Can GHA cause ULNS symptoms in sps?

[Smite]

A good portion of my sps show paling and little to no color. My water tests 0 phosphates (Hanna checker) and undetectable nitrates (salifert). The symptoms started with the increase of GHA. Originally I started adding gfo to my carbon reactor. The GHA started to slow but my sps coloration and growth went down hill as well.

I picked up a fully colored ponape? Birdsnest a few months back. Had a nice green Base and pink tips. Currently it is translucent green with white tips (with polyps). I saw a thread on ULNS and it was the exact same effect

I've now cut skimming to 12 hours from 24 - i noticed improvements so I've started feeding oyster feast daily along with other coral foods a few times a week. Growth has taken off, but not color.

I change carbon weekly with my 10-15% water changes. I manually removed all gha i could to give my ATS a chance to out compete the tank but it's come back full force everytime. My ATS does grow GHA just not enough.

I've slowly been adding potassium k-balance, iodine lugols, coral Vitalizer, pohl's amino acid and Kent's iron. I've seen some green and pink return for the first time in a while. Polyps are white on 80% of the sps.

Zoanthids and LPS seem alright. Mostly sps seem to be affected and flower pots. Maxima is happy and growing.

Parameters are
7.7-8 alk
500 cal
1450 mag
Phosphates not detected
Nitrate not detected
Temp 77-80
Sg 1.025 - calibrated refractometer

System is 100g. 2 mp40s max out at 90% and a gyre 150 70% pulse.

Lighting 8x54 ATI. 6 blue+ 2 purple +. Purple on 2 bulb channel 2 hours mid day.

I've added a seahare who's doing his best for now.

I plan to send in a triton test in the next couple weeks to see where I'm at a d eliminate metals.

Just curious if anyone has seen similar effects while battling green hair algae? Or maybe there's something else I should look into?

 

[Sabellafella]

A good portion of my sps show paling and little to no color. My water tests 0 phosphates (Hanna checker) and undetectable nitrates (salifert). The symptoms started with the increase of GHA. Originally I started adding gfo to my carbon reactor. The GHA started to slow but my sps coloration and growth went down hill as well.

I picked up a fully colored ponape? Birdsnest a few months back. Had a nice green Base and pink tips. Currently it is translucent green with white tips (with polyps). I saw a thread on ULNS and it was the exact same effect

I've now cut skimming to 12 hours from 24 - i noticed improvements so I've started feeding oyster feast daily along with other coral foods a few times a week. Growth has taken off, but not color.

I change carbon weekly with my 10-15% water changes. I manually removed all gha i could to give my ATS a chance to out compete the tank but it's come back full force everytime. My ATS does grow GHA just not enough.

I've slowly been adding potassium k-balance, iodine lugols, coral Vitalizer, pohl's amino acid and Kent's iron. I've seen some green and pink return for the first time in a while. Polyps are white on 80% of the sps.

Zoanthids and LPS seem alright. Mostly sps seem to be affected and flower pots. Maxima is happy and growing.

Parameters are
7.7-8 alk
500 cal
1450 mag
Phosphates not detected
Nitrate not detected
Temp 77-80
Sg 1.025 - calibrated refractometer

System is 100g. 2 mp40s max out at 90% and a gyre 150 70% pulse.

Lighting 8x54 ATI. 6 blue+ 2 purple +. Purple on 2 bulb channel 2 hours mid day.

I've added a seahare who's doing his best for now.

I plan to send in a triton test in the next couple weeks to see where I'm at a d eliminate metals.

Just curious if anyone has seen similar effects while battling green hair algae? Or maybe there's something else I should look into?

Im acually seeing this now with bubble algae, alot of sps colors are great + more then what ive hoped. Theres a few others that are just pale and dont look that well, but their growing. Its possible, my friend has a giant refugium packed with all typed of algaes and litterally had no growth no coralline ect.. just from the sheer fact the algae suckedup any excess ammonia/p04. As for the birdsnest, 90% of the time if its bright pink, it sat in very very high intensity lighting. Try moving it up and see if it changes

 

[robert]

Algae and corals compete for space on the reef - don't neglect allelopathy - algaes produce carbon compounds which disrupt the coral holobiont through resident bacterial overstimulation.

It may not be as simple as nutrient competition.

 

[SeaDweller]

Your phosphates could be higher than the tests read, as the GHA may be up taking a lot of it and giving u a false low.

 

[Smite]

Your phosphates could be higher than the tests read, as the GHA may be up taking a lot of it and giving u a false low.

I think you're right but I wonder if the GHA is striping the water so much that it's starving the sps as well.

At first is suspected my Marco rocks were leaching but it's rarely on the rocks. Mostly on the back wall and exposed glass on bottom where sand got blown around. I've set a feed mode on my apex and feed smaller amounts 2x a day. Everything gets eaten.

Algae and corals compete for space on the reef - don't neglect allelopathy - algaes produce carbon compounds which disrupt the coral holobiont through resident bacterial overstimulation.

It may not be as simple as nutrient competition.

Is this something my weekly carbon changes will help keep at bay? I leave for the weekdays for work so I'm only able to scrape the GHA once a week.

Im acually seeing this now with bubble algae, alot of sps colors are great + more then what ive hoped. Theres a few others that are just pale and dont look that well, but their growing. Its possible, my friend has a giant refugium packed with all typed of algaes and litterally had no growth no coralline ect.. just from the sheer fact the algae suckedup any excess ammonia/p04. As for the birdsnest, 90% of the time if its bright pink, it sat in very very high intensity lighting. Try moving it up and see if it changes

Yeah this is what I was worried about.

I'll try moving the birdsnest up. Imy a little hesitant since it does look border-line bleached. I'll go slowly and keep an eye on it

 

[SeaDweller]

I think you're right but I wonder if the GHA is striping the water so much that it's starving the sps as well.

At first is suspected my Marco rocks were leaching but it's rarely on the rocks. Mostly on the back wall and exposed glass on bottom where sand got blown around. I've set a feed mode on my apex and feed smaller amounts 2x a day. Everything gets eaten.



Is this something my weekly carbon changes will help keep at bay? I leave for the weekdays for work so I'm only able to scrape the GHA once a week.



Yeah this is what I was worried about.

I'll try moving the birdsnest up. Imy a little hesitant since it does look border-line bleached. I'll go slowly and keep an eye on it

Sorry it's late and I have a newborn. Didn't read correctly and I now understand your post a bit more.

Can GHA uptake too much nutrients to make it unavailable to your sps to the point they pale......?
Hmm... I feel you'd have to have a ton of GHA to sort of act like macro algae; and if your levels are indeed low to zero, then dosing nitrates may be counterproductive.

Perhaps I didn't catch it, but do you run a fuge to outcompete the GHA? I feed my fish heavily and I have no GHA growing in my DT (however when I dose aminos, I get a minor cyano outbreak). I run chaeto and some type of red macro in the sump and that grows very quickly (obviously up taking the nutrients). I get some minor GHA in the fuge area and that's about it. I have brown slime algae in the DT's glass every few days. Sometimes I have to dose nitrates to keep some detectable levels.

Personally, if it were me, GHA would tell me that there's probably enough phosphates for it to grow and give me a false low. I would dose KNO3 to see if that could help drive the PO4 down in the RF ratio, making the N more available to use more P, and I'd watch it very carefully. Also the KNO3 would help with the pale colors, but again that is what I would try in my tank.