Corals Dying and Strange Growth

Johnson556 · Sep 19, 2018

Past month has been rough, I've been losing acros like wildfire and just last night noticed a large rainbow Acan colony pealing off its skeleton. I'm at loss for words. Tank is stable at

Alk - 8.00
Calc - 430
Nitrate - 2ppm
P04 - never above 0.02
Mag - 1400
Salinity 35PPT

My concern is this growth that is forming on the rocks. It is taking over killing coralline and seems to be harming corals as well. What is this? It's hard and comes off rather easily. Scraping it inbetween your fingers feels like stale bread. I have no idea what it is. Can someone please help me identify this and how to stop it.

chipmunkofdoom2 · Sep 19, 2018

Really sorry to hear that

has anything changed in your setup? Anything at all? New food? New filters in the RO/DI? Any new inhabitants that could have brought disease?

ndrwater · Sep 19, 2018

What he^^^^ said and what is the age if the tank? Looks a lot like green Coraline

vetteguy53081 · Sep 20, 2018

Hard to tell on my phone screen but is the green growth coraline or bubble algae?are you using tap water?
Also, nitrate is up a little. How often are you doing water changes?

Johnson556 · Sep 20, 2018

chipmunkofdoom2 said:
Really sorry to hear that has anything changed in your setup? Anything at all? New food? New filters in the RO/DI? Any new inhabitants that could have brought disease?

I haven't done a thing for months except add fish to get my nutrients up. For 3 months I couldn't get Nitrates or Phosphates detectable so I began adding more fish, that is it. However, last week I noticed AEFW on a big red planet colony (which is now a 2" frag). Everything has been agressively scubbed or dipped since then. No signs of eggs or flatworms since. Also have absolutely no idea how they got in the tank.

ndrwater said:
What he^^^^ said and what is the age if the tank? Looks a lot like green Coraline

Tank is 7 months old (still somewhat new), but all of the rock in it is about 12 months old so. Only real addition during my upgrade from my 90G was 80lbs of aragonite. I can assure you, my dry rock started with green coralline and this is nothing like it. So bizarre, I've texted it to a few tank wizards in my area and they could not identify.

vetteguy53081 said:
Hard to tell on my phone screen but is the green growth coraline or bubble algae?are you using tap water?
Also, nitrate is up a little. How often are you doing water changes?

I have three emerald crabs in my tank so I doubt it, plus it doesn't feel like bubble algae. It actually feels like stale bread but very easy to break apart.
Only use RODI water with less than 2 TDS and use red sea blue bucket salt mix, do a 40G water change every 30 days with the occasional 10G-20G in between.
Nitrates are at 2PPM and took 3 months and 5 more fish to get there, they still drop if I dont feed twice a day. I specifically shot for that number because everything was so pale beforehand. Everything started to get colorful then completely went to $h!t...

Gregg @ ADP · Sep 21, 2018

Can you take some of the green stuff out, break it up, and get a pic? That will tell us more.

Gregg @ ADP · Sep 21, 2018

Can you take some of the green stuff out, break it up, and get a pic? That will tell us more.

Gregg @ ADP · Sep 21, 2018

Can you take some of the green out, put it on a tray, break it up a little and get a pic? That will help ID it

tankstudy · Sep 21, 2018

Run an ammonia and nitrite test to rule those out.

Johnson556 · Oct 2, 2018

Last night I notice the frag plug of some Zoas was completely covered in this stuff. Seemed to appear over the weeend while I was away. Since I hooked up my scrubber I thought it was receding, well apparently not. Getting to my breaking point.

Really want to know what this crap is.

Sea MunnKey · Oct 2, 2018

That is definitely bubble algae!

Johnson556 · Oct 2, 2018

No way.....that small?

If this is true my emerald crabs are fired. If they’re actually still around...

IslandLifeReef · Oct 2, 2018

I agree with @Sea MunnKey, bubble algae. You can see it much better in the video you posted. I had to zoom in to see it. I've read that Vibrant will take care of that over time.

Sea MunnKey · Oct 2, 2018

Read this thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/v...iscussion-thread.271428/page-225#post-4791769

Been through the bubble algae issue about 2 years ago and dosed the tank with Vibrant as per instructions. No bubble algae problem ever since ... Good luck!!!

Johnson556 · Oct 2, 2018

Should have never took my ATS offline a few months back. Things were perfect but sps was starving for nutrients.

Thank you for the input.

Sea MunnKey · Oct 2, 2018

My current system is skimmerless & my sump is still dry. I do weekly 15% water changes with added GFO & carbon ...

iemsparticus · Oct 2, 2018

vetteguy53081 said:
Hard to tell on my phone screen but is the green growth coraline or bubble algae?are you using tap water?
Also, nitrate is up a little. How often are you doing water changes?

I would hardly call 2ppm Nitrate “up a little.”

Johnson556 · Oct 2, 2018

Looking everywhere for this particular species of "bubble algae" cannot find anything remotely close. The only species that could somewhat match what I have is Valonia aegagropila, but many qualities are still off.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-02/hcj/feature/index.php

Later tonight will be sucking out as much as possible and throwing in some bubble eating inhabitants to see.

Rcpilot · Oct 2, 2018

Definitely bubble algea. It's just a "carpet" varient of the stuff.

I think you're doing the right thing by manual removal. Get as much out as you can. Killing it in the tank causes more dissolved organics in the water. Get all the easy stuff out first, and then dose what's left in the hard to reach areas.

Check TDS on your RO output. Might be time to refresh the DI or carbon.
Check lights for spectrum loss. Not sure what type of lights you have, but MH and T5 will loose their color over time, and need to be replaced.

Johnson556 · Oct 2, 2018

Rcpilot said:
Definitely bubble algea. It's just a "carpet" varient of the stuff.

I think you're doing the right thing by manual removal. Get as much out as you can. Killing it in the tank causes more dissolved organics in the water. Get all the easy stuff out first, and then dose what's left in the hard to reach areas.

Check TDS on your RO output. Might be time to refresh the DI or carbon.
Check lights for spectrum loss. Not sure what type of lights you have, but MH and T5 will loose their color over time, and need to be replaced.

I have an ATS so I'm hesitant on using a product like Vibrant. My plan of attack is to leave the scrubber hooked up, manually remove as much as possible tonight and borrow a seahare + restock my emerald crab population.

The T5's are only 4 months old, and run 6 hours a day in a temp controlled canopy. TDS is always at zero.

This algae certainly happened because of me taking my ATS offline and emerald crabs dying off. Should have replaced them and added more to my CUC . My current cuc is what was left from my 90G when I upgraded to the 180 in May.

IslandLifeReef · Oct 2, 2018

Johnson556 said:
I have an ATS so I'm hesitant on using a product like Vibrant. My plan of attack is to leave the scrubber hooked up, manually remove as much as possible tonight and borrow a seahare + restock my emerald crab population.

The T5's are only 4 months old, and run 6 hours a day in a temp controlled canopy. TDS is always at zero.

This algae certainly happened because of me taking my ATS offline and emerald crabs dying off. Should have replaced them and added more to my CUC . My current cuc is what was left from my 90G when I upgraded to the 180 in May.

The only problem I see with only using the ATS is that it has to outcompete the bubble algae for nutrients. Vibrant is just a bacteria that binds the nutrients so that they can't be used by the algae, but corals can still use them. Not trying to talk you into anything, just something you might want to look in to.