Big Algae Problem

[Gary Ellis]

Need help bad... It's all over the back and on my rocks... I scrapped some of it off the back on the left side and it looks whitish underneath. Nitrates and phosphates are good. I do a water change once a week and feed flake once a day and skip some days. What do I do?

 

[mcarroll]

Nitrates and phosphates are good.

Does this mean "zero" or does it mean good, moderate numbers?

Algae are good at finding nutrients even when it looks like there are none.

The microbes that you want to grow are not good at it.

It seems contrary vs what you've heard, but it makes sense when you think about it.

So if you've been enforcing zero-nutrients, or even just allowing it to happen, you might actually be encouraging this algae.

Long way of asking for your NO3 and PO4 test numbers, I guess.

And a better pic with better light....it's really hard to tell what I'm looking at. Could be coraline algae. Coraline with hair algae. Or something else.

Please tell us about the tank's history as well.

 

[Gary Ellis]

It's a Red Sea Max E260. Been running since 5/2/18. I only have the ATI test kit and both nitrate and phosphate read 0 ppm as far as I can tell. I do a water change once a week and I have the BRS ro/di kit. I only use ro/di water in my OTO. I have a bag of BRS Ceramic Biomedia Spheres and a bad of Chemipure Blue and just recently added a 1/3 cup of BRS Rox 0.8 in the media rack. I have been feeding lightly once a day flake and once a week Mysis shrimp.

 

[mcarroll]

I only have the ATI test kit and both nitrate and phosphate read 0 ppm as far as I can tell.

Those are fine for our needs....0 is very likely to be zero.

Stop these things:

I do a water change once a week

Biomedia Spheres

Chemipure Blue

Unless the algae turns out to be dino's (doesn't look like it) this should not be used either:

BRS Rox 0.8 in the media rack

All too much extra for now. Save them for later when they will be more useful.

If you gotta change some water to keep the algae cleaned up, you might have to consider adding some nitrates and phosphates to your new water to keep the tank levels intact and more stable.

If the chromis are your only fish, consider using only flake and feeding as many times a day as you can...an auto-feeder might help. If you use an auto-feeder, you can still feed by hand too, but I'd use something other than mysis...smaller, mainly. Try baby brine shrimp (including "instant BBS") or fish eggs, for example.

This will give the tank more stable nutrients, which is good for your tank in two ways:

1) more feedings keep the chromis from eating each other a little longer
2) allows more than just algae to compete for nutrients and grow (taking up space) on your rocks and sand

It looks like you may lack CUC at this point as well.

If there's more algae than you want to hand-remove, then you need more herbivore snails.

Try hard not to let the alge get established.

 

[Gary Ellis]

So you want me to stop the water changes? It seems I read everyone says water changes,water changes and more water changes... you want me to take out the carbon,chemipure and bio-spheres too? Wow this is everything the opposite that thought I should do. I'm confused... I also have 2 Clowns, an Emerald crab and 2 Astrea snails and a recently added Turbo snail.

 

[Mical]

Looks like a new tank to me, has it fully cycled yet?

 

[mcarroll]

"Too much information" could be the main problem these days.

Consider why you're doing the water changes and ask yourself if they are really needed. Are nutrients too high? Is alkalinity too low? Those are the two main things to "fix" with a water change.

Consider how new and clean the tank is. What are things like extra media and chemipure supposed to accomplish in a new, clean tank?

Do you have a reefing book (or books) yet? Highly recommended. See what the library or your LFS have to offer, or order something used online. Tons of great books out there.

Emerald crab and 2 Astrea snails and a recently added Turbo snail.

A good start, but you need more "manpower" than that.

Maybe wait a week or so to see the impact of the Turbo....wait longer if he's making progress.

But if he's not then I'd add three more snails every couple weeks or so until you see a difference.

Get more even more variety and generally favor smaller types of snails.

 

[Gary Ellis]

Looks like a new tank to me, has it fully cycled yet?

7 weeks

 

[Gary Ellis]

"Too much information" could be the main problem these days.

Consider why you're doing the water changes and ask yourself if they are really needed. Are nutrients too high? Is alkalinity too low? Those are the two main things to "fix" with a water change.

Consider how new and clean the tank is. What are things like extra media and chemipure supposed to accomplish in a new, clean tank?

