Algae Woes

[JSB]

Ok, admittedly my tank is young (about 4 months), but I am ready to be done with the algae (red hair, cyano, diatoms). I am doing everything right (or so I believe). I use RO/DI water for NSW and Top Off. I run GFO and carbon. NO3 and PO4 are 3ppm and .03ppm respectively. I change water 10% weekly. I have zebra snails, some astrea's (but not enough), emerald crabs, yada, yada yada.

I am having manageable but bothersome runs with diatoms and red hair and am waiting for that to be over, as the tank matures. However, I replaced my dark colored tight-mesh screen top this weekend with a more open clear version, and cut the lights back 20% in intensity. This afternoon, I am finding cyano starting on the sand. I have used all the sage advice I have ever given or received in this hobby for algae control, but am still bumming out.

I will admit to running a longer photoperiod than I am used to. I have been using the Radion LED's in natural mode which has a natural up/down ramp and defaults to a 12 hour day. Due to the first 4 and last 4 being less than 40% intensity, and the middle being 80% intensity, that seems right to me.

Can anyone say anything to me to stop me from pulling my hair (head, not red) out?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Astraea snails eat diatom. Nassarius snails will stir up the sand and help control the cyano, and a fighting conch will also help a lot to keep the sand bed white and diatom free. If you are keeping up your maintenance and still have cyano (and if you don't mind going the chemical route), try Red Slime Remover or Chemi-Clean. As for the red hair algae, some Tangs or Rabbitfish may eat them. Mexican Turbo snails supposely eat red algae, but I am not sure about the coarse hard red hair algae.

 

[Hyprviperx]

+1 on the conch i have 2 tiger conchs and they have eliminated all sand algae and since they bury themselves they have kept the sand sifted well. they even end up climbing on top of rocks. other than that the mexican turbos and the astreas help alot and as Tomoko said the red slime remover also works and its supposed to be reef safe. ive used it w/ no problems in my tank but i dont really have any SPS (so i cant say yay or nay to that point). i do have softies, lps(chalice and acans), fungia, sopnges, etc.. good luck

 

[JSB]

Thanks for the advice. I have some astrea and some nassarius snails coming this week, but I will check on the conch. My Scopas shows no interest in the red stuff, and I am topped up on the fish I want as I have achieved what could be considered peaceful equilibrium. Turbos are out as they just knock crap over all the time and re-aquascape when I don't want to. I prefer not to go the chemical route if I can help it, but it depends how frustrated I get. It really isn't BAD, I just don;t want to get there.

 

[swissgaurd]

just getting through a bad algae outbreak cyno and hair algae
used prodibio and microb-lift special blend

vic

 

[H@rry]

You didn't mention how much/often you are feeding. You might try cutting back and seeing if that helps.

 

[JSB]

You didn't mention how much/often you are feeding. You might try cutting back and seeing if that helps.

Thanks for the advice H@rry, but I only feed once a day, and while I am not stingy, I have seen others that are WAAAAY more generous than I am. When I was initially stocking the fish, I was feeding twice a day to make sure everyone was eating, but have since cut back.

I have good flow to the cumulative tune of up to 4000gph in a 60, and a skimmer that is rated 3+ times the size of the tank, and a 100micron sock changed weekly. I know I will not likely have a substrate that looks like the gulf coast beaches (for more than a day after cleaning anyway), I would like for all forms of algae to step back some.

Again, this is not a crisis outbreak that is choking things out, it is just dusty brown or red sand a day after cleaning, cleaning the glass everyday, and blowing algae off the rocks and things twice a week. I would like to cut this activity down, not because I dislike the activity, but because I like the semi-pristine look that I have right after cleaning.

So, my plan is a little less food, a little shorter photoperiod, a bunch more nassarius and astreas. I would like to do the tiger conch mentioned above, but it would quickly run out of sand to graze in my tank.

 

[aquabull]

Have you started abusively dosing magnesium, with healthy doses of calcium and carbonate? With mag levels around 1250ppm, with cal levels around 420 and kH around 9, you will not have an algae problem. Unless, of course, you are dealing with stray or ambient light from ceiling fans, windows, and yes, even big t.v.s!

 

[JSB]

Have you started abusively dosing magnesium, with healthy doses of calcium and carbonate? With mag levels around 1250ppm, with cal levels around 420 and kH around 9, you will not have an algae problem. Unless, of course, you are dealing with stray or ambient light from ceiling fans, windows, and yes, even bis t.v.s!

Perhaps not abusively, but yes I am dosing. CA=450, ALk=10KH, Mag=1400. I do have a room with a lot of ambient light, but that describes virtually every room in my house. I bought the fish a 55" 3D LED TV to keep them company:wink:, but it is 12' from the tank and they decidedly do not like daytime TV, so it is usually off. I am sure the ambient light is contributing. However, all I can hope to do is starve it out by getting nitrate and phosphate even lower, but without running bio-pellets, I am not sure how. I am hesitant to run pellets or dose any chemical measures.

 

[Decalf]

"NO3 and PO4 are 3ppm and .03ppm respectively"

I think you need to get these as close to Zero as possible to starve out the algae. I had this issue and used Mircrobacter7 and Biofuel to produce more bacteria in the system to basically drain it of all the NO3 and PO4. After the bacteria are taking it up faster than the algae it will die off. Then the bacteria will die off , and you should be able to then keep the tank in balance with water changes, and maintence doses of Mircrobacter7 and Biofuel. Look up NeoZeo method for maintaining an ultra low nutrient style reef aquarium and ZEO type system in other posts. Basiclly this is the same thing as when using a biopellet reactor.

 

[KJAG]

Astraea snails eat diatom. Nassarius snails will stir up the sand and help control the cyano, and a fighting conch will also help a lot to keep the sand bed white and diatom free. If you are keeping up your maintenance and still have cyano (and if you don't mind going the chemical route), try Red Slime Remover or Chemi-Clean. As for the red hair algae, some Tangs or Rabbitfish may eat them. Mexican Turbo snails supposely eat red algae, but I am not sure about the coarse hard red hair algae.

My skimmer was down for a few weeks and I had a gnarly red turf algae outbreak soon after( a few months ago).Had thick, red turf growing on every inch of once pristine rock, frag plugs etc. Bought a couple Mex Turbos and they mowed it down in less than a week. Now I'm dealing with the Turbos knocking things over but the red turf is gone

 

[Dozerman]

My tank had small patches of red slime is lower current areas of the tank, not much, but it bothered me just because it was there. I decided to add a bio-pellet reactor and have had no traces of any nusance algae at all after a few months. Nitrate and phosphate only show up as a trace now, which IMO is needed for coral growth.

 

[robf]

The tank is relatively new still so I wouldn't be overly concerned. It sounds like you are doing everything right and eventually it will improve. I know how hard it is to hear this because in real time four months seems like an eternity. For me its the ewww factor that bugs me. I don't like the fact that my tank looked like hell in my living room even though it was part of the process. I just needed to "get over" myself and let the tank season. That said I still tried to keep things clean.

 

[JSB]

I changed the flow pattern a bit by lowering an mp10, I increased overall flow by adding another 10% max power to the daytime programming of the mp10s (2@90% Nutrient Transport), and added a dozen bulldozer snails, I mean turbos. Now my hands are in the tank everyday putting the transitional pieces back in place as well as the occasional super-glued piece. Overall, the red is in decline, but now the green on the glass is greater each day.

Oh well, this too shall pass.