually after two years, everyone would assume it is cycled. Are you just being thorough about the tank’s history by mentioning that the tank is cycled, or is there an interesting history about this aquarium?

 

[Burrow09]

Just curious. You mentioned that your tank is cycled and two years old. Usually after two years, everyone would assume it is cycled. Are you just being thorough about the tank’s history by mentioning that the tank is cycled, or is there an interesting history about this aquarium?

Nothing interesting other than I got lazy and the algae is out of control. Found a passion for the hobby and wanting to right the ship but I have zero clue where to start

 

[Ajayabb]

I would try dosing either H2O2 or Fluconazole first and see if that works. If that doesn’t, I would pull the rocks out and scrub them. Mine had terrible growth and so I pulled each rock,sprayed with H2O2 and scrubbed them. The problem I had when I did that was the tank went through a small cycle afterwards however

 

[vetteguy53081]

Liquid vibrant will rid this as will a good CUC: Turbo snails, astrea , trochus and nassarius snails and about a dozen blue leg hermits. For a week, lower white light intensity.

 

[Burrow09]

I would try dosing either H2O2 or Fluconazole first and see if that works. If that doesn’t, I would pull the rocks out and scrub them. Mine had terrible growth and so I pulled each rock,sprayed with H2O2 and scrubbed them. The problem I had when I did that was the tank went through a small cycle afterwards however

Never tried H2O2. Do you rinse afterwards?

 

[Burrow09]

Liquid vibrant will rid this as will a good CUC: Turbo snails, astrea , trochus and nassarius snails and about a dozen blue leg hermits. For a week, lower white light intensity.

Read a lot about Vibrant. I have a good CUC now just purchased last week.

just annoyed at myself for letting my tank get in the shape it’s in

 

[vetteguy53081]

Read a lot about Vibrant. I have a good CUC now just purchased last week.

just annoyed at myself for letting my tank get in the shape it’s in

It happens and rather this than Dino or Bryopsis

 

[Ryan Avery]

Dose flux rx and be done with it !

 

[Thomas Wieczorek]

I'm literally about to do this rip cleaning tomorrow (Saturday April 24th 2020) for the same reason as the person who posted this thread, serious algea. It's so bad that I have turf/Gha growing up hammer and torch skeletons. Its choking out all my live rock and filling in between zoas. My #1 concern is I have corals encrusted on the rock. Montipora, zoas, plays, galaxia. I'm worried about damaging the corals. Is there any tips on how to rip clean with encrusted coral on live rock?

 

[poo pie]

My 90 Gallon tank is cycled and about 2 years old. My algae Problem started about 3 months ago and just keeps getting worse. Here is some of my tank parameters

My lighting schedule is currently 12 hours with LED lights
Working Protein skimmer
Nitrates are high but improving
Other levels are all normal

I’ve thought about taking all my live rock out and just scrubbing to try to manually remove it. Vibrant? What does everyone suggest to try first?

i would do an icp test first before i tried a gazillion things. you have to get to the root of the problem before you can effectivly treat it. chemicals are a last resort. could be as simple as increasing flow to eliminate detritus. youll never know until you check the chemistry

 

[Marco9926]

IMO Focus on why algae are growing...high nitrates means than your N cycle is not balanced...
A solution may be an ATS filter, that fights algae with algae. It takes a few time to work but results are proven, all your tank will like it!

 

[Kmartinez]

I'm in this same boat!
I've done so many options, it gets so close. Then booom takes right back over... I have a max e170 and am figuring the next move too... Add sump for better protein and more room for added options.... Or get this right and enjoy. I'm wondering on how the bacteria is working? It's going on a year for mine, I haven't seen a spec of corraline..... could adding good bacterial help fight this crap?

 

[hubble]

+1 on the ATS........

 

[brandon429]

Thomas those two posted threads show the complete skip cycle approach. Cloudless reassembly

for coral-laden rocks we still work on them in the air, over the kitchen sink. They can likely tolerate an hour or so being in the air, crazy I know


but u don’t have to concern, spray or dribble sw over the corals as you detail. Keep em target wet.
use knife tip to target debride algae away right up to the flesh


a pocket knife makes your target rock free of algae, tip dig, lift, scrape and dislodge and be rinsing down the drain with saltwater.

*when the frag is all manually metal cleaned, the rock around it, abutment algae targeted like a knife urchin, then go back over cleaned areas with peroxide and cell burn invisibles. Thats the right way to handle rocks. Peroxide doesn’t go on algae, it’s been scraped away. Peroxide goes only on clear rasped surfaces which have no discernible target.

when reassembled lower light white levels and run blues much better for a while to see if helps lower grow back. Manage params, clean up crews, filtration approaches, all in the clean condition not the invaded condition thats what everyone does