Do you have a reefing book (or books) yet? Highly recommended. See what the library or your LFS have to offer, or order something used online. Tons of great books out there.



A good start, but you need more "manpower" than that.

Maybe wait a week or so to see the impact of the Turbo....wait longer if he's making progress.

But if he's not then I'd add three more snails every couple weeks or so until you see a difference.

Get more even more variety and generally favor smaller types of snails.

What type of snails do you recommend?

 

[Tony's Reef]

Your nutrients could be reading 0 because the algae is consuming it to grow. We had this issue with a buddy's tank. Everything tested low to very low, but yet, he was still having a massive bloom. I'm not sure if it has been suggested, but a refugium with a good light source (36w LED grow bulb from amazon) and some Chaeto or caulerpa would do wonders. However, this looks like an AIO and that may not be possible. Next bet is what has been mentioned, and that is a cleanup crew. A good size Mexican Turbo Snail works wonders on this stuff. I would suggest a Blenny, but your tank is still a little young for those. And then there is always pulling it yourself with water changes. You will never get all of it, but you can get most of it. And pulling out the algae will also pull out the nutrients it has consumed. Don't just let it stay in the tank.

 

[mcarroll]

What type of snails do you recommend?

Anything that's strictly herbivorous. Favor more smaller types and fewer large types.

No (or VERY small) need for detritivore/omnivore types such as crabs, nassarius, etc.

 

[Gary Ellis]

Well now I'm not sure if I should continue with my water changes or no. Never getting rid of all of it doesn't sound good. I'm so early into this that I'm wondering if I should start all over.

 

[Tony's Reef]

If you start over, you will go through this again. You say your tank is only 7 weeks old, and that is not that old. I mean, your rock is still pretty white so it could still be going through a cycle. Once the cycle is done, it should subside and that is when the cleanup crew would do wonders. Doing water changes is a good idea if for the only reason of pulling the algae out manually. If you can scrape that back part of the tank with a credit card or something and get ALL of that algae out you may see a spike in nutrients and then that would be a great time for a water change.

 

[Gary Ellis]

Anything that's strictly herbivorous. Favor more smaller types and fewer large types.

No (or VERY small) need for detritivore/omnivore types such as crabs, nassarius, etc.

Would more Astreas be good? Will they eat the hair?

 

[Gary Ellis]

If you start over, you will go through this again. You say your tank is only 7 weeks old, and that is not that old. I mean, your rock is still pretty white so it could still be going through a cycle. Once the cycle is done, it should subside and that is when the cleanup crew would do wonders. Doing water changes is a good idea if for the only reason of pulling the algae out manually. If you can scrape that back part of the tank with a credit card or something and get ALL of that algae out you may see a spike in nutrients and then that would be a great time for a water change.

If I scrap the back it's going to go all over the place. Should I run my pumps when I do this or turn everything off and then scrap and do a water change?

 

[Tony's Reef]

The way I do it is with a sump which may not be possible for you. I scrape this stuff off while I'm running a siphon into a filter sock to catch the algae. This is for a big problem though which I just got over solving. But you definitely want to shut the pumps and powerheads off when you do it. Hair algae is pretty easy, you can just grab the clump and scrape under it to remove it. But you are right, if you just scrape it without trying to catch it, it will go everywhere.

 

[Gary Ellis]

The way I do it is with a sump which may not be possible for you. I scrape this stuff off while I'm running a siphon into a filter sock to catch the algae. This is for a big problem though which I just got over solving. But you definitely want to shut the pumps and powerheads off when you do it. Hair algae is pretty easy, you can just grab the clump and scrape under it to remove it. But you are right, if you just scrape it without trying to catch it, it will go everywhere.

You can't really grab it it's not long enough. I guess I'll just scrap it and try to catch some of it with my siphon and then do a water change.

 

[Tony's Reef]

If you have a net, more specifically a brine net (a regular one will work as well, just not as good) you can use that to catch it in the water column.

 

[Gary Ellis]

OK Thanks to all of you for your help...

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Just be patient. At 7 weeks this is a normal part of the dry rock cycle. Just leave everything alone for a month and I bet you'll see it start to decline and recede.

I know its not a popular thing to just wait but thats what reefing turns out to be